Millenials to end football?

[Klose_the_Sith]

Ok, here's another. The death of Princess Di.

Yeah, that one I'll probably grant you. Except that I was in the UK went it happened, so there didn't seem to be anything strange about the news coverage or obsession

[Amridell]

I am a millennial. I am also an American. And I will say that I hope we do end it. In my opinion, I simply have no interest in it, and I think that this generation can move on to much more complex games. Maybe this is just all the International (great pudge hooks, Dendi!) and IPL I've watched, and all the other Esports I forgot talking, but I am hoping my generation carries this article through.

[SaintRidley]

Being from 1988, I've always felt kind of in a weird spot in generational terms. I'm too young to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the Soviet Union, but my brother was born in part due to the Gulf War and I have a few memories around then. Jurassic Park was a formative experience and Toy Story was revolutionary. I remember the NES very clearly, and Alex Kidd in Miracle World was my first video game ever.

I still don't like cell phones and I feel like it wasn't until high school that most people my age started having them. I remember before the internet was very interesting to most people, when having a computer lab in an elementary school was weird. I remember when it was possible that you would accidentally discover a pornographic web site when trying to do research on the president at school because the whole .com/.gov domain issue was not something everyone was aware of.

The death of Princess Diana was the first major international news I was aware of. 9/11 came at the time when I was already beginning to become interested in watching the news to begin with. Y2K was a hilarious letdown, and I still remember computers before Windows, though only just. I was close enough in age to Harry Potter when the first two books and the last three books came out that I was, basically, growing up parallel to him.

I'm not really an 80s kid, since I remember nothing from then, but I remember too much of the 90s to really feel like I belong to the same generation as anyone born in the 90s.

So mostly I'm just confused.

[Aedilred]

I'm not really an 80s kid, since I remember nothing from then, but I remember too much of the 90s to really feel like I belong to the same generation as anyone born in the 90s.

So mostly I'm just confused.

You see, this is the problem. Life and experiences don't just fall neatly into brackets. I was five when the Berlin Wall came down; I remember being sat in front of the TV and told this was Important. That's just about the first thing I remember from outside my own direct life experience. I remember all the other stuff Katana_Geldar mentioned, and also stuff like the wars in Yugoslavia, but mostly I remember the 90s, probably falsely, as an era of hope and innocence. The Cold War was over and we had nothing to be afraid of any more, at least until 9/11 brought a new kind of threat to our attention via our living rooms. Of course there were still wars going on, but our way of life was no longer directly under threat. I still can't work out whether it was ever actually the case in the West, or whether it was just the age that I was.

But I'm still old enough to remember a time before the internet; before even my parents had a mobile phone; before we had a computer in the house; when neapolitan ice cream still included a mint flavour; when "digital" was still a magic word; when it looked as though minidisc players were going to revolutionise the way we listened to music; when waterbeds were still the height of fashion. My memory of the 80s is largely second-hand (a lot of it was recycled during the 90s, of course) and my memory of the 70s is obviously completely nonexistent; but I'm not a millennial either.

I am a millennial. I am also an American. And I will say that I hope we do end it. In my opinion, I simply have no interest in it, and I think that this generation can move on to much more complex games.

This... depresses me. Destroying something just because you have no personal interest in it is a one-track route to cultural barbarism, even if your intentions are at least nominally philanthropic. It's a sad society that has no room for escapism. Besides, of all sports widely played, American football is one of the most tactically complex. If sports are to be exterminated on the basis of lack of complexity (which, to be honest, I find a rubbish measure on which to judge them) then gridiron should be one of the last to fall. Cricket might survive it, but even that's debatable.

[GnomeFighter]

This... depresses me. Destroying something just because you have no personal interest in it is a one-track route to cultural barbarism, even if your intentions are at least nominally philanthropic. It's a sad society that has no room for escapism. Besides, of all sports widely played, American football is one of the most tactically complex. If sports are to be exterminated on the basis of lack of complexity (which, to be honest, I find a rubbish measure on which to judge them) then gridiron should be one of the last to fall. Cricket might survive it, but even that's debatable.

Cricket less complex than American football? T20 maybe, but a test match is like a 5 day game of chess. You call yourself british? Pah! (Ye, I'm a cricket fan :) )

Anyway, ye, people should live and let live. I don't see American football going anywhere soon, and this "this generation is rubbish" is utter nonsense. Personally I really hate it and think it has far more of an effect than any "no losers sports day", and I also think that even if they do actually exist in more than a few hyped up news papers they are probably less damaging than the past attitude of "your worthless if you don't win" and "trying is not good enough".

On the generation side, for me it has always been roughly defined as:

Generation Y don't remember a time without computers being everywhere.
Millennials don't remember a time without the internet.

Thats not to say they were not born before we had computers or internet, but that they do not remember a time when they were not able to get easy access to them.

That puts Generation Y starting between about 1980 and 1985 and Millennials around 1995. I was born in 1980 and I just about remember computers starting to come in to every home and school, by my brother born in 1983 always had access to computers at school.

[Aedilred]

Cricket less complex than American football? T20 maybe, but a test match is like a 5 day game of chess. You call yourself british? Pah! (Ye, I'm a cricket fan :) )

Oh, I'm a huge cricket fan (Tests, principally, not hit-and-giggle). But the tactics of the game have never seemed to me to be that complex, even though the number of variables in play at any given time is enormous. American football, on the other hand... well, I just don't have a clue what's going on. Maybe it's just a question of familiarity.

[GnomeFighter]

Cricket is a very complex game, but subtle in its complexity with long stratagys playing out, much of it pre match with team selection, then in terms of bowler and fielder variation. It is a game of car and mouse with allot of levels. Take a look at the subtle shifts in the team as you reach different parts of the day. You will often see changes in aggression to throw batsmen off, or speeding up and slowing down of batting to put bowlers off there stride, or get the field to move round. It's subtle, and plays out over a long time, but its there.

I like to compare it to F1. You can enjoy the cars zooming round and think it is nothing more than going round in circles (or hitting a ball), but there is great hidden depths of subtle tactics going on.

I do think part of it with American football is the rules. It's like Rugby League. The first time I watched that i had no idea what was going on, but as I started to understand the rules I found it more and more interesting. Turnovers and the like give you a headache until you realize how people are trying to force them in the right place at the right time. Rugby League and American football have allot in common.

I think many sports have a complex tactical side to them that we just don't see clearly. Apart from football. Thats just a bunch of overpaid guys kicking a pig bladder around

[Eldan]

Look, eventually, we'll all play Blernsball anyway.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I am a millennial. I am also an American. And I will say that I hope we do end it. In my opinion, I simply have no interest in it, and I think that this generation can move on to much more complex games. Maybe this is just all the International (great pudge hooks, Dendi!) and IPL I've watched, and all the other Esports I forgot talking, but I am hoping my generation carries this article through.

...

No.

I think American TV should get out of the sports rut and show a wider variety than football, basketball, and baseball being the only sports shown on non-sports channels, and being the majority of what's shown on sports channels with NASCAR and hockey as well.

But until we perfect simulation gaming and can send in teams of real people to fight in warfare, or the SCA can find the right balance between realism and safety, have less restrictive rules for archers and crossbowmen, and get people to actually learn how mass combat works, football stays.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Not that I'd miss football if it fell to the wayside, but if there's any american sport that bugs me, it's baseball. I just don't get it. Even golf makes more sense to me. Of course golf isn't an american sport, so it doesn't really fall into the same category as the other two.

[Aedilred]

Cricket is a very complex game, but subtle in its complexity with long stratagys playing out, much of it pre match with team selection, then in terms of bowler and fielder variation. It is a game of car and mouse with allot of levels. Take a look at the subtle shifts in the team as you reach different parts of the day. You will often see changes in aggression to throw batsmen off, or speeding up and slowing down of batting to put bowlers off there stride, or get the field to move round. It's subtle, and plays out over a long time, but its there.

I like to compare it to F1. You can enjoy the cars zooming round and think it is nothing more than going round in circles (or hitting a ball), but there is great hidden depths of subtle tactics going on.

Oh sure; I guess I just see a lot of the subtlety in cricket as being strategy rather than tactics per se.

I'm also yet to be wholly convinced of the effect that "good captaincy" (i.e. tactical application) actually has on the game. Everyone is in agreement that Stephen Fleming, for instance, was just about the best international captain of the last ten years, but it didn't seem to carry through into their performances. It was commonly claimed both that Michael Vaughan was a better captain than Strauss and that the class of 2005 was better than that of 2011, but Strauss's win/loss record was very similar (until this last series at least). In Australia, famously, each successive captain throughout the 90s-00s was considered to be a step down from the previous in terms of ability, but their win rates went up.

It just seems to me that on-field captaincy is a relatively insignificant factor in terms of winning games in comparison to the individual and collective ability of players. Occasionally you get a captain who is obviously so clueless or lackadaisical that the team is losing or drawing matches they could or should have won (*cough*MSDhoni*cough*) but those are rare, and I don't think I've ever seen a captain drag his team out of the mire with brilliant tactics (Ponting at Old Trafford 05, maybe, but that was more down to his implacable batting than any tactical nous).

Indeed, the captains with really impressive records tend to be those who had a weapon at their disposal that nobody else could match - such as Jardine (bodyline), Lloyd (express bowling quartets), Imran (reverse swing) or Bradman (the best eleven players hitherto to set foot on a cricket field).

None of which is, of course, to denigrate the game, which I love dearly!

[KuReshtin]

There will always be competition in some form or another. It's just part of who we are.
even if that means that the competition is who's faster, stronger, can throw something the furthest or is part of a winning team, there will always be people wanting to compete, and therefore, I believe that American Football won't disappear because people are becoming less interested in beating up another person.
American Football is also one of the few team sports where you don't get as much segregation because of body type as a lot of other sports. in an American Football team, there is a place for the chubby kid who can't run very fast, as well as there being a place for the kid who can run fast and catch the ball that the kid who may not be very fast, but can chuck the ball downfield.

American Football was the only sport I ever felt comfortable being part of the team, and that the others in the team didn't judge me for being too short and too fat and too slow. And I believe that is another thing that will mean that American Football will survive as a sport.


Also, Eldan, as a side note, just because you haven't seen American Football in Australia doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's there, you just haven't looked in the right places.

[INDYSTAR188]

Not that I'd miss football if it fell to the wayside, but if there's any american sport that bugs me, it's baseball. I just don't get it. Even golf makes more sense to me. Of course golf isn't an american sport, so it doesn't really fall into the same category as the other two.

I wouldn't either. My personal preference of sports is:

Pro Football
College Basketball
College Football
Pro Basketball
International Soccer
Pro Soccer

I find baseball incredibly boring. Going to games is fun-ish (beer, hot dogs, babes). But I find drunk super aggressive sports fan to be a huge hinderance in taking my daughter to games.

[Eldan]

Also, Eldan, as a side note, just because you haven't seen American Football in Australia doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's there, you just haven't looked in the right places.

I'm not in Australia, though. Haven't been for, oh, three or four months. I just constantly forget to update my location tag.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I wouldn't either. My personal preference of sports is:

Pro Football
College Basketball
College Football
Pro Basketball
International Soccer
Pro Soccer

I find baseball incredibly boring. Going to games is fun-ish (beer, hot dogs, babes). But I find drunk super aggressive sports fan to be a huge hinderance in taking my daughter to games.

There are only really two sports that draw my interest and only one of them is regularly televised.

MMA
Parkour/Freerunning.

Guess which one gets air-time.


PS: I'm making an assumption here because I've never seen it televised. If anybody knows of a parkour/freerunning show, I'd be very interested in giving it a look.

[sktarq]

A few things. according to the various newspapers, market reviews, and economics books I read the millenials are variously placed at starting between 1980 and 1983 and ending at 1999. The internet seems to have a rather differing standard. I do not know why. It does seem that early memory and world awarness has more to do with "generation" than actual age of birth. I personally put the difference here in america if people remember the looming dread and fear of the MAD policy and the the pre AOL internet.

As for American Rules Football dying out. Possibly and very much so in my part of nation. Schools avoiding liability, growing popularity of soccer, rugby, etc. Less to do with violence than taste and fassion. Also a growing distate for the very rowdy fan antics assosiated with the NFL may be involved on a generational scale. But who knows

EDIT:Thinking on it one other things comes to mind that does seem at least partially generational. A lower tolerance for commercials interupting gameplay. I don't know if this is just the people I know but if true on a larger scale could drive people away from the this sport to others. . . But still little of the violence issue.

[Aedilred]

Realistically, American football isn't likely to die out, although there might be a culture shift in which it loses some of its pre-eminence.

Over here, football (soccer) is far and away the biggest sport, with far bigger sums of money at stake, a much bigger fanbase, and a truly disproportionate amount of coverage compared to other sports. However, a hundred years or so ago, cricket was the most popular sport by some distance, and soccer was a relatively eccentric pastime.

It's also regional. In the UK, we have two competing codes of rugby football. Rugby league is more popular in the north, but is hardly played at all in the south. I gather that in Australia, AFL is dominant in some areas and league in others (union being the third-most popular football code, and they're still consistently one of the best teams in the world *grumble*).

The trick, I suppose, is for sport to embrace societal changes and adapt to them rather than try to stick them out. We've seen periodic changes in recent years to the rules in rugby union to make it less dangerous to players and more attractive to spectators. Cricket is currently undergoing a deeply controversial revolution to try to get more people to watch the game. Meanwhile, aside from a change about twenty years ago to make the game more about skill and less about skewering opposing players with your studs, soccer is firmly and increasingly impolitely refusing to change a thing, despite mounting evidence in some areas that the current situation isn't good enough. It'll be interesting to see if it pays the price for that.

[Morph Bark]

I see some definitions are in order.

Americans name specific generations of families thus:

The Greatest Generation (born 1920-1945). So-called because these are the people who fought in World War 2. Not many of these left. The critical event marking this generation is that they remember WWII. Not many of these left.

The Baby Boom (Born 1945-1965). So-called because there was a massive birth spike when all the soldiers came back from the war, and the Baby Boom is the result. People of this generation remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also the Beatles , Woodstock, the Rolling Stones. The Civil Rights Movement. People of this age listened to old people rant about rock music and long hair.

This is the most important generation currently because they are more numerous than the succeeding generations, which are smaller. They also tend to be the people in the most important jobs.

Generation X (born 1965-1995) This generation was the children of the Baby Boom's youth. It is quite small, IIRC , because many baby boomers waited until much later to have children. People of this generation remember the Challenger Disaster, The Wall coming down in Europe, the events of 1989. Ronald Reagan. Guns & Roses. Duran Duran. Nirvana. The original My Little Pony, GI Joe, and Transformers. People of this age listened to old people rant about Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the generation I am from, born in 1971.

Millenials (also known as generation Y) (born 1995-??). These are the generation of my children if any of them had lived, and the children of the baby boom's maturity. It is larger because many boomers had to work through college, pay off their debts, and gain financial security before they really started having many kids.

These are the people who are currently going through high school and college. The events so far of their generation are the events of 9/11/2001, the wars of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and the current economic crisis. Not to mention my little pony remakes, Harry Potter, facebook, google. Old people rant about all of the above.

At any rate, that's what Americans mean when they use the word "millenial". I may not be using the definitions quite correctly, but I think they'll do well enough to get on with.

According to Wikipedia, Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born from 1982 up to the early 2000s. (Probably because they became adults after the turn of the millennium is why they're called "Millenials".)

The generation after that, called Generation Z, starts from somewhere in the early 90s onwards. The definitions often seem to overlap somewhat, except for the Baby Boomers, which have a clearly defined beginning, and the Greatest and Silent Generations.

I don't know whether these are the generation definition the article you linked used, but considering that around now is the time that the early millennials (from 1982-1990 for instance) are having kids or have young kids growing up and steering them away from football (if they really are doing that, that is), it very well might be.

[GnomeFighter]

Oh sure; I guess I just see a lot of the subtlety in cricket as being strategy rather than tactics per se.

I'm also yet to be wholly convinced of the effect that "good captaincy" (i.e. tactical application) actually has on the game.

Ah, I think we are working to slightly different meanings of the word "tactical"!

Getting in to the details of the meanings of each word I would argue cricket is more of a tactical game, relying on the ebb and flow and reacting, and american football a strategic game relying on set plays and pre planing. However, I don't know much about American Football.

As for the effect of captaincy I do think it dose have some effect, but the selectors have as big an effect, as the building of the right team, with the right synergy of batting pairs, infield groups of players, etc can have a huge effect. If the players are not gelling the captain can only do so much. However I do think that tactical changes, moving around fielders, using your bowling line up and bowlers using variation of line, length, spin, etc is what makes cricket. Contrast that to football (uk) where it is just about players out playing each other with, to me, very little tactics.

Were realy not helping the cliché that all we do in the UK is drink tea and watch cricket.

[sktarq]

According to Wikipedia, Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born from 1982 up to the early 2000s. (Probably because they became adults after the turn of the millennium is why they're called "Millenials".)

The generation after that, called Generation Z, starts from somewhere in the early 90s onwards. The definitions often seem to overlap somewhat, except for the Baby Boomers, which have a clearly defined beginning, and the Greatest and Silent Generations.

So we seem to be of the agreement that the definitions of generation seems to be so blurry arbitrary etc as to have lost most conversational value.
Being born in late '81 I can certainly attest to idea that some kind a generational change happened around then but there seemed to be another about '89-90 and probably more since then. So have "generations" as a useful term sped up to every 5 or ten years instead of the 20 or so that was the common idea of the term previously?

[Klose_the_Sith]

I gather that in Australia, AFL is dominant in some areas and league in others (union being the third-most popular football code, and they're still consistently one of the best teams in the world *grumble*).

Union is dominant in the Canberra area and the better-off parts of NSW/QLD. All the Super 14 club teams are doing very well, whereas a lot of the League club teams are desperately reliant on gambling revenue from owned clubs to stay afloat.

There are people who love their League, but it's the third code more than Union is.

[KuReshtin]

I'm not in Australia, though. Haven't been for, oh, three or four months. I just constantly forget to update my location tag.

Fair enough. My comment still stands, though. There is a whole lot of American Football played in Switzerland as well.

[THAC0]

There are some economic factors to football as well. Many places I have worked have been higher up on the socio-economic scale. Football was there, but not really more than any other sport.

Where I work now though? Football is god. You know why? In part, for a lot of these kids, they have no way out except through a sports scholarship and football is the most lucrative scholarship out there. I think they also field the largest teams.

[Eldan]

Fair enough. My comment still stands, though. There is a whole lot of American Football played in Switzerland as well.

Is there? I knew a Rugby player in university, but I've never seen American Football. And I just ask a few people, most don't even know the difference, beyond "One's British, the other American".

[KuReshtin]

Is there? I knew a Rugby player in university, but I've never seen American Football. And I just ask a few people, most don't even know the difference, beyond "One's British, the other American".

Problem with American Football in Europe is that it's still a niche sport in most countries, with only a few having national exposure (germany and Austria spring to mind).
However, it's played in a majority of European countries. Just no one knows about it.

[Maelstrom]

Problem with American Football in Europe is that it's still a niche sport in most countries, with only a few having national exposure (germany and Austria spring to mind).
However, it's played in a majority of European countries. Just no one knows about it.

Quite a few teams in France I know of as well...one right here in Dijon. Of course the only reason I know about it is my fellow teammates thought it was amusing an American playing rugby in France rather than on the AmFoot team...

[Morph Bark]

Is there? I knew a Rugby player in university, but I've never seen American Football. And I just ask a few people, most don't even know the difference, beyond "One's British, the other American".

Rugby is basically American Football without the padding. Or rather, American Football is rugby with padding. Rugby is known as "a thugs' sport played by gentlemen" in the UK, whereas football is known as "a gentlemen's sport played by thugs".

[Maelstrom]

Rugby is basically American Football without the padding. Or rather, American Football is rugby with padding. Rugby is known as "a thugs' sport played by gentlemen" in the UK, whereas football is known as "a gentlemen's sport played by thugs".

Rugby is every *but* American football...yes, the shape of the ball is the same, the field is similiar, but that is about where it stops....

As for quotes, how about George Orwell's describing rugby as the equivalent of “war minus the shooting.” ;)

[Aedilred]

Rugby is every *but* American football...yes, the shape of the ball is the same, the field is similiar, but that is about where it stops....

Yeah, they are very different games. Having said that, rugby (union) is becoming increasingly stop-start these days - but then that's considered a bug, not a feature.

[Joran]

On the terminology question, I always considered myself Generation Y (or Why?) if you're being pithy and I was born in the early 1980's. I have reproduced successfully and am trying my best to raise a functional, productive member of society.

I am a football fan. I participate in a fantasy football league, have a subscription to RedZone, and thanks to the spawn, I can't watch as much football as I used to, I still get in an occasional game.

Now, that said, I'll have a son soon and I absolutely, will not allow him to play tackle football... pretty much ever. The research seems conclusive that football causes brain injuries and these brain injuries are severe. There are other sports out there that he can enjoy, but I'm drawing the line at sports like boxing, MMA, and football.

I have a friend, who is a diehard Steelers fan. She just told me that she can't in good conscience watch anymore football; that by doing so, she was contributing to a corporation that profits off of brain injury. I doubt many people will do this, but I think we as a society will eventually come to an uneasy truce like fans of boxing and MMA do.