Mark Cuban Isn’t Surprised By The NFL’s Bad TV Ratings, Because He Claimed It Would Happen Two Years Ago

I chose this picture because this is how I envision Mark Cuban reacting to the NFL’s ratings decline only two years after he called that the league would IMPLODE in 10 years. Sheer joy. The kind of joy that comes with being so right that it hurts. God what a rush!

If you’re not familiar with the situation, NFL ratings were down 10% for the first four weeks of the season and are now down 11% overall. Here is what Cuban had to say about the NFL’s impending demise only two, short years ago.

Per ESPN:

“I think the NFL is 10 years away from an implosion,” Cuban said two years after the NFL announced an expanded TV package. “I’m just telling you: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And they’re getting hoggy.”

“Just watch. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. When you try to take it too far, people turn the other way. I’m just telling you, when you’ve got a good thing and you get greedy, it always, always, always, always, always turns on you. That’s rule No. 1 of business.”

“They’re trying to take over every night of TV,” Cuban said. “Initially, it’ll be, ‘Yeah, they’re the biggest-rating thing that there is.’ OK, Thursday, that’s great, regardless of whether it impacts [the NBA] during that period when we cross over. Then if it gets Saturday, now you’re impacting colleges. Now it’s on four days a week.

“It’s all football. At some point, the people get sick of it.”

This makes complete sense. When the NFL expanded to Thursdays, it started delivering a watered-down product. Players can’t recover fast enough, teams can’t prepare well enough, and everyone is worse off for having had the experience. If the NFL was smart, they would only start Thursday night games after the bye weeks begin and they would have two teams who just had a bye week play that week. That solves your fatigue and preparation problem. It gives players another nine days to recover before they have to play their next game. And on top of that, you won’t always get RIVETING match ups like the Browns vs. Dolphins, or two other shit teams that the NFL always sticks on Thursdays, because WHO CARES AMERICANS ARE SO DUMB THEY’LL WATCH WHATEVER WE BROADCAST. Turns out we’re not that dumb, and we won’t watch whatever you broadcast.

[H/T FTW]