The N.F.L. has never stopped changing. But a few things remain constant, including the league’s popularity and brutality.
The N.F.L. looks remarkably spry at 100 years old. The game is still spectacularly popular across bipartisan lines in the United States. An array of problems threatens its future — from how it deals with domestic violence to the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick to the concussion crisis to a cord-cutting population migrating away from traditional television. But the league remains enormously popular across lines of gender, race, age, class and even politics, and N.F.L. games remain pretty much the only sure thing for high ratings on the networks’ schedules — in 2018, they accounted for 34 of the top 50 broadcasts.
- The New York Times
