
Last year the University of Tennessee played a college football game against Virginia Tech at Bristol Motor Speedway that attracted a record 157,000 spectators. Photograph: Michael Shroyer/Getty Images
Never mind that the NFL’s ratings problems run deeper than players kneeling during the anthem, which barely eats more than a minute of a broadcast that lasts at minimum three hours. In some ways the league set itself up for failure by committing so completely over the past decade to the rivalry between Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, the latter of whom retired two seasons ago after helping the Denver Broncos to victory in Super Bowl 50. Two star QBs who could step into that breach, Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers and Houston’s Deshaun Watson, are out with season-ending injuries. Thursday Night Football has proven to be a disastrous experiment, one that produces far more player injuries than actual entertainment. Meanwhile stories continue to emerge about the adverse effects football has on players’ long-term health. All of it makes the NFL that much more difficult to sit with.
Still, things could be worse for the NFL. It could be Nascar. A decade ago the sport emerged as an unlikely challenger to pro football’s small-screen primacy, attracting nearly 20 million viewers to the 2006 Daytona 500. But Nascar has lost more than 45% of its audience since then, according to Nielsen. What’s more, equally dismal live spectator figures have compelled some tracks to remove seats from their grandstands. Denny Hamlin, a star Nascar driver, has made his peace with this. “People with smartphones, they’re rewatching races in the back of their car going up the highway,” he said back in April. “You don’t have to attend these races anymore. You get such a good experience through your cellphone, so the way we measure attendance and we measure TV ratings and all that’s always skewed because we live in a different world now.”
There.
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Might need a bigger car to carry it all.
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Just 46 minutes to the Birch & Barley; I must be hungry for a blackened salmon dinner.
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Save room for a slice of birthday cake!
Salut!
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Had vanilla bean cheesecake with berry sauce.
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On the way out saw a flock of pigeons exercising by wheeling in the sky. Just at the end some delicate salmon pink clouds to the southeast, no less.
Daily total is 97 minutes.
Day 7: 228+97=325 minutes.
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Thank you, Den. 🙂
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Happy birthday, Doc!
Mmm, cheesecake.
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Thank you, Jim.
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That Jay Leno “Jaywalking” video you posted yesterday. When I first saw it many months ago, I sent it to Bob’s computer. He watched it a bunch of times. On You Tube there were many more and he started watching all of them. Like me, he couldn’t get over how little people know. Jay’s videos made both of us feel like geniuses.
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DOC! I didn’t get around to making you a birthday card this year, I’ve got to get back in the groove soon. I’ve got another person with a birthday in November coming up.
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Thank you, Carol. You certainly have plenty else to occupy your attention!
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Our pot luck turned out to be perfect. The church facility, it’s kitchen, all perfect. Fifty-six people came. Pot luck is the way to go, lots of food, big variety. I made a pretty big ham and most of it went, as did most of the sausage I got from our meat market.
The video I made of Bob’s life back in 2011 seemed to be a hit. We had it play over and over, and at one time we turned the sound up so the music I chose for it could be heard. People were standing around and I narrated the back story on some of the pictures, we had lots of laughs.
Now I move on, try to get used to life w/o my Bob. 😦
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Yup.
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