# Papa John's Blames NFL Controversy for Poor Sales. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 1, 2017, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430 "2017-11-01T20:10:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2017, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/101 "2017-11-05T02:06:32Z")
I find Chick-Fil-A to be just boring. For the most part, a chicken sandwich is just a chicken sandwich, and if you’re making it interesting, it’s through whatever else you’re putting on it. I recently tried a Rally’s (AKA Checker’s) chicken sandwich, though, and it was actually a bit better than at other fast food places. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/102 "2017-11-06T11:30:34Z")
I boycott all pizza in general thanks to Mussolini ruining all things Italian. Instead when I watch football I make British Nachos, sliced cucumbers dipped in cottage cheese. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/103 "2017-11-06T12:30:17Z")
Is all the hate at the quality of Papa John’s really justified? I’ll grant that it’s been probably about 15 years since I had one of their pizzas, but I seem to recall back then that they were better than Domino’s and Pizza Hut were at the time, and the only idiosyncrasy I recall was that they put the pepperoni under the cheese and tossed some pepperoncinis in the box with the pizza. I haven’t ordered from them ever since Papa John outed himself as an asshole, but I honestly don’t recall their food being as awful as people here are saying it is. > [@Asuka](#): > > Instead when I watch football I make British Nachos, sliced cucumbers dipped in cottage cheese. I believe you mean [nachos Flanders style.](http://eatslikeaduck.com/nachos-flanders-style/) ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/104 "2017-11-06T12:51:00Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Is all the hate at the quality of Papa John’s really justified? I’ll grant that it’s been probably about 15 years since I had one of their pizzas, but I seem to recall back then that they were better than Domino’s and Pizza Hut were at the time, and the only idiosyncrasy I recall was that they put the pepperoni under the cheese and tossed some pepperoncinis in the box with the pizza. IMO they _were_ better at the time, and when you consider the whole package (with pepperoncinis and garlic sauce) I’d say they’re still slightly better, but not worth the price difference per ounce. I’d already stopped getting them when the quality of their pizza _qua pizza_ declined, and the Obamacare hysterics just cemented my decision to continue passing on them. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/105 "2017-11-06T15:34:22Z")
Speaking of Papa and sports, does anyone know why Papa John’s sponsored top fueler driven by Leah Pritchett was suddenly sponsored by Pennzoil at the last NHRA race? It seemed kind of sudden (with two races left in the season) to switch. Maybe she’d had enough of him? Something else? On the other hand, maybe it was a Halloween thing. Putting your car in a costume, as it were? One of the pro stock drivers had his Camaro done up in black with a screaming chicken on the hood, like it was the Bandit’s Trans Am. ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/106 "2017-11-06T16:00:44Z")
Saw plenty of PJ commercials yesterday. Still not going to buy their box full of steaming garbage, I mean pizza. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/107 "2017-11-06T16:16:36Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > I haven’t ordered from them ever since Papa John outed himself as an asshole, but I honestly don’t recall their food being as awful as people here are saying it is. You’re on the internet, there’s a segment of people that proclaim their hate for any kind of chain restaurant. If there’s a thread about food on the internet, you’ll always get people telling you how Domino’s, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, or whoever are just completely worthless, how Olive Garden is inedible, and god forbid you talk about McDonalds, the great Satan that tastes horrible and kills you within one bite. It’s just one of those internet things and it’s best not to try to make a lot of sense out of it. I think Papa John’s is actually not bad, but I don’t buy them because of the price and the owner, and I’ve had a lot of NYC pizza from non-chain places (some even in NYC) that I’d rank much, much lower than theirs. ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/108 "2017-11-06T17:00:56Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > Papa Johns relies so heavily on discounting that I’m wondering if the better economy has actually hurt them. People have more money to spend on better pizza than during the recession, there’s no need for a buy one get one free pizza accompanied by a 12 pack of cheap beer when unemployment is at 4.1% Economists call a good whose consumption drops as income rises an “inferior good.” The classic example is laundromats – when the economy gets better, people buy washers and dryers. I doubt pizza is an inferior good in economic terms. The better economy might mean that some of Papa John’s customers trade up to better pizza, but it also means that some people who could only afford Papa John’s pizza once per month can now buy it every week and some people who couldn’t afford pizza at all can now afford it sometimes. A better economy should mean more people buying Papa John’s pizza. For what it’s worth, I didn’t think Papa John’s pizza is awful but I think Papa John’s owner is so I stopped going there years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/109 "2017-11-06T17:36:24Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Is all the hate at the quality of Papa John’s really justified? I had some a couple weeks ago. We were having our son’s birthday party hosted at a place and the “three pizzas” were delivery from Papa Johns. I had a couple slices and… it’s pizza. It’s the same mass market delivery tier stuff as Dominos or Pizza Hut. Worse than the good ma & pop joints, better than Cici’s or places with animatronic animal jamborees.\* Maybe someone out there has a strong opinion on the taste hierarchy of the mass market stuff but it’s all “cheap pizza” to me. But this also means that, while I wouldn’t demonize Papa Johns on taste alone, I also have no reason to not buy from the other places when the owner makes cock-hole statements. The pizza is largely the same and Mr. Domino (that’s who owns Dominos, right?) hasn’t said dumb stuff. \*Actually, I was in a Chuck E Cheese for the first time in 20+ years this past week as well and was disappointed to see that the robot animals have been replaced by a horrible presentation on a giant television. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/110 "2017-11-06T17:48:19Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > IThe pizza is largely the same and Mr. Domino (that’s who owns Dominos, right?) hasn’t said dumb stuff. Domino’s founder, and former owner, Tom Monaghan, is a conservative Catholic, who has gotten some press over the years for his public stances against abortion and birth control. However, Monaghan sold most of his ownership of the company to Bain Capital (yes, the same company once run by Mitt Romney) in 1998, and hasn’t been involved in running the company since. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/111 "2017-11-06T17:50:21Z")
Next you’re going to tell me that Mr. Hut eats orphans. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/112 "2017-11-06T17:56:10Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > Next you’re going to tell me that Mr. Hut eats orphans. [Did that frog have parents?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiD-n7ewvGo) :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/113 "2017-11-06T19:39:25Z")
Can we talk about the founder of Little Caesar’s? For years, he paid Rosa Parks’s rent because she couldn’t. > **[Little Caesars founder quietly paid Rosa Parks' rent for years | CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/mike-ilitch-rosa-parks-trnd/index.html)** > > Those who knew Mike Ilitch, the Little Caesars founder and Detroit Tigers owner who died last Friday, have spent the past few days fondly remembering his impact on friends, on Detroit residents, and on the sports community. He and his wife were Republican donors, but I don’t know about anything comparable to Papa John and Tom Monaghan in the evil side. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2017, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/114 "2017-11-06T20:06:26Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Can we talk about the founder of Little Caesar’s? > For years, he paid Rosa Parks’s rent because she couldn’t. > [http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/mike-ilitch-rosa-parks-trnd/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/mike-ilitch-rosa-parks-trnd/index.html) > > He and his wife were Republican donors, but I don’t know about anything comparable to Papa John and Tom Monaghan in the evil side. It’s in post #38, but only in the link, and not made obvious. I haven’t had Little Caesar’s in quite some time, but I don’t remember it being particularly bad (as compared with the follow-up posts on how some people found it pretty bad. It’s still much better than Papa John’s to my tastes.) ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/115 "2017-11-07T01:49:45Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Is all the hate at the quality of Papa John’s really justified? I’ll grant that it’s been probably about 15 years since I had one of their pizzas, but I seem to recall back then that they were better than Domino’s and Pizza Hut were at the time, and the only idiosyncrasy I recall was that they put the pepperoni under the cheese and tossed some pepperoncinis in the box with the pizza. > > I haven’t ordered from them ever since Papa John outed himself as an asshole, but I honestly don’t recall their food being as awful as people here are saying it is. Papa John’s was my chain-of-choice for quite a while (I really liked their cheesesticks). I had stopped getting them after the Obamacare whining, but a couple years ago I tried them again–and holy cow, it was much worse than Pizza Hut/Dominos. I don’t know if it’s a matter of everyone else improving or if they got worse, but it was very much inferior to other chains now. ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/116 "2017-11-07T13:06:50Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > NFL parties with beer and pizza have been a thing my entire life. > > Whoever has the biggest tv screen and reliable reception invites their friends over. I used to watch games regularly at friends homes. I always brought a six pack to contribute. > > The playoff season is when the parties really gain steam. It won’t this year. No one wants to watch these selfish, showboating millionaires anymore. > > NFL viewership is down. Of course that impacts sales of pizza, snacks and beer. Oh well. There was a time when people liked to have parties to watch lynchings. The players have been showboating for decades and millionaires for quite some time. If anything many of the contracts are more reasonable now with the changes to the rookie scale, and unlike most major sports the contracts are mostly unguaranteed. When a player declines or gets hurt he can usually get cut with little or no further pay. Is that something “fans” cheer for? Did the excitement go down when players got a little bit more freedom with limited free agency about 25 years ago? Or let me guess, it was when some of them grew a conscience and some balls and stopped being merely delighted to do a little dance for “fans” who don’t look at them as human beings at all but just entertainment for the millions of mostly fat, lazy and unathletic dipshits who hate people who have skills they don’t possess. Why wasn’t all the fake paid for military bullshit a problem? Or any other number of things more outrageous than the discomfort of acknowledging these guys as actual grown men and human beings? ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/117 "2017-11-07T13:11:09Z")
As far as Little Caesar’s goes, I don’t care how nice the owner was. It doesn’t even register to me as run of the mill chain pizza. Let’s say Papa Johns is Walmart and Pizza Hut is Target. Little Caeser’s is the place where you shop for dented cans. Or gas station pizza. It’s my son’s favorite - like if you have a group of people with $60 and $55 is for weed, then they split the $5 pizza because they have to eat something but don’t exactly care what. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/118 "2017-11-07T13:17:16Z")
Little Caesar’s is edible. It’s not good pizza, but it’s not awful pizza either. I don’t care much for their regular pizzas, but their deep dish is decent and it’s something that the other chains around here don’t provide. My fondest memory of them is that when I was a kid, they had a Simon-type game in the lobby where you put in a quarter and had to hit the color pads in the same order that they blinked at you. You got one point for each correct hit, and if you scored high enough you could win a free bottle of soda or an order of Crazy Bread or a small cheese pizza. I always brought home at least a Crazy Bread. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/119 "2017-11-07T22:14:58Z")
I miss the days when instead of kneeling about cops, athletes could literally beat up cops and not even get probation over it and nobody cared. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430/120 "2017-11-07T22:45:11Z")
> [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](#): > > As far as Little Caesar’s goes, I don’t care how nice the owner was. It doesn’t even register to me as run of the mill chain pizza. Let’s say Papa Johns is Walmart and Pizza Hut is Target. Little Caeser’s is the place where you shop for dented cans. Or gas station pizza. It’s my son’s favorite - like if you have a group of people with $60 and $55 is for weed, then they split the $5 pizza because they have to eat something but don’t exactly care what. Nah. Their deep dish/Detroit style are streets ahead of Papa John’s limp dick of a pizza. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/papa-johns-blames-nfl-controversy-for-poor-sales/800430.md?page=7)