Basically all the talk of how the NFL will cease to exist within 20 years due to a variety of factors have got me wondering what’s the most “stable” sports league. Controversy both in actions on/off the field as well generally relevancy questions (since no scandals can also mean nobody cares).
I would normally say the NBA but the current China thing as well as the constant weird stuff with the NCAA that pops up from time to time nix that.
MLB also seems pretty low on the controversy except weird calls every year or so, though I’ve also read in several articles that declining fan base may also mean it’s heading into irrelevancy.
I don’t know enough about NHL or MLS scandals to judge them which is also an issue.
As a generally non-sports person, I was going to say hockey, but soccer probably works to. Both of which are hardly ever in the non-sports related news. If we suddenly found out that some amazing soccer player was on PED or that a hockey team was found to be paying off refs for the last two years, it would make it’s way into the main stream media and you’d at least be aware of it.
Case in point: the vast majority of us had never paid any attention to cycling until Lance Armstrong. He was regularly winning races since '91 but I think 2004ish is when he got popular outside the sport due to the doping.
Tennis might be another one. IMO, again from a non-sports person, they seem to fly under the radar of main stream media other than to bring our attention to the current greats.
He was a celebrity long before the scandal because of overcoming cancer. He was regularly on TV, newspapers, and magazines. His Lance Armstrong Foundation (famous for the “Livestrong” bracelets) was founded in 1997.
I’m not sure why you brought up 2004. Doping allegations started in 1999 when he won the Tour de France. At least in the US popular sentiment that the allegations came from jealousy, and people stood behind him because he overcame an illness that was predicted to take his life and reached the pinnacle of his sport.
No actual investigation had started until 2006, when the US Anti-Doping Agency started collecting evidence after SCA Promotions refuses to pay a bonus Armstrong for winning his 6th Tour de France, went to court, and lost. The company had cited circumstantial evidence in that case which led to the agency opening an official investigation.
It wasn’t until 2012 that the USADA concluded that doping had occurred and demanded his titles be stripped from him. Armstrong didn’t admit to doping until 2013, and revealed he had done so since 1995. The controversy tanked his celebrity status, it didn’t improve it. I think he’s a terrible example of an athlete becoming famous because of controversy.
‘Baseball is dying, folks’ is a cheap way for sportswriters to get clicks. Yes, we’re never returning to the era of Willie, Mickey and the Duke and the World Series won’t achieve the ratings it used to. This series that just ended featured amazing baseball but was also on a Wednesday night. The Super Bowl is far more of an event than just a sports match up. It’s got perfect timing, winter has set in for a large portion of the country and the holidays are a month in the past. Early February is a good time to cheat on those New Year’s Resolutions, it’s after Dry January and before Lent. And it’s a Sunday night and is over at a decent time even on the East Coast.
As far as the least controversy over somewhat major sports, I’ll go with MLS. As far as I know, it doesn’t have the ugly racism and homophobia that rears it’s ugly head in European soccer. While I think copying European soccer with scarves and team names is silly, it’s apparently working. The quality of play has steadily improved and they’ll never be in the huge bidding wars so prominent in Europe. Yeah, they’ll be debates over promotion and relegation as well as chasing the timing of the season, but that falls below the radar except among soccer nerds.
Exactly. They like to mention that baseball is getting the lowest ratings it’s ever gotten, but fail to mention that everything is down across the board, because there’s so many more options on TV. The World Series beats out everything that isn’t the NFL, and it’s not close. Locally, regular season games do extremely well in their respective markets. That’s why television revenue is way up for baseball teams. If no one’s watching, then where’s the money coming from?