The 2018 season was very good to NFL owners.
In many ways, the National Football League is the comeback player of the year. Television ratings stabilized after years of erosion and in some cases there were more eyeballs on the games in 2018 compared to previous years. While players were still being arrested, there was just one outrage when the NFL’s old nemesis Harvey Levin’s TMZ television production company released a video showing Kansas City player Kareem Hunt knocking over and punching a woman in a Cleveland hotel last February. Hunt was fired by the Chiefs organization although somehow NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was fingered as a culprit because the NFL did not buy the hotel surveillance video of the Hunt assault. TMZ is in the business of buying videos. The NFL cannot just demand video evidence and is not in a position to get it unless people cooperate. The NFL is not in the law enforcement business and has made the decision to stay away from buying evidence. Cleveland law enforcement personnel filed no charges in the case although there was a police report.
The NFL and the football industry should also being breathing a sigh of relief as people have forgotten about the seriousness of the concussion issue. That and the national anthem protests seem to be a 2017 problem and have faded in obscurity although head and brain injuries are permanent. But the public has flocked back to watching football on television. Some of the good football fortune may be traced to the United States Supreme Court legalizing sports gambling around the country and states getting in the act. New Jersey and Delaware got up and going in time for the 2018 NFL and college football season and were joined by Mississippi, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Rhode Island. Nevada has had sports betting for decades. The National Football League had a good 2018.
