Bill Parcells won two Super Bowls as a head coach. Now, he's like many NFL fans watching on television each week, still transfixed by the games, often perplexed by them, too.
"The officiating is almost an impossible job now; there are so many variables," Parcells said. "And the replay situation is out of control. You've got people looking at the replay, and they can't even get it right. So it must be too complicated."
That's a good word to describe the NFL's popularity _ it's complicated.
In a recent Gallup Poll, 37 percent of Americans named football their favorite sport, with basketball a distant second at 11 percent. Last year's Super Bowl drew an average audience of 111.3 million viewers, and advertisers spent $5 million for each commercial.
But NFL television ratings have fallen for two straight years _ by 8 percent in 2016 and 9.7 percent this year, according to Nielsen.
Some blame oversaturation, with Thursday night games and Sunday morning games from London cluttering the menu. Some fans took issue with NFL players kneeling in protest of racial inequality during the national anthem. President Donald Trump fanned the flames with sharp criticism of those protests.
Meanwhile, scientists studying brain tissue at Boston University continue to diagnose former players, posthumously, with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a progressive, degenerative disease. There were 281 reported concussions in the NFL this season, the most since the league began sharing the annual number in 2012.
Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose new contract extension will pay $40 million per year, remains a lightning rod for criticism over the league's handling of these and other issues.
"[The ratings decline] tells you things," Parcells said. "That tells you that the public interest is waning somewhat. But I watch every Sunday, so my TV ratings haven't gone down."
