Is Pro Football Becoming Too Popular?

I don't know why I'm posting this, but bare in mind that I am a huge football fan. I just had something pop in my head last night and I felt like I needed to question/rant about it for a little bit. It's kind of along the lines of my being troubled by all the Brett Favre coverage. But I had to ask myself that question,is Pro Football becoming too popular? I really am starting to like the NFL less and less each season, and I need to know why.


The NFL has clearly become easily the most popular sport in America. But with this, I feel like there are way too many people who buy the jerseys, and gather around the tv on Sundays, yet when questioned about whether they can name 10 players on their favorite team, they would maybe be able to pull out 3 or 4 names. It's like the new band when you're in middle school that you're required to like so you can look cool, but you really can't make an informed decision about whether you truly enjoy the music on your own. I don't know if enough people are informed enough to truly enjoy the music of football.

Now to go against myself, I think maybe I'm being a little bit snobbish on this. I watch ESPN religiously, and probably know way too much about the big 5. (NFL,MLB,NBA, College Football and Basketball). I can't help myself though, I've been raised on sports and I've been reading the sports page cover to cover since I was in kindergarten. I used to cut out box scores so I could keep my own stats of all the pro and college teams. I am a huge sports geek, and I do not apologize for this. So for me to hold it against someone for not knowing as much as me probably is not fair. However, all of these people who think they are football fanatics need to look in the mirror and ask themselves whether or not they are true fans. Or are they watching simply because they don't want to look like an idiot on Sundays when all of their friends are out watching the games and they don't want to look stupid, or even worse if you're a guy, not wanting to look like a wuss. For people to emerge from the woodwork simply to either hype up the Redskins because they won a meaningless game, or to come out simply to cheer against the Redskins seems a little fake to me.

So these people are making me like football less and less. Now granted, I didn't grow up playing football, and I did play varsity basketball and more than likely would have played varsity baseball if I didn't get scarred for life by a terrible coach in 7th grade. So these sports will always have a soft spot in my heart, making me a little biased. But to go back to that same analogy from before, if you're just watching football becasue its the cool thing to do, please stop yourselves. You're ruining it for this once diehard football fan. Now, please leave me so I can check what time the Cubs are playing today, because it actually counts in the standings.