History is Repeating Itself

For the first decade of commercial television, it was boxing - not NFL Football - that was the top sport on the tube. The Gillette Friday Night Fights were a staple of the small tube on NBC, as were the Pabst Blue Ribbon Wednesday Night Fights on CBS. THe Dumont Network ran regular cards from the St. Nicholas Arena and even the upstart ABC had the Muriel Cigar Fights on Saturday Nights.

Then came the deaths of Benny Kid Paret and Bobby Moore on TV and the outcry saw boxing reduced to an afterthought on television while profootball saw the NFL, then the AFL, rise dramatically in popularity. Todayu we have Fox, CBS, and NBC dividing the broadcast network pie with ESPN and the NFL Network complmenting with cable coverage. Boxing? Forget about it.

Now comes the brutality charges for the NFL, heightened by the Junior Seau suicide. The NFL is facing the same crossroads that boxing faced....will they do a better job of managing the outcome? Students of history are taking keen notice!