David Rosenthal

And then they sat on the data for a long time.

And then when they did release it, they claimed that there was absolutely no provable link, no evidence at all, that...

head injuries from playing football led to long-term damage.

The NFL didn't acknowledge that until 2016.

Super bad.

I mean, there's the Will Smith movie concussion about it.

We don't need to go into a bunch of the specifics, but I think like from the acquired standpoint and the NFL audience standpoint, this was a major, major trust-breaking moment for

The second order effects are pretty large from this.

One is what you said about parents allowing and wanting their children to play football.

Yes.

But I think the real risk, and this is starting to be shown out in the data, is how are future generations going to view the NFL and football?

And if you look at the data, U.S.

adults as a whole, 33% say the NFL is their favorite professional sports league.

But if you look at Gen Z, only 23% of Gen Z say that the NFL is their favorite professional sport.

So 10 points less than the broader population.

And basketball in Gen Z is 19%, right there pretty close to football.

Yeah, this whole thing was just bad, period, for the NFL.

That strategy would have worked really well 30 years ago.

But in the social media era where individuals have Twitter accounts, a lot harder to control the narrative.

It all gets distributed out to the teams.