Last week, the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys played a professional football game that was one for the ages, which will go down in NFL history. It also made ratings history, besting the much ballyhooed World Series Game 7. It effectively puts the final nail in the coffin of those that claimed the NFL boycott over Colin Kaepernick had any sort of effect.
Almost 50 million people saw that Packers-Cowboys game, the most-viewed NFL divisional playoff game in pro football history. That gave the game a whopping 26.1 rating with a 46 share. According to the Associated Press, "The rating is the percentage of television households tuned to a program, and the share is the percentage watching a telecast among those homes with TVs on at the time."
More than 30 million viewers saw Atlanta Falcons down the Seattle Seahawks, the Pittsburgh Steelers slip by the Kansas City Chiefs, and the New England Patriots turn away the Houston Texans, all with decent-to-good ratings and shares.
And that's a tough act to follow, given that NFL playoff ratings have been dramatically increasing over the last several years. So when this year's ratings are that good, it's bad news for the NFL boycott fans.
Flash back to earlier this year, when Colin Kaepernick was taking a knee and conservative columnists and media outlets and Donald Trump demanded their supporters boycott the games. It showed some slight early success as football had to compete with an amazing baseball run by the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians that captivated country as the two historically-beloved franchises battled to win their first title in decades. The high stakes presidential debates didn't help. And ratings data doesn't always work in streamers.
But research of mine showed several things. First, NFL attendance was up, even during those first few busy months. That shouldn't have happened with a boycott. Second, NFL attendance rebounded, once the election and World Series were over. Likewise, that shouldn't have happened with a boycott. Now, with playoff games setting playoff game ratings records, and beating World Series ratings, we can safely conclude that the NFL is in even better shape than it was at the beginning of the year. Even Trump showed ads during the NFL games at the end of the election.
Sure there are people who disagree with Kaepernick taking a knee during the National Anthem. But there are plenty more who feel he should have the right to protest, even if they don't agree with his stand. Others feel that it doesn't make much sense to turn off the New York Jets vs. Miami Dolphins if Colin Kaepernick is taking a knee for a minute or two on the other side of the continent, when he plays for the San Francisco 49ers.
The NFL boycott has gone about as well as attempts by Republicans to boycott the Broadway mega-hit "Hamilton." Meanwhile, the North Carolina boycott over the bathroom bill cost the state $600 billion in business, and the North Carolina GOP Governor and Attorney General candidate their jobs. The GOP may have won the 2016 election, but Democrats seem to do boycotts better.
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Ga. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu.