Dec 2, 2016 06:06 AM
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/artic...moms-kids/
EXCERPTS: [...] Between 2009 and 2014, youth participation in the game dipped markedly. What’s more, the number of men between 18 and 24 watching NFL games dropped by 5.3 percent from 2010 to 2013, according to Nielsen data. And one of the main storylines of the first half of this season was the precipitous collapse in ratings. The game is losing athletes and fewer young people seem to be in love with the league, two bright red flags.
In response, the NFL has initiated a campaign to secure the next generation of fans that is unprecedented in the history of professional athletics. And the fantasy game is just a sliver of it. Brandissimo is just a sliver of it. The NFL has infiltrated the school system, it has produced a football-themed animated television show that aired on NickToons and it is currently executing a multi-dimensional plan to convince concerned moms to let their kids play. There’s a team of people working out of NFL headquarters in Manhattan whose professional lives revolve around getting kids interested in the game.
And this is all happening at a time when almost no one who is knowledgeable about the sport [...] feels comfortable with football’s impact on children. [...] It’s clear that these events work brilliantly as promotional devices for the league. But if you judge them by the depth and validity of the information provided to parents, they are shameful. As Anne Osborne, a professor at Syracuse University who co-wrote the book Female Fans of the NFL, told me, “The goal of the Moms Clinics isn’t really education. It is indoctrination.”
[...] In its effort to convince mothers to let their kids play football, the league seems to realize that it’s not enough to manufacture programs and spin narratives that make the sport seem safer. The league has also injected what psychologists call “incidental emotions”—ones you wouldn’t necessarily feel unless prompted—into the calculation. “Parents may already be worried about their child getting a concussion or getting hurt playing football. Those are emotions they are naturally facing with this choice,” says Piercarlo Valdesolo, a psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College and one of the authors of “Emotion and Decision Making.” “But making parents feel guilty for denying a child an opportunity to play football is framing the choice using an incidental emotion.”
This tactic, most prevalent in politics, aims to reduce a choice down to a gut-level decision. Why? Because “everyone’s gut can be manipulated,” Valdesolo says. That helps explain the NFL’s recent focus on emotional branding...
EXCERPTS: [...] Between 2009 and 2014, youth participation in the game dipped markedly. What’s more, the number of men between 18 and 24 watching NFL games dropped by 5.3 percent from 2010 to 2013, according to Nielsen data. And one of the main storylines of the first half of this season was the precipitous collapse in ratings. The game is losing athletes and fewer young people seem to be in love with the league, two bright red flags.
In response, the NFL has initiated a campaign to secure the next generation of fans that is unprecedented in the history of professional athletics. And the fantasy game is just a sliver of it. Brandissimo is just a sliver of it. The NFL has infiltrated the school system, it has produced a football-themed animated television show that aired on NickToons and it is currently executing a multi-dimensional plan to convince concerned moms to let their kids play. There’s a team of people working out of NFL headquarters in Manhattan whose professional lives revolve around getting kids interested in the game.
And this is all happening at a time when almost no one who is knowledgeable about the sport [...] feels comfortable with football’s impact on children. [...] It’s clear that these events work brilliantly as promotional devices for the league. But if you judge them by the depth and validity of the information provided to parents, they are shameful. As Anne Osborne, a professor at Syracuse University who co-wrote the book Female Fans of the NFL, told me, “The goal of the Moms Clinics isn’t really education. It is indoctrination.”
[...] In its effort to convince mothers to let their kids play football, the league seems to realize that it’s not enough to manufacture programs and spin narratives that make the sport seem safer. The league has also injected what psychologists call “incidental emotions”—ones you wouldn’t necessarily feel unless prompted—into the calculation. “Parents may already be worried about their child getting a concussion or getting hurt playing football. Those are emotions they are naturally facing with this choice,” says Piercarlo Valdesolo, a psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College and one of the authors of “Emotion and Decision Making.” “But making parents feel guilty for denying a child an opportunity to play football is framing the choice using an incidental emotion.”
This tactic, most prevalent in politics, aims to reduce a choice down to a gut-level decision. Why? Because “everyone’s gut can be manipulated,” Valdesolo says. That helps explain the NFL’s recent focus on emotional branding...
