Insurance and incidents of the sort outlined could push a turnaround in 2-3 years, quite easily IMHO. Insurance changes could make it extremely expensive in the space of a single year if they're on annual policies. If school boards are given the sudden option of running football at a substantial loss, pulling athletics programmes altogether and losing their value while mothballing their assets or trying to switch code, I'd bet on the latter.
Instinctively the elephant in the room is the different college conferences. Varied enough to go in different ways if push came to shove, big enough that they could impose a code change on their feeder systems. Plus, a big enough bottom-line contributor that if the numbers turned around fast enough I suspect administrators would try a roll of the dice rather than a mothballing.
(And I still want to see a greater uptake of cricket! :-))
The problem with cricket is, first, that it's absolutely beyond most Americans' comprehension, and second, that we already have an incomprehensible sport that involves throwing a ball and hitting it with a stick.
Oh, I know, I just think it's more fun than Baseball :-) ISTR that MLB had a lock-out a while back which ended up with Cricket filling some of the broadcast slots. Speaking as a cricket fan with any luck they can similarly shoot themselves in the foot in the future and T20, as a faster form of the game, can develop a foothold. One has to have dreams!
(Honestly, I've tried watching baseball and, well, incomprehensible covered it well. Trying to work out what was and wasn't a strike a) confused and b) bored me, what with the slowing effect on the game. Then, they keep doing hits which get easily stopped and they're out before even making first base! Gimme T20 every day.)
Insurance and incidents of the sort outlined could push a turnaround in 2-3 years, quite easily IMHO. Insurance changes could make it extremely expensive in the space of a single year if they're on annual policies. If school boards are given the sudden option of running football at a substantial loss, pulling athletics programmes altogether and losing their value while mothballing their assets or trying to switch code, I'd bet on the latter.
Instinctively the elephant in the room is the different college conferences. Varied enough to go in different ways if push came to shove, big enough that they could impose a code change on their feeder systems. Plus, a big enough bottom-line contributor that if the numbers turned around fast enough I suspect administrators would try a roll of the dice rather than a mothballing.
(And I still want to see a greater uptake of cricket! :-))