American college campuses are bastions of liberal thought and practice these days, a fact few dispute. Yet, when it comes to the sporting world college football seems to get what the NFL doesn’t — politics equals bad business.

One doesn’t have to look any further than what took place over the first full weekend of January 2018 to see that.

How so?

Well, the ratings are in from both the wildcard weekend in the NFL and the national championship game for college football and they tell two very different tales.

On the one hand, the NFL saw a dramatic drop in its playoff viewership, as in a 14 percent drop versus last year alone in the Wild Card round alone.

The news only gets worse when you consider easily the best and most recognizable game of the weekend also was the worst of the bunch in terms of ratings drop — Carolina versus New Orleans.

Wild Card Weekend Overnights Roundup:
TEN-KC: 14.7 HH -11% YOY vs. 16.6 (OAK-HOU)
ATL-LAR: 14.9 HH -10% YOY vs. 16.5 (DET-SEA)
BUF-JAX: 17.2 HH -10% YOY vs. 19.2 (MIA-PIT)
CAR-NO: 20.4 HH -21% YOY vs. 25.9 (NYG-GB)

— Anthony Crupi (@crupicrupicrupi) January 8, 2018

Yes, losing the Green Bay-New York matchup is a big deal to the ratings, but of all the matchups on the weekend Carolina-New Orleans was the one with the most national name recognition and even that couldn’t save it from the biggest drop off year-over-year.

Cam Newton versus Drew Brees couldn’t draw? Seeing the most exciting offensive rookie not playing QB in a long time couldn’t draw? Seriously?

If that’s the case, the NFL has some major problems (and HINT: they clearly do).

Things didn’t get better for the divisional round of the playoffs either, as they hit lows not seen in a decade including all three games in the same time slots down over last season and way down compared to 2016.

Ratings for the divisional round of the playoffs were down a whopping 16 percent year-over-year, but the only media outlets to really cover it were those that report of sports TV ratings. That should tell you something fishy is going on here.

On the other hand, the All-SEC national championship game for college football drew a massive crowd and a huge increase. Ratings were UP 10 percent compared to last season when Clemson defeated Alabama in another regional matchup.

Yet, outside of reporting the raw numbers for both of these big events few in the mainstream sports media world have connected the dots.

Which begs the question why haven’t they?

Is it because it flies in the face of their leanings politically? Is it because it flies in the face of the narrative that the ratings decline isn’t politically motivated and they can’t give up on the investment made over the past two years? Or could it be a third thing all together?

It’s hard to argue the point that at the very least on-field political activism isn’t a driving force. All things being equal, how do you square ratings dives for the professional version of the sport and ratings boosts for the college version with any other explanation? The professional version is seeing declines while it’s not tamped down on-field political activism while the college version has largely kept a lid on the on-field actions and it’s the latter that’s seeing ratings multiply instead of decline.

There’s also a good case to be made that there’s a large investment in a narrative formed two years ago by a lot of people in sports media. Their coverage of the protests were a huge draw and controversy means more clicks and thus more advertising pennies in the pockets of those that are running media outlets. But, admitting the narrative may have been wrong would mean discrediting two years of work, and that certainly isn’t a good look.

As for that third option thing, there are few theories out there.

Timing? That can’t be the case. All four NFL games were played on the weekend devoid of college football. The College Football Playoff national championship was played on a Monday night, where plenty of eyeballs are tempted to go elsewhere on the TV dials, yet it increased its viewership from a season ago.

Lack of interest? Maybe that’s something to look in to, especially in the case of Buffalo-Jacksonville or Kansas City-Tennessee. It isn’t as if those four fan bases can be found all over the country in droves (although KC and Buffalo fans are pretty easy to spot in a major city near you). But, is that enough to give the full disparity we see in ratings?

Even the third rail options seem flimsy at best. With all the options considered, it’s simply insane to deny that the different measures in which political activism by players have been handled between the two sports matters.

Yet, here we are on the week of AFC and NFC championship games and a quick Google search pulls up just one article on the issue — from Clay Travis at Outkick The Coverage.

I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, as Travis has been on the NFL ratings decline like his fans have been on CNN trolling them on New Year’s Eve (seriously, it may be the best on-air NYE troll job I’ve ever seen).

But, I digress.

Let me clue you in to something about myself that should help explain everything the NFL should be taking note of as to why fans are leaving at a clip of 20 percent over the past two seasons.

First off, I’m a diehard Green Bay Packers fan and have been since my birth on November 10, 1981. Yes, I’m 36 years old and yes, I’m a 36-year-old who has never in his life missed a single Packers game viewing for a regular season matchup.

That’s 558 regular season matchups and another 36 playoff games for a total of 594 games seen for the Green and Gold to date.

I’ve grown up remembering and living in the late lean years of the mid to late 1980’s (when the NFL was king in places like Wisconsin and hardly anywhere else on TV yet believe it or not). I also grew up more on the highs of the 1990’s Packers and then the awesomeness that was being an adult and celebrating my team’s victory in Super Bowl XLV.

I also used to be a junkie for any and every NFL game that would be on after the Packers. Put me in front of the TV, watch whatever NFL game was on next no matter who was playing and I’d find a way to be entertained. The NFL is what got me hooked on sports, but it was my gateway drug in to a life obsessed with sports in general.

Sunday’s were for football from noon to bedtime in my house. PERIOD.

Fast forward to this season and I have still tuned in to every Packers game, agonized over Aaron Rodgers’ injury status (maybe even shed a tear and said a prayer for a speedy recovery) and cheered my team to a bitter (and I mean bitter) end.

I also can count on one hand the number of other NFL games I decided to take in in full this year. Simply put, I’ve enjoyed my Sunday’s watching football as a refuge from the real world, a chance to escape and just enjoy teams competing against each other on the football field and that fun and relaxation has been taken away from me.

It’s not just the protests, but it’s also the way they’ve been covered and the harping on political activism during broadcasts that’s been really annoying. There are amazing stories to be told around the NFL, but media outlets have chosen to highlight politics as its bet to driving viewers.

That has worked — in the opposite direction that many thought it would though. It’s made a weekly ritual turn in to something that’s just not fun anymore.

The philosophy so many others, and I subscribe to is really simple, yet the NFL managed to bungle it over the last two years. It goes something like this:

You, the player, can certainly use your famous name and celebrity to affect change for whatever cause you want. Just do it on your own time, not while a football game is to be played — kind of like the rest of society checks political theater and protests at the door of their office every Monday through Friday. Work is work and as an athlete your work is to play football for 16 Sunday’s a year.

Where have the questions about the games gone? Instead, you can tune in to SportsCenter every night and see interviews at locker rooms or practice facilities look like they belong on CNN or Fox News. Who wants to see that while they try to escape the political divide that bombards us everywhere else in life?

An even deeper dive in to the comparison between the NFL and college football suggest a very big problem for the professional (at least out about it) version of the sport.

Take a look at what ratings were like for the two College Football Playoff semi-final games and the picture for the NFL is very bleak in terms of viewership indeed.

According to ESPN’s release of the final ratings numbers, the 2018 Rose Bowl featuring Georgia-Oklahoma was a massive draw. It drew a combined 26.8 million viewers between its coverage on ESPN and ESPN2, while the Sugar Bowl featuring Alabama and Clemson drew just 21.1 million.

Both of those numbers are better than anything the NFL wildcard weekend put together this season and only the Green Bay-New York matchup last year topped the Alabama-Clemson matchup from the college ranks this season.

So, what really gives here?

It’s hard to draw any other conclusion than how these two seemingly similar products have handled political activism while playing the game matters.

Partners of the NFL and college football are certainly aware of what the dichotomy between the two has done to their bottom lines. Reports have indicated that ESPN and other NFL partners are losing nearly $500 million in advertising revenue alone.

But, the only response from the NFL and its partners has been to hide what has been happening on the field in the hopes of it going away. The broadcasts have gone from panning shots of protesting players during the national anthem to not a single mention of them happening even when they continue to this day.

It’s as if the protests never happened anymore after about Week 4 or 5 of the 2017 regular season. Yet, anyone in attendance in person could still see those protests happening and after a season and a half of weekly protest shots the damage was done. Who exactly are the NFL and it’s broadcast partners fooling?

The Genie is out of the bottle and it isn’t fitting back in anytime soon, at least not without the NFL and the media admitting what the real problem is and working to regain the trust of those it has lost.

Will they get the message after this dismal season of ratings or will it be too little, too late for the once king of sports ratings?