‘Modern-day Joe Camel’: Did Nickelodeon broadcast gloss over NFL’s violence?

[Marcellus]

I usually wouldn't quote and post an entire article from the Athletic but this one is so ripe for conversation I couldn't resist.

If you want to know why there shouldn't be NFL games on channels like Nickelodeon look no further than this article.

‘Modern-day Joe Camel’: Did Nickelodeon broadcast gloss over NFL’s violence?

By Daniel Kaplan Jan 11, 2021

Social media basked Sunday in the New Orleans Saints-Chicago Bears game broadcast on kids channel Nickelodeon, with raves for the augmented reality slime showers in the end zone to precocious channel personalities offering Football 101 explanations. At one point in the early evening, the Nickelodeon broadcast claimed the No. 1 trending Twitter topic.

Winning head coach Sean Payton even subjected himself to a real slime bath after the game. But is this all akin to back in the day cigarette marketing, masking harsh realities — in this case a violent sport — with cartoonish marketing?

Chris Nowinski, CEO and co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, wrote in an email, “In general, I have no problem with sports broadcasting on youth platforms to create the next generation of fans. But I do have a problem with the NFL broadcasting on Nickelodeon while it is still recruiting 5-year-olds to tackle football. The NFL is the only remaining major league that spends millions promoting to young children a sport that will expose them to hundreds of head impacts a year and may eventually cause CTE (brain-wasting disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy). Tackle football is not appropriate for children under 14, so until the NFL stops recruiting young children to play, I see the Nickelodeon broadcasts as a modern-day Joe Camel.”

He took particular exception to how Nickelodeon broadcaster Nate Burleson described a hard tackle of Taysom Hill mid-way through the first quarter. Burleson, an 11-year NFL veteran and NFL Network studio show co-host, had been talking about slime with his fellow broadcaster when Hill went down hard on the turf. As Hill visibly struggled to stand up and a referee checked on him, Burleson said, “Yeah and Taysom Hill getting up a little slowly. It’s like scraping your knee at recess. You get banged up, you get back up, you go out there and play another down. But he’s going to do everything. You’ll see him play quarterback. You’ll see him play running back, which is behind the quarterback.”
Hill visited the medical tent, sparking some concern with him hitting his head after being limited due to a concussion last week. According to the CBS broadcast, Hill visited the tent to address a knee issue.

NFL Nickelodeon broadcast was worse than I expected. Announcer, after Taysom Hill hit his head: “[He is] getting up a little slowly. It’s like scraping your knee at recess. You get banged up; you get back up, and you go out there and play another down.”

That’ll get kids killed. pic.twitter.com/Nixh90S7nC

— Chris Nowinski, Ph.D. (@ChrisNowinski1) January 11, 2021

The NFL has made great strides over the past decade to regulate the violent effects of the game, whether it be unaffiliated neurotrauma consultants, taking the head out of tackling, and investing in new helmet and turf technologies to absorb hits. The ethos of playing hurt no matter how bad is supposed to be an outdated approach.

Like nearly all sports, the NFL struggles with declining youth participation in its game, as video games and other forms of entertainment attract kids. In 2008, 3.5 percent of kids ages 6 to 12 played tackle football, but by 2019 that was down to 2.9 percent, according to the Aspen Institute’s Project Play. In 2019, for ages 13-17, the number of football participants (1.46 million) trailed basketball (3.44 million), baseball (2.18 million), and soccer (1.48 million) and was only slightly ahead of tennis (1.41 million), according to Aspen.

And beyond playing, getting kids to watch sports, whether football or others, when they can just view highlights, is a tough task. Twitter on Sunday was filled with tales of parents finally getting their kids to watch NFL games because of Nickelodeon.
Mike Rose, a raceway marketing director, tweeted, “Whoever green lighted this Nickelodeon NFL playoff game ‘test’ nailed it. My 9 and 11 year old have never been so engaged. And I won’t lie, it’s quite entertaining.”

It’s too early to measure the efficacy of the Nickelodeon broadcast in reaching the Gen Z demo. So far all one has to go on is the anecdotes of parents with happy kids. Broadcast figures aren’t out yet for Nickelodeon, which shared the game with sister channel CBS. Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive, cautioned on Twitter, “So, agree the Nick feed has potential. That said, we should wait until we see the viewing in the U18 demos … before assessing impact & utility. The fact that a bunch of 40+ media types think it’s the bee’s knees might just be a counter indicator….We’ll see.”
Jon Solomon, editorial director of Aspen Institute’s sports and society program, worried like Nowinski about the broadcast’s failure to acknowledge the violence in the game.
“When you’re making a broadcast dedicated entirely for kids, is there a responsibility to accurately explain all aspects of the sport so parents and families have a full understanding of the benefits and risks of football? I would say yes,” Solomon said Monday. “But I’m not surprised that it did not occur yesterday.
“You know, will parents and kids get an accurate representation, that this is a violent sport? It doesn’t mean that you should or shouldn’t play it. But let’s just make sure that everybody has all the accurate information.”

The website nflnickplay.com offers five health and safety tips, but they are about training and nutrition, Solomon said. In fact, he added Nick missed a big chance to highlight flag football because Saints quarterback Drew Brees is a big proponent. “So you’re here with the star quarterback on the Nickelodeon NFL broadcast. And you could have talked about, you know, what his experiences have been like for maybe a safer path toward playing later in your career?”
Nowinski’s CLF, which is a founder and collaborator in the Veterans Affairs-Boston University-Concussion Legacy Foundation Brain Bank, offers media training for NFL broadcasters and reporters on how to describe hard hits and the violence in the game. He wrote that he reached out to the Nickelodeon coordinating producer Shawn Robbins offering to train his team to prevent exactly this debacle from occurring. “We did not hear back,” according to Nowinksi.
Efforts to reach Robbins were unsuccessful. CBS Sports, and the NFL, did not reply for comment.
Many offered glowing reviews of the Nickelodeon broadcast for its ability to connect with kids and offering a dumbed-down broadcast. Even Solomon said, “So this is the NFL appealing to a younger audience and trying to get them into their game. And I think we’ll see more sports do this. I think it’s actually pretty smart.”

But Nowinski sees a far darker side. Referring to Burleson’s remarks after the Hill hit, Nowinski said, “The NFL Nickelodeon broadcast sent an incredibly dangerous message to children on what to do after hitting their head; this advice has literally gotten children killed. We need the NFL to do better.”
(Photo: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)