Rival Report 11/4: Seahawks' Richard Sherman blames ratings drop on NFL's crackdown on fun

Love him or hate him, Richard Sherman is always willing to tell you what is on his mind. Personally, I love the guy and wish he was a Raider because that type of blunty honestly and self secured personality would be great to have in the Silver and Black. Sherman is at it again, ripping the NFL and Roger Goodell in the midst of a ratings drop nearly unheard of for the NFL.

For those of you living under a rock, the NFL has experienced a monumental drop in ratings this year. There are a plentitude of reasons for this precipitous drop the league is experiencing, but Richard Sherman is pointing out one of the biggest explanations for the fall from grace. The league is controlling too much, they need to r-e-l-a-x as Aaron Rodgers would say.

"Because the league isn't fun anymore. Every other league, you see the players have a good time. It's a game." Richard Sherman stated at his Thursday press conference, "This isn't politics. This isn't justice. This is entertainment. And they're no longer allowing the players to entertain.

"They're no longer allowing the players to show any kind of personality, any kind of uniqueness, any individuality. Because they want to control the product. They want to control the messaging, etc., etc."

On this point, Richard Sherman is 100% right and it is high time for the NFL to adjust their gestapo stance. The fans enjoy watching goofy celebrations after touchdowns, the trash talk between players makes the game more exciting, and nobody has ever cared what shoes or socks a player is wearing. It is time for the NFL to relinquish their excessive stranglehold on the game and to let their players have fun again.

The thing is, Roger Goodell and the NFL are all about control and it's fair to wonder if they would even know how to let up some of it at this point. The Goodell led establishment is unapologetically power hungry and they have gotten to the point where they have started to eat into the entertainment of the league as a whole.

Richard Sherman points out part of the reasoning for the control on the players is because of them wanting to control all messages sent to fans from the league. They say they want to do this to protect the league from negatively influencing society, children in society specifically. Except they have no problem having their biggest sponsors be from alcohol, so you don't want the wrong message to get out but drink up boys and girls!

"They say we're trying to influence kids, and that's their biggest thing. That's their biggest ploy is you don't want to be a bad influence to kids. You don't want to be a bad role model. And I can agree with that. But in the same breath, you can't say Budweiser is the official sponsor of the NFL, and we're trying to influence kids. So there's a ton of hypocrisy, but it doesn't matter because we don't control it."

It's about time for the NFL to realize that people want to get to know the real athletes in this game. Twitter and social media has changed the entire world, and it's time for the NFL to realize that the unbridled access to real people and real thoughts is what their fans want.

Nate Scott of USA Today makes an excellent point in one of the articles highlighted below, and that is that the NBA is cutting edge on this. The NBA is growing at an epic pace, and part of that is because their players are allowed to have a voice and to be unique. They have embraced their players ability to mold their own messages and image, it's time for the NFL to do the same.

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