Football and basketball are fundamentally very different sports. In brief, the former is a game of hard hits and intense trauma to almost every part of the body — trauma that leads to permanent damage more often than not. Basketball, on the other hand, is a less violent, more fluid game that rarely entails damaging contact and definitely never shortens the lifespan of its players. Alas, despite distinct differences in the sports themselves, there are similarities between football and basketball, with no similarity currently more prominent than the overwhelming popularity of each sport.
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The Harris Poll for sports, which asks adults (anyone over the age of eighteen) what their favorite sport is, has pegged football as the most popular sport in America for more than thirty years now. And while basketball is significantly less popular, it undeniably remains a staple of American society. But the Harris Poll does not reflect much of the present growth of these two sports, which is coming by way of youth involvement. Social media — which has almost uncontrollably boomed in the past five years — and initiatives to get children involved in all sports, not just football and basketball, has exponentially increased both the popularity of and involvement in football and basketball. And how is each sport responding to this new level of popularity?
Differently.
Well, at least that’s the short answer. Football and basketball are both evolving in discrete ways that accommodate for the particular needs of each sport, and these evolutions are run by the undisputed global leaders of football and basketball — Roger Goodell (NFL Commissioner) and Adam Silver (NBA Commissioner), respectively. But, different as the responses to the increased popularity of football and basketball are, they’re driven by the same thing, as is almost every change in sports today: technology.
Football has a little bit of a concussion problem, to say the least, and it’s a problem that has resulted in many CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy)-related deaths and many mothers encouraging their children to choose a sport that isn’t so dangerous. But football as an institution is using technology to its advantage in various attempts to make football less life-threatening because sports shouldn’t be overly life-threatening. Companies such as Vicis and a team from the University of Arizona are part of a growing group of innovators doing everything they can to make football safer, but America’s most popular sport still has a ways to go before it’s in the clear from a health perspective. Alas, to see progress made in a time where football is so popular is a step in the right direction as technology is trying to be applied to fix their greatest threat.
Basketball, on the other hand, doesn’t have a concussion problem to address and therefore has the luxury of focusing on fundamentally improving the sport and its associated culture. Most notably, Adam Silver, the NBA as a whole, individual teams, and even individual players are using technology and social media to engage basketball fans around the globe in new and exciting ways. So, while football is being forced to use technology to ensure that it produces more fans than corpses, basketball is turning itself into a sport with stellar global popularity. Every NBA team and almost every NBA player has at least a Twitter nowadays (with some accounts making more use of comedy than others), and media such as Bleacher Report’s Uninterrupted, to name just one example, are taking basketball to a level of popularity the sport hasn’t seen since Michael Jordan’s time.
With the sports and technology worlds intersecting like never before, it’s interesting to observe how the NFL and NBA have taken advantage of technology at a time when both sports are becoming exponentially more popular. Football and basketball are definitely handling their situations differently as they are focused on different priorities, but it’s safe to say that both associations are taking steps forward to enhance the experience for both athletes and fans.