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Mark Cuban: The NFL's 'implosion' is 'absolutely' under way, but not because of TV ratings ...

WASHINGTON -- In March 2014, a month after the NFL reached a deal with CBS and the NFL Network to begin airing Thursday night games, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made national headlines by declaring that the NFL was "10 years away from an implosion."

On that same night, pontificating from atop his StairMaster in American Airlines Center, Cuban further declared: "I'm just telling you: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And they're getting hoggy."

Well, as we all now know, NFL TV ratings have dropped significantly. And last week, CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said the decision to add Thursday night and London games to the NFL schedule has diluted CBS' Sunday NFL ratings.

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When asked Tuesday night by The Dallas Morning News if he believes the NFL implosion is indeed underway, Cuban said, "Yeah, absolutely.

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"But not from a TV ratings perspective," he said, noting that while NFL ratings have declined, they still well outpace those of basketball, baseball and hockey.

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"But they still have bigger strategic problems in that people don't want their kids to play football," Cuban said. "That's huge. That impacts how much football kids will watch. And how much football families watch.

"You just get the sense that they don't really have a grasp of how to connect to people in the broader population."

Cuban cited a book called The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. The book, he said, details examples of companies that have been highly successful "but get disrupted because they lose grasp of what got them there.

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"The NFL is going through the innovator's dilemma," Cuban said. "They're getting disrupted at their own hand by not dealing with certain issues."

Cuban said the NFL's primary issue is that it needs to "come clean on CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy] and deal with it. And it's not just about reducing [concussions]. Until something's solved, I'm not going to let my son play tackle football. I'll let him play touch football or flag football, but there's no chance of letting him play tackle football."

How strongly does Cuban feel that boys and young men shouldn't play football? "I get pissed about my brother letting my nephew play," he said, adding, "And I know among my wife's friends that they kind of give you the cross-eyed look if you say you let your son play tackle football.

"That's a fundamental problem. When we were growing up, every family had a team. We watched the Steelers, the Pirates, the Penguins. Hell or high water, we were watching them. That was the big game. You also watched the highlights when they came on the news.

"Now, my son, if the Cowboys game or the Steelers game is on, I'll say, 'You're sitting right here with me.' But he's playing minecraft or watching videos.

"When he went out to play flag football, and baseball, he didn't know the rules. Literally, go watch 8-year-old kids play baseball. Unless they're really into it, they'll always be that kid who hits the ball and didn't know he has to run to first base. That's crazy. That's a fundamental problem all sports have."

Asked whether the NFL can do anything to reverse its negative trends, Cuban said the league -- and, for that matter, the NBA, MLB and NHL -- needs to address the issue of kids not following, understanding and growing to love sports in the way previous generations have.

"I think all the major professional sports should band together and talk about how watching their sport on traditional television is a better experience than watching it online," he said. "You would think it just makes perfect sense. Would you trust watching a game that you couldn't attend in a stream, or would you feel more confident watching on regular TV?

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"No one wants to watch a game, whether you're checking your fantasy sports, or anything else for that matter, and have it buffer and have it fall behind . . . You lose the benefit of social media because everyone's watching a different part of the game.

"So there's a lot of benefit all the major sports accrue given that their major source of revenue is television. I think that's one thing they could be doing to help."

Last, but not least, Cuban worries that professional sports leagues in general -- especially in the NFL -- are pricing themselves so high that they no longer will be affordable for average families, thus worsening the issue of not cultivating younger fans.

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That trickle-down effect alarms Cuban. He said it's the primary reason he has lowered Mavericks ticket prices so that some 4,000 seats for all but a few games are priced at $19 or lower.

"Because we want it to be affordable entertainment because that's how we're going to get kids hooked on being Mavs fans," he said. "That's part of the innovator's dilemma. That's part of the dilemma the NFL is going through right now.

"You know, the average parking price at an NFL game is twice the average of our ticket price. We try to really define ourselves as affordable entertainment. Not all NBA teams, but the Mavs have. And I think that's the challenge that professional sports has.

"If we price ourselves out, we're going to all of a sudden wake up and realize that, 'Yeah, we're investing in these sports, but they don't care about our basketball or football or baseball or hockey teams anymore.' That's a challenge. I think it's bigger for the NFL. I just think they have a bigger problem."

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Twitter: @townbrad