Maybe. Maybe not.

The NFL has taken a ratings beat down this season. Some of it has to do with Colin Kaepernick’s antics and ilk. Colin isn’t completely to blame. The fan base suffers from fatigue after years of watching the whole sport drift to the left, now closer to Stalinism than to soccer. Many have completely written it off. I did.

Okay, my write-off is not complete. I’m watching a few SEC games right now.

This week, Daniel Holloway and Variety looked into the subject. Specifically, they cited Dak and Dallas as possible saviors of a ruined season.

In a season that has seen the NFL’s broadcast partners dogged by depressed ratings, last Sunday brought a welcome jolt. Fox’s second game of the afternoon — for most homes the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers — was the most watched of the season, drawing 28.9 million viewers. That evening, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” featuring the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, drew 22.5 million viewers, the most for any primetime football game this season.

That was enough to slow the bleeding, but not stop it. Ratings for week 10 games were still down an average 6% from one year ago. Considering that all other weeks this season saw percentage declines in the double digits, however, it was a moral victory — one that could become a winning streak in week 11, which begins tonight with the New Orleans Saints and Carolina Panthers on “Thursday Night Football.”

Like most of the press and the establishment, Variety misses the real point. Football was quintessentially American. Then it was hijacked. The hijackers are still in control. Most former fans will not return to a League and a sport that view them as hostile aliens and idiots, “deplorables” good for buying tickets and jerseys and for little else.

Then again, the press misses a lot of stuff these days. They were blindsided by Trump’s win. Never saw it coming. Wasn’t even a possibility. They were preoccupied with Comrade Clinton’s ascension over the feeble objections of the basket-dwellers. I saw that train coming, calling the electoral vote with 95% accuracy – 2 months early. Really, it was kind of hard not to see it.

It’s much the same, maybe exactly the same, with football. The press elite were preoccupied with Comrade Roger’s foolish war against NE. That the people grew tired of pink-clad felons standing around for TV timeouts in a debased PC playground never occurred to them. And, again, I saw it all first. I hailed Prescott as the possible hero of the season one week into the preseason (even after Dallas and Dak lost the first scrimmage against the Rams).

Dak is electric and just a darned good quarterback. MSU, 2014, anyone? But can one player salvage a whole industry? Who can say? (I lean towards “no”). There’s much else that must change. It’s the same with Trump. In both cases we now have “our guy”. That’s great but now we must see delivery. We must ditch the same sort of afflictions that plague football and America.

USA Today.

Hope abounds though the greater questions and concerns are still out there. Time will tell.

By the way, for major stories in 2016, that’s: Perrin, 2 – Media, 0. I offer my services to Zuckerberg for rooting out all that fake news. I won’t hold my breath.