Make Football Great Again (In Mexico)

Once, in Mexico,  football was one of the first sports preferred by mexicans along with baseball. College football was really popular and was the first sport, holding at least 68,954 spectators in the Olympic stadium in Mexico city. It was trasmited in radio and TV. Out of that, classic movies were filmed; for example 1956 “Viva la juventud;“ “Sin temores ni rencores todos juntos vencerán;” “Con la frente muy en alto Poli y la Universidad;” “No Fear No Regrets Everyone Will Win;” and a "Young Cheerleader Lady Sings."  

So, what happened? Why this decay? How soccer became the favorite sport? We suggested in an older post, following the argument of Powell of Bletcher Report, that the decay of football, and maybe baseball, in Mexico had political reasons related to univertsities. The idea was to create a context of violence in the stadiums, because College football created unity among students like that woman singing in the movie “Todos juntos vencerán”.

I explained in a past article about the violence in the stadiums and the groups of profesional mercenaries used for those purposes. But that is not the only reason, there may be several reasons for that decay. In this writing I will present some of them. And I will explain them in further entrances.

Media coverage: Media is really important for the coverage of a sport, and in the case of football, the decay of the College league, resulted n a decrease of the media coverage inside the country. Up to our present days coverage inside Mexico is really few, there are some TV channels that transmit the games. But they are not nationwide TV Channels; on the other, TV channels broadcast the national soccer league division 1 and 2 . Many generations of football players and fans were resignated to have a mediocre coverage,since it is catalogued to be fourth or fifth most important sport in the country. 

Another reason was the rivalry between public and prívate Colleges. They fought to have the best scolarships and better players. The money invested in players preparations, nutritions and medicine made it difficult to compete. This resulted in the divition of two major college football leages: CONADEIP, and ONEFA.  There are some games, specially in ONEFA, that are not much competitive and boring to watch. 

The question now is if LFA can make football great again? Can this new profesional league be attractive enough? Can it compete with the ratings of College football, or increase them. We will see.