It looks like fewer people are watching the NFL this season. Ratings are down universally and, especially in local markets, that ratings drop is significant. For example, according to MMQB.com, the ratings for Jets games are down locally by almost forty percent. Does this mean that football is losing its all-powerful grip on America’s sports fans? Is the era of total world domination by the NFL over?

Yesterday in California they had the Great ShakeOut, a dress rehearsal for the big earthquake that is expected any day now. The NFL might be wise to invest in a little preparedness of its own because like the plates moving along the San Andreas Fault, things are shifting. Is the NFL getting boat-raced by other professional sports? Hell no. Are NFL fans consuming football in an entirely new way? Hell yes. Is the NFL, in explaining the ratings drop as an anecdotal blip, kidding itself? Quite possibly.

The NFL is basically attributing the drop in local TV ratings to societal circumstances (local NFL games are the ones you get on network TV on Sunday afternoons, in the 10AM and 1PM time slots in California). Last year they said the presidential election impacted ratings. They often cite something else on TV, like the World Series, as a reason for lower viewership. This year we’ve heard that the players’ “kneel-down” protest may be why fans are watching less football. This is, of course, nonsense. Lower NFL ratings is not an anecdotal phenomenon, it’s not the result of circumstances or event or events or competing programming.

NFL fans want to watch football. It’s all they want to do. They would do it all day every day if that was an option. The thing that’s changing, however, the thing that’s shifting, is the way they want (and at some point will demand) to watch football. L.A. is ground zero for what is happening. No one cares about the Rams or the Chargers, but they’re still on “local” TV every Sunday, getting bad ratings because the entire region is fractured into fan bases for all 32 NFL teams. This makes the concept of a “local” NFL telecast a dinosaur – there’s no such thing as local anymore. So bad games being played by teams that fans are indifferent to will lead to sagging ratings. This is a long-term trend. Here’s another, fans, especially millennials, if given a choice between watching one NFL game on local television or watching them all on the Redzone Channel, will opt for the Redzone every time. Younger fans will watch Redzone on their phones, they’ll get out of the house and watch highlights on their mobile device all day long. They’re not watching football less, they’re watching football different. Here’s the rub: if I can get a primetime game on Thursday and Sunday night and on Monday night and then I can get real-time highlights on my phone or tap into the Redzone channel, why would I waste my Sunday at home watching the f’n Rams?

The NFL ratings drop doesn’t just signal an evolution of sports, it marks a revolution of choice. The NFL claims it wants to be global, but it still thinks and acts locally. It rations its product to customers every Sunday instead of giving those customers access to everything. It worries about the individual franchises at the expense of the corporation. That’s a mistake, and the ratings are just an early indication of that mistake.

The best games get the best ratings, that’s why the NFL and other pro sports leagues try to present marquee matchups in primetime. Some teams in the NFL are never on a national telecast in primetime, but those lame teams and matchups get served up every Sunday in local markets and that’s why ratings suck. The goal of the NFL should be to get more total viewers watching NFL games and the best way to accomplish this is to let the fans decide on what games they want to watch. If more total eyes on football were the goal, the NFL could do away with the antiquated concept of local TV ratings and either give all fans access to all games or find a way to let fans pick the game they most want to watch (call it flex scheduling for the fans).

Most of the NFL’s players are young and hip. NFL owners? … Not so much. The average age of an NFL owner, literally, is seventy years old. I believe most of them view their own league through the prism of leather helmets and wool uniforms and radio broadcasts from old Yankee Stadium. I dig history as much as the next guy, but to make this ratings slump history, will require a widespread realization that the emerging NFL fan base wants to consume NFL football differently. First-rate entertainment changes with the times and those changes will certainly be a test for the old guard of the NFL.