No one ever went broke selling sex and violence.
Football is another matter.
The National Football League is the 800-pound gorilla of sports leagues at the moment, but the jungle is littered with the bodies of imitators. The American Football League survived nine years on its own before being arm-wrestled into a 1969 merger. The original World Football League, despite stars like Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick, Paul Warfield and Danny White, folded 10 weeks into its second season. That was 1975. Things were so bad at the end that the Birmingham, Ala., sheriff's department ambushed the winners in the locker room after the World Bowl and confiscated their uniforms.