Wakeboarding and Football?

Found this picture at espn.com

Not sure the connection to the article itself...a weird wakeboarding sighting nonetheless.

Haha, that's pretty funny!

Man, that football is ripped.

It doesn't have a life jacket on either...

I have never seen an inflated football sink...

Forgot to mention, I ride the same board as the football.

Looks like the damn football rides better than me.

looks like the story is dicussing whether the NFL has "jumped the shark" (reference to Fonzi jumping the shark in Happy Days...see wikipedia below). with more and more exposure and yahoos with $60+K boats that don't even ride, has wakeboarding "jumped the shark"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

So is that picture supposed to be the modern day equivalent of Fonzie jumping a shark on water skis? If that's what they're going for, it's quite a stretch. At least they should have put the football on JD's head as he jumped the fountain!

IMO, its a metaphor for pro football saying that the best is behind them and as other sports with more edge to them get popular, pro football wont have a corner on the market any longer. Personally, I can relate. I played HS Football and have always been in the football groove, but over the past few years, I have paid less attention and concentrated on other activities. Other than just trying to put a modern spin on it using the wakeboard instead of skis while "Jumping the Shark" its about football, not wakeboarding. In some groups, the only thing keeping pro football in the limelight is the increasing amount of betting that has been going on in the past 5 years or so. Without that it would be declining faster.

I've been keeping track of NFL football a lot less lately but it's because of exposure. There are now NFL games on ESPN and NBC (don't have either) and the radio feeds nfl.com used to provide for free on the Internet now cost money. That's not even taking into account the exclusive NFL Network games that even a lot of people who do pay monthly fees for TV don't have. Yahoo has a package I'm very interested in where they provide Internet streams of NFL games but that's not available to US citizens because DirecTV is sitting on the rights to that and not doing anything about. NFL money is and should be made off of ticket sales and merchandising. Trying to pull in the reigns and make more money off of broadcasting is only shooting themselves in the foot. They think they can still move the product without the exposure and that's just not going to happen. People will find other things to do (like wear a giant football suit and jump over sharks on their wakeboards).

I have played alot of football thru the years. Highschool, semi pro and half a season of pro. I also am 31 years old and live better now than ever before. I run a malibu 247rx, and yes i wakeboard. I mean go big and eat sh*t alot. But to answer the question on this post. MONEY HAS JUMPED THE SHARK. people with money seem to try to hard to show off with what they think is cool in this country. And they don't know the first thing about the lifestyle. It really makes me mad when I see people in life that run wake boats and don't wakeboard, run offshore boats and don't ride them offshore, drive offroad vehicles, and don't go offroad............People need to find their own thing that makes them happy and stop faking their lifestyle. I just wish that those type of people would find their own lives so I don't have to get on the lake at 4 in the morning to ride a little butter.........