Normally, trying to finish a Gregg Easterbrook Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN would eat up at best a full hour of one's work day. At 8,000 words of not-always-fulfilling football reading, it's a behemoth of statistical minutiae that exhausts at least this sports fan's tolerance for 24-hour football commentary and analysis.

Today that slog was worth the hour spent because Easterbrook makes a point that crosses over nicely into politics. In commentary about the tale of the Patriots coach Bill Belichick's cheating ways, Easterbrook, who's also a fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes:

Think the NFL can't decline? Fifteen years ago, the National Basketball Association was going up, up, up by every measure and was widely considered the gold-plated can't-miss "sport of the next century." Since then, NBA popularity and ratings have plummeted while NBA-based teams have floundered in international competition. At the moment of its maximum success, the NBA became overconfident and arrogant in ways that need not be recounted here. Key point: There was no law of nature that said the NBA had to stay popular, and it did not.

Today the NFL is king of the hill in sports status, ratings, merchandising and association with the American psyche. There is no law of nature that says the NFL has to stay popular. Overconfidence and arrogance could be the downfall of the NFL, too -- and we might be on that precipice. People will always watch and play football, of course. But nothing guarantees that the NFL's version of football must remain the super-successful money machine that it is today. There could be autumn Sunday afternoons in the near future in which the overwhelming majority of Americans couldn't care less what NFL games are being shown. Fifteen years ago, sports-marketing types would have said "impossible!" to the notion that only 11 percent of American households would watch the NBA Finals, which is what happened this June. Plummeting popularity for NFL broadcasts seems "impossible!" right now, but might happen fast enough to make your head swim.

Swap "NFL" for either political party and the point still stands. Human nature being what it is, the point is rarely heeded -- in politics just as much as in sports.

--------------------------------------------
Follow the RCP Blog on Twitter.
Become a fan of RCP on Facebook.
--------------------------------------------