A lot of negative publicity surrounding American football was shown to have borne bad fruit Wednesday with a Bloomberg Politics Poll revealing that half of all Americans say they would not want a son to play football.

Only 17 percent of those surveys said they believed football would grow in popularity in the next two decades.

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Although television rating are higher than ever and football merchandise sales are growing rapidly, the sport also has seen a spate of negative stories concerning its athletes abusing their wives or children. Just as bad, growing evidence of brain injuries and other debilitating physical fallout from playing football has taken a toll on the sport.

Congress, too, has gotten in the action with league officials testifying about the sport's violence and some lawmakers even proposing an end to the league's tax-exempt status and making the sport's ant-trust exception subject to a review every five years.

The survey indicated football may be on its way to a fate similar to boxing. Once one of America's top sports, boxing has declined in popularity to abysmal levels due to concerns about the sport's brutality and similar problems with its participants being accused of abusing others and committing violent crimes.

Selzer & Co., a Des Moines, Iowa polling firm conducted the survey for Bloomberg from Dec. 3-5 among 1,001 U.S. adults with a plus-or-minus 3.1 percent error margin.

The question asked participants: "If you had a young son today, do you think you would or would not want him to play competitive football?"

Survey said: "Fifty percent would not want him to play, 43 percent would want him to play and 7 percent were not sure."

About one-third of those earning more than US$100,000 annually said football would lose fans over the next 20 years. More than 25 percent of college-education respondents said the same thing,

Wealthy and college-education individuals considered together to the tune of 62 percent said they did not want their boys playing the sport.

Politically speaking, 52 percent of those identifying as Democrats said they would oppose their kids playing football while 47 percent of Republicans agreed.

Despite NFL attempts to interest females in becoming fans, 58 percent of women responding disapproved of their boys playing football compared to 41 percent of men.

Tagspoll, NFL, Football, americans, Boxing, violence, bloomberg, sports injuries