In spite of its obvious flaws — the most dangerous of which involve the long-term health of its players — the NFL has clearly done a lot of things right in the past few decades to earn its lofty position on the American sports landscape.
Those running the league understood early on what would become an insatiable public appetite for off-the-field news, and the NFL capitalized by turning itself into a 12-month machine complete with free agency, draft coverage, mini-camps and — oh, yes — the games themselves (with fantasy football, the first fantasy sport to really take off, fueling the frenzy during fall Sundays).