Television ratings for the N.F.L. are down 11 percent this season, and league officials have been grasping for possible explanations.
To some extent, they blame the presidential election. Some fans have tuned out football, they theorize, to tune in to a political race in which sexual assault and the treatment of women have been front and center, thanks to Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee who has bragged about groping and kissing women against their will.
Those issues are important to some people, like — and this is just a guess here — women. And anyone else with even a sliver of decency.