Oscar Gamble Society

February 20th, 2007 by Cliffy

For so many years, there were four major sports in the US - baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. From year to year, and definitely from city to city, it was some ranking of those specific four… and then everything else came after. But now, NASCAR’s popularity boom is undeniable - and many would suggest it’s passed hockey (at least) amongst the list of “most popular sports in the US”. But how do we measure that?

Attendance is tough - cuz you can’t use an absolute attendance figure, given the wide range of actual events among the sports as well as the per-event capacity… and you can’t use average attendance figures, for much the same reason. What is “TV Viewership”, when that’s brought up? Is that Nielson ratings? Again, that’s a tough metric, given that NASCAR and football are limited events on weekends - as opposed to basketball/hockey (82) and baseball (162) which are not as limited in quantity, and are often shown on weeknights.

I suppose a poll question to a representative sample of the country would best determine “the country’s most popular sports”. Even then, the wording of the question would be key. Do you simply ask for each respondent’s favorite sport? That’s not the best way to rank them. For example, if 40% said football, 35% said baseball and 25% said NASCAR - but all would’ve put hockey as their #2, then this method would produce a rather faulty ranking.

You could give the respondent five (or more) and ask them to rank (like a lot of league MVP voting is handled, giving more points to higher ranks and fewer points to lower ranks and then adding up totals… and comparing) - but where do you draw the line, and what do you include/exclude? I suppose this approach is better than the former, but still not fool-proof, as it were.

Oh, one other problem: Do you separate NFL from college football, and NBA from college basketball - or even NHL from college hockey? I would - cuz they’re far different products, and in two of the three cases (IMHO), the college product is better.

My top ten is as follows:

1. NFL

2. MLB [In his HOF acceptance speech, Howie Long said that while baseball was America’s Pastime, football was America’s Passion. I agree with him.]

3. college football

4. college hockey

5. NHL

6. college basketball

7. NASCAR

8. curling

9. shuffleboard

10. NBA

I base this on the following question: If I came out of a coma and had no concept of what day or time it was - and had a remote control, but no TV guide, in what order would I look for sporting events on the TV? (Clearly this would be my first move coming out of coma… looking for sports on TV - as opposed to more banal options like asking questions such as… “Where am I?” and “What happened?”) In other words, I’d try to find an NFL game first. Then if that wasn’t available, I’d look for a baseball game. And so on… and so on… and if I actually got to the NBA…. I’d strongly consider turning the TV off and counting ceiling tiles before I’d actually watch an NBA game.

But that’s just me…. probably.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Sports, Auto Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.