I already knew that. Depending on the teams involved, the World Series isn't much of an attraction for fans of teams that aren't playing. It's certainly not going to be watched like the playoffs in football, let alone the Super Bowl. But I don't think that really speaks to the popularity of the respective sports. Like I said before, it's apples and oranges.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

It's not the playoffs that beat the World Series' top rated games. It's a 4:15 Sunday afternoon game(with a regional game added in).

I guess I don't get your point. You say pro football wouldn't outdraw baseball on an even playing field but when played at the same time, when one team is a few games from crowning a champion, and the other is playing regular season games, you still see the NFL beating or dominating the championship games.

The MLB playoffs are just like an NFL season, especially on those weekend games.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Are you seriously suggesting that baseball is a more popular sport than football? Sorry, but that hasn't been true since around 1985 no matter what fruit you compare it to. Baseball is the national pastime whose time has passed.

If the baseball season were distilled down to 16 regular season games with two playoff games and one winner-take-all World Series game, you couldn't buy a ticket.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

It's just not true. Way more people care about baseball as evidenced by their apparent loss of innocence upon finding out that their heroes weren't "clean". Nobody gives a fuck that a sauced up Walter Payton followed a super-juiced Jay Hilgenberg and Tom Thayer into the endzone. It doesn't matter.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Did you even click that link? The same day as Game 4 of the World Series, which was the highest rated baseball game that year, with the biggest name in baseball, ended up having 7 million less viewers even with the benefit of the baseball game at night and the football game during the day.

That's the exact same day, with only one baseball game, and the most important one so far in that season, and it got smoked by the NFL. The week before was roughly the same ratings for the NFL which likely took place right around the time of Game 1 of the World Series.

I don't see how you can make a case that more people care about baseball over football.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

It's a different type of game. People go to baseball games to be outside in the summer weather. Do you know what percentage of so-called NFL fans have never seen an actual NFL game? It's more than 90%. You certainly can't say the same for baseball fans. I could try to beat you over the head with that fact, but it doesn't get us any closer to the real answer than your comparison of a World Series game to Minnesota/Packers in November.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

So should we be comparing the popularity of baseball versus the popularity of having a picnic? C'mon you are making absolutely no sense. I was just having a conversation the other day at the baseball diamond and my kid's coach is saying less and less kids are signing up to play baseball. More and more are signing up for "travel" football programs. Travel football programs? They didn't even exist when I was a kid. When I asked why he thought that was true, he said TV. Football is an immensely more TV friendly sport. Even consider the money aspect of it... The NFL brings in about 2.2 billion dollars a year in revenues from television. The MLB earns about 340 million. Take a look at a few articles that study it and you'll see what I mean:


http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/really-is-baseball-less-popular/
"So is it true that "baseball is not nearly as popular now as it once was," as Gary Gillette concluded? Clearly, baseball is not the favorite mass media sport anymore, and hasn’t been for 40 odd years. As television replaced radio as the preferred entertainment medium, football replaced baseball as the preferred sport to watch. But preference is not popularity. The scientific polling data trend offers convincing evidence that baseball is about as popular now as during any period since the late 1930s. "

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?id=1731732
More out of habit than anything else, we still refer to baseball as the national pastime. In truth, the tag hasn't fit for some time. Football began making inroads as far back as the 1970s, and two decades later, it wasn't much of a contest anymore. If baseball still had the hearts and minds of the American sports fan, then football could lay claim to everything else. By any measure -- TV viewership, merchandise sold, fan surveys -- football rules. The game may not be superior, but it undeniably is more popular.

Is it really so difficult for you hardheaded football fans to grasp that there is a whole lot more that people might like to do on a warm summer evening than on a winter Sunday or that if you miss a particular Red Sox/Yankees game you have 17 more chances to see them but if you miss Michigan/Ohio State you have to wait for two completely different teams to play next season? Am I making sense now?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

The baseball and football season now overlap for the months of September and October. No one is talking about May or June. They go head to head all the time, with the World Series trophy on the line, and they get beat down in the television ratings.

We can compare September and October baseball games which makes your "more to do on a summer evening" thing irrelevant. It's bad for baseball though.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

No, you aren't making sense. A great portion of the country, particularly in the PAC-10 and SEC for college ball and all around the South have warm weather well into November. In fact, you are probably more apt to stay indoors in the Summer in many places in the South rather than in the Fall. And why are you making excuses for how baseball chooses to schedule its season with a ridiculous number of games? Does it dilute baseball's popularity? Probably. But it still doesn't change the fact that it is less popular.

I still can't believe I'm arguing this. You might be the one person in all of America that is not willing to admit that football is more popular than baseball.

MLB attendance in 2009 was 73,000,000 as compared to about 17,000,000 for the NFL. But I'm sure you prefer to use numbers that support your argument. As a sensible guy I'm willing to state again that it's apples and oranges (or whatever fruits Willie Wildcat prefers) and we can't really make a definitive statement on which is more popular for whatever that's worth anyway. If you'd rather watch Purdue play Ball State than a MLB playoff game, knock yourself out.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

How can you make that comparison considering how many more games MLB plays???

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Oh, but you don't mind making the comparison when it favors football, huh? Naturally more people are going to turn their TV sets to the single Michigan vs. Ohio State game on a late fall afternoon when the Big Ten title might be on the line as opposed to a possibly meaningless baseball game in April but that doesn't stop you from using that as evidence of football's greater popularity.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

That is an imperfect number because NFL teams can't even sell 73 million tickets because of capacity issues. This is not an issue with tv ratings because it is unlimited and a better metric. That number also doesn't factor in the number of people who attend more than 8 MLB games a year which would be impossible for the NFL due to the scheduling. In that number, a fan could account for over 80 tickets sold whereas in the NFL a fan could account for no more than 8 tickets sold.

That's why tv ratings are the way to judge things. Every person is only counted once, and the time of year is the same, and there is no cap on attendance.
You are one of the only people I have ever heard even make a case that baseball is on par with football in this country.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Not unless you want to add up all the ratings of every baseball game that's televised.



If football has so many fans, why can't over 90% of them be bothered to actually attend a game? Maybe baseball should be compared to a picnic. And football should be compared to True Blood.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

They do on the national broadcasts and the numbers aren't close. You can't do it locally as easily because people can be counted more than once, like when the Cubs play during the day and the White Sox play at night. People will watch both games.
Football games at many stadiums are too expensive for many people to afford. I can go to a White Sox game for around $10. I'd have to pay around $150 for a Bears game at a minimum.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

iro·ny
Pronunciation: \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural iro·nies
Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler
Date: 1502


1 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or utterance
2 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony, tragic irony
3 a

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Thread over.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

For somebody that said "I just know a fuck of a lot more about baseball than you," you sure sound like an idiot in this thread.

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Really, Frank? Are you going to compare a sixteen game season with attendance of 19,000,000 to a 162 game season attended by 73,000,000 and decide the sport seen by less people is more popular too? You can spin anything anyway you want. There isn't a definitive answer. But the very fact that fans are upset to the point of tears over juiced up guys breaking records in baseball while no one gives a fuck that every football record is held by a juicer should tell you a little about which sport matters more.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I can't believe that you don't understand this. Are you telling me this is a fair way to judge?

The best attendance in the NFL last year, was the Dallas Cowboys, at 112.2 percentage of capacity. They had 718,055 total attendance.
The worst attendance in MLB last year, was the Oakland A's, at 39.8 percentage of capacity. They had 1,408,783 total attendance.

So the Oakland A's, who couldn't fill even close to half of there stadium, would be more popular than the Dallas Cowboys.

In fact, to have the Oakland A's win this incredibly flawed metric, they only were required to average 8,865 fans a game. That's less than 1/10th of what the Cowboys averaged in that year. That would be an average capacity of under 20% and yet it would still be more popular than one of the most popular teams in all of sports.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Why are you guys still arguing with this JORR guy. He is making himself sound like an idiot more and more each day. What numbers does he base his Red Sox vs Yankees filling 5 football fields comment? His attendence arguement should have ended this thread. Comparing NFL to MLB because of attendence is moronic at best.

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This is pretty fun now.

Let's compare Bears attendance to Arlington Park attendance.
The most up to date numbers I could find on Arlington Park were from 2006.

2006 also happens to be one of the best Bears seasons in recent memory including an appearance in the Super Bowl.

Bears attendance for that year: 497,786
Arlington Park attendance for that year: 655,788

That's right. Horse racing was more popular than the Bears that year.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

And why is that, you fucking snot-nosed jagoff? I'm sure I can go through your posts and find you comparing Sox and Cubs attendance. Or does attendance only count when you want it too?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I don't know if that makes it more popular or not. I'm not trying to absolutely declare one thing more popular than another. That's what you and the pack of morons in this thread is attempting to do. What I'm saying and what I have been saying is that you can't compare the things. They're played in different seasons at different times and have different amounts of games. You want to bring up thoroughbred racing, well, by some measure it probably is still the world's most popular sport. But it obviously isn't mainstream as are football and baseball so let's stick with those. My point is that television numbers are no better to support your contention than attendance figures are to support mine. Further, I find it highly ironic that a guy who doesn't believe advertising works is using the numbers of advertisers to support his conclusions.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

It's no more or less fair than the way you're trying to judge. You've got a top restaurant that's open one day a year in February and it seats 100 people. Every February when it opens it's sold out. There's another 100 seat restaurant that is equally as good but it's open 100 days a year and you're trying to use the first restaurant's average of 100 people per service to say it's more popular than the second restaurant and it's 30 customer average. Don't you see the flaw in that?

Why can't you just admit there's no real way to compare them? If you like football better- great.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

You are wrong though and you are one of the only people I've ever heard argue that baseball is more popular in America than football. It's not close, and hasn't been since the 80s.
How dense are you? I never said advertising doesn't work. I simply said that I still make my own decisions. I'm sorry that concept is too hard for you to grasp. It makes you look silly to keep on saying that when it was painfully obvious that point was never that advertising doesn't do anything.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Except you have no real proof of that and I will say again, they cannot be compared on a level playing field. You are simply wrong and hard-headed. Good for you. And good for every other idiot who agrees with you.



How dense are you? If you really think you "make your own decisions" with no input from advertising, you're saying it doesn't work. Or do you think it just doesn't work on a brilliant guy like you and only the rest of us dupes are susceptible?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I agree that would be a bad way to judge. Unfortunately for you, it's much closer to what you are saying. The reason your analogy is bad is because there is a limit on the number of chairs and people may be counted twice. That's why tv ratings are a better metric. People are counted once. There is no limit to the amount of people who can watch on television. I'll say it for the last time. A regular season NFL game gets more people watching(interest) than a World Series game on the same day almost every single time.
Go bump an old thread where we talked about this and respond to it there. I'm not having this discussion again. It's clear you didn't get it back then and probably won't now. No need to rehash it again.

The only reason I even responded to it was because I wanted to make it clear once again that my point was never that advertising doesn't work. In fact, if you look back I gave two specific ways that it does work. The discussion was on whether my choices are because of advertising. I don't care if you disagree but at least be accurate.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!