Now, don't get me wrong. I love football. I'm from Southeast Texas, where every other sport is a distant second to football. But my first love was basketball (my dad's hometown in rural Louisiana didn't have the money for football, so basketball was the sport of choice), and I think football has significant problems as a sporting event. So let's get started, shall we?
1. Football is a team sport. Twenty-two men are in action on every play.
Pretty much. But it's not as if the FB is going to see much action on most plays. Really, the primary "stars" on the field are usually the QB, RB, and the WRs. Everyone else just plays secondary rolls.
Contrast that to baseball, when nobody moves on most plays, which consist mainly of two guys playing pitch and catch. Every now and then, someone will hit the ball to a fielder, who will sometimes have to (gasp!) actually run to get the ball.
Yeah, baseball is primarily a duel between the pitcher and batter. Probably 90% of all camera shots in a baseball broadcast include only four men: the pitcher, batter, catcher and home plate umpire.
But everyone gets their turn at the plate. Nobody (except for the AL) gets to sit out the action. Compare that to the special teams in football. And are you really going to say that the center participates in the same level of excitement as the QB? What about the long snapper?
Or contrast it to basketball, when four guys clear out so one guy can operate one on one.
If you do this at any level in amateur or professional basketball, you will lose. If all you have is one (or even just two) primary scorers on your team, you will lose the game when the defense double or triple teams him. Basketball - particularly in extreme passing offenses like the Princeton Offense - relies on every player doing his part. And, even if you've got Kobe on your team, you can't just give him the ball every time.
One man can’t dominate a football game the way a baseball, basketball or hockey player can.
Yes they can. An incredible QB can truly dominate a defense.
A Nolan Ryan could throw a no-hitter or a Roger Clemens could strike out twenty batters.
Well, Ryan's no-hitters involved a good bit of defense behind him, while Roger Clemens' 20K performances still required defense on all the hitters he didn't strike out.
But, more importantly, neither Ryan nor Clemens could win the game by themselves. Ryan needed guys like Cheo Cruz to actually, you know, score runs. Clemens couldn't even bat for himself until he came to Houston.
A Michael Jordan could isolate one on one against a defender to dominate a basketball game.
No he couldn't. Jordan was a great player. #1 or #2 all-time. But even he couldn't take on five professional players and win. He needed other scoring threats to lessen the pressure on him. He needed other defenders to help him stop the opposition. He couldn't just dominate by himself.
A goalie can shutout the opposing hockey team.
Granted, I've only been to a few hockey games in my life, but I'm pretty sure the goalie can't (1) score all by himself, or (2) defend properly without other defenders.
But it takes an entire team effort to win a football game.
In EXACTLY THE SAME WAY THAT OTHER SPORTS DO!
2. Football has a level playing field. At least it’s more level than the other so-called “major” sports. It has a hard salary cap, not a soft cap like baseball, which is a joke, or basketball, which circumvents a hard cap with the “Larry Bird Rule”. I know there’s some kind of cap in hockey but don’t know what it is or how it works. I don’t really care to know either.
I'm kind of tired of this meme. If you look at the teams that have made the playoffs over the years, all the major sports leagues have a rough sort of parity.
Moreover, this isn't really about why football is popular - it's about why the NFL is popular.
Football has parity, of sorts. The teams with the best records have the toughest schedules the next year while the weaker teams play easier schedules, at least in theory. The worst teams get to select first in each round of the draft. None of those lotto picks like the NBA has, either. The weak sisters have a chance every year to improve enough to contend with the big boys. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, for example, went from worst in 2006 to first in 2007 in their division.
Yeah, this happens in every other league. And the lotto picks are to prevent crap like the Bush Bowl from happening (even if the Texans didn't end up picking Reggie Bush that year - thank God - teams do start to give up late in the season to get better picks. Of course, this looks really bad for the Texans, who had no plans to draft Bush but still lost to a 49ers squad that was trying to throw the game). And Tampa Bay is able to pull off that sort of turnaround because the NFC South is awful. Try doing that in the AFC South. I don't care if you draft the next LT, the Texans are still going to get their ass kicked. So much for parity.
3. Football has instant replay. If an official makes a questionable call, or a close call, there’s an opportunity to correct any mistakes. The last time I saw a baseball or basketball game, they didn’t do that. The last I heard, the refs in those sports strongly opposed the use of technology or instant replay.
Again, this is a reason for why the NFL is popular. And there are two problems with this.
1) It's not as if the Canadians, when inventing this sport in the 1890s, had this little exchange:
JULIAN: Hey, Ricky. What are we going to do if some hoser ref blows a call?
RICKY: How aboot if we have instant replay, eh? The ref will stick his head in a box, and he'll see what actually happened!
JULIAN: Great! Let's go eat maple syrup and drink some Molson, eh?
2) I seriously doubt anyone decides their sports-entertainment consumption habits based off of instant replay. Nobody is going to say, "Gee, I can choose between baseball and football tonight. What do I want to see? Not any baseball, because they don't have instant replay! Fuck that!"
4. Football is played, usually, outdoors and in all weather conditions. I’ve sweated off ten pounds and been baked like a lobster at football games, I’ve been drenched and soaked in rainstorms and I’ve gotten pretty darned cold at times. This is a commonality which football fans share, not to mention the players. The game goes on, regardless of weather conditions.
I'm not really clear with where you're going with this...
A few sprinkles of rain will cancel a baseball game. 100% of all NBA games are played indoors. Kudos to hockey for experimenting with an outdoor game last year. Maybe they’ll continue the practice and in doing so, try to make a hockey fan out of me.
...so what?
5. There’s a strict drug policy in the NFL. Baseball has become a joke with all of its steroid users, not to mention recreational drugs. How many strikes did Steve Howe get? Seven? Wow, a “seven strikes and you’re out” policy. Basketball isn’t much better.
Baseball is begining to fix its steroid "problems" (again, why is steroid use an issue? There's no difference between performance enhancement through drugs and performance enchancement through equipment). And don't trumpet the NFL's drug policy as a victory. What the NFL did to Ricky Williams was a tragedy.
6. The NFL has a sixteen-game regular season. Each game means a lot. Baseball has 162 games. Basketball and hockey both have 80-something, I think. They have so many games that the importance of each game is diluted when considered in context with the entire regular season. When a NFL team loses just one game, it’s the equivalent of a baseball team having a ten-game losing streak.
A baseball team that wins 100 games is considered “great” by most baseball fans. That also means the team lost 62 times. A 100-62 record (.617) in baseball is roughly equivalent to a 10-6 (.625) record in the NFL. That winning percentage isn’t considered to be great in the NFL. Ask Cleveland Browns fans. The Browns had a 10-6 record last year and didn’t even make the playoffs.
This is actually a fair critique, though probably not for the reasons that Andrew thinks it is.
Well, that's not true for basketball. But for baseball it's pretty good.
The problem is that the level of luck involved in the typical baseball game is so high. It's less of an issue with other sports. So winning 60% of baseball games makes you pretty fucking good.
And I can see why that might be a problem. Individual games in baseball are often decided purely by luck. Berkman can't just decide to hit a homer on his next AB. It's just not that simple.
Of course, the NY Giants went 10-6 last year and won the Super Bowl, so what the fuck does any of that mean?
My point is not that baseball or basketball is "better" than football. That would be a meaningless statement. My point is that the reasons Strickert gives for why the US population now spends considerably more money and time watching, playing, and consuming football than it does baseball are simply not satisfactory.
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