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barterer2002
July 19, 2010 at 10:29PM View BBCode
I'm not buying that argument either. You guys are making a happy like argument and pushing yourselves further out on a rapidly thinning limb. You're staking out the position that Baseball is the number 3 sport and when someone disagrees with the idea that its 3 behind both football and football are changing the argument in a happyesque way. I'd expect better.
whiskybear
July 19, 2010 at 10:41PM View BBCode
College football and the NFL are different leagues backed by different financial interests, covered by different broadcasting and sponsorship arrangements.
Hamilton2
I'm just quoting Bart here to remind us all of where we really are. It is fairly plain to see that Bart's observations in his "nutshell" are spot on. Depending on how you define "popularity" you could make the argument that baseball is either more or less popular now than before.
Since I was the first one in the thread to reference the NFL and NCAA football in regards to comparing them to MLB in terms of popularity, I think it is obvious which side of the fence I am going to land on here.
Bart, there are a number of hugely compelling arguments for separating NCAA and NFL football, IMO.
A) The NFL and NCAA football use a different set of rules and cannot be cross-officiated. Unlike College Baseball and MLB, which are entirely identical in terms of rules and regulations, the two footballs are so far afield as to be virtually unrecognizable as the same game. Some anecdotal evidence here would be the various successes and failures of major college football coaches at the professional level and vice versa.
B) The NFL and NCAA Football are marketed to and appeal to almost entirely separate demographics. While the NFL is a truly national sport in America there are certain niches (read: The SEC and Los Angeles) where NCAA football is vastly more popular than the NFL, to the extent that the NFL does not really succeed in those regions to the same extent that it does in others. Consider that the NFL's least profitable franchise is located in Jacksonville, FL and that they don't even have a franchise in L.A. Yet, colleges like University of Florida, Florida State and USC are consistently packing out stadiums of 60,000+. If the NFL and NCAA were really "the same sport" then it would make sense for the two to have success with nearly identical demographics, but they don't.
C) NCAA Football does not specifically prepare players for the NFL. Contrast the football system with the basketball system. As stupid as we can all agree that the "one and done" rule is in NCAA Basketball, it is, at its core, an admission by the sport of basketball that the purpose of the NCAA is to be a weeding-out period to compare the have's and have not's in terms of NBA capability. The NBA draft is so predictable that it has to resort to a semblance of random chance in order to get any air time; whereas the NFL, which treats the NCAA as a foreign league whose players need an additional Combine and other workouts to prove themselves, has a highly unpredictable draft, not only in terms of who is taken where, but in terms of who succeeds.
D) Vince Young. Basically, he won a national title for the University of Texas. He was the fastest and most athletic player on the field and his team won because of him. That does not and cannot happen in the NFL. The pace and speed and mental aspects of the game in the NFL are so vastly different than that of NCAA Football that they really ought to be regarded as two separate sports.
E) Separation of the two in terms of ratings, merchandise revenues, TV viewership, attendance, etc. You can completely remove the NFL from the picture and MLB is still 2nd to "football" in terms of popularity in the United States. That is, NCAA Football is more popular than MLB is. If the side by side comparison puts both the NFL and NCAA Football above baseball in popularity, it doesn't make sense to me to lump them together as one massive sport "football" vs. "baseball." ESPN continually lists the NCAA separately from the NFL in terms of its reporting and broadcasting, and it makes sense to do so.
F) Just look at the playbook and interface from Madden '11 and NCAA '11 and tell me that the two games are the same. Yeah. That's right, I'm appealing to a video game. Guess I should shut up now. :spin:
July 20, 2010 at 02:51AM View BBCode
Originally posted by barterer2002
So in other words
1. football
2. football
3. baseball.
You can argue that the NCAA and the NFL are different and its true that they are but the essential game you're arguing is still football.
Here's the nutshell.
1. Baseball has not kept up with football in terms of growth of popularity
2. Football has passed baseball as the number one sport while baseball is number 2 which can be argued as a decline for baseball as its dropped from 1 to 2 (Craig's point)
3. Baseball has more fans now than it did at any other time in history, as well as more fans per team and makes a larger profit which can be used to argue that the popularity of baseball itself is not declining (Daren and Tom's point)
You can obviously both see each other's point of view and are now arguing just for the sake of arguing I think.
I'm just quoting Bart here to remind us all of where we really are. It is fairly plain to see that Bart's observations in his "nutshell" are spot on. Depending on how you define "popularity" you could make the argument that baseball is either more or less popular now than before.
Since I was the first one in the thread to reference the NFL and NCAA football in regards to comparing them to MLB in terms of popularity, I think it is obvious which side of the fence I am going to land on here.
Bart, there are a number of hugely compelling arguments for separating NCAA and NFL football, IMO.
A) The NFL and NCAA football use a different set of rules and cannot be cross-officiated. Unlike College Baseball and MLB, which are entirely identical in terms of rules and regulations, the two footballs are so far afield as to be virtually unrecognizable as the same game. Some anecdotal evidence here would be the various successes and failures of major college football coaches at the professional level and vice versa.
B) The NFL and NCAA Football are marketed to and appeal to almost entirely separate demographics. While the NFL is a truly national sport in America there are certain niches (read: The SEC and Los Angeles) where NCAA football is vastly more popular than the NFL, to the extent that the NFL does not really succeed in those regions to the same extent that it does in others. Consider that the NFL's least profitable franchise is located in Jacksonville, FL and that they don't even have a franchise in L.A. Yet, colleges like University of Florida, Florida State and USC are consistently packing out stadiums of 60,000+. If the NFL and NCAA were really "the same sport" then it would make sense for the two to have success with nearly identical demographics, but they don't.
C) NCAA Football does not specifically prepare players for the NFL. Contrast the football system with the basketball system. As stupid as we can all agree that the "one and done" rule is in NCAA Basketball, it is, at its core, an admission by the sport of basketball that the purpose of the NCAA is to be a weeding-out period to compare the have's and have not's in terms of NBA capability. The NBA draft is so predictable that it has to resort to a semblance of random chance in order to get any air time; whereas the NFL, which treats the NCAA as a foreign league whose players need an additional Combine and other workouts to prove themselves, has a highly unpredictable draft, not only in terms of who is taken where, but in terms of who succeeds.
D) Vince Young. Basically, he won a national title for the University of Texas. He was the fastest and most athletic player on the field and his team won because of him. That does not and cannot happen in the NFL. The pace and speed and mental aspects of the game in the NFL are so vastly different than that of NCAA Football that they really ought to be regarded as two separate sports.
E) Separation of the two in terms of ratings, merchandise revenues, TV viewership, attendance, etc. You can completely remove the NFL from the picture and MLB is still 2nd to "football" in terms of popularity in the United States. That is, NCAA Football is more popular than MLB is. If the side by side comparison puts both the NFL and NCAA Football above baseball in popularity, it doesn't make sense to me to lump them together as one massive sport "football" vs. "baseball." ESPN continually lists the NCAA separately from the NFL in terms of its reporting and broadcasting, and it makes sense to do so.
F) Just look at the playbook and interface from Madden '11 and NCAA '11 and tell me that the two games are the same. Yeah. That's right, I'm appealing to a video game. Guess I should shut up now. :spin:
DwightKSchrute
July 20, 2010 at 04:26AM View BBCode
Hamly, NCAA baseball does have different rules one could say they vary as much as between the two footballs.
thatrogue
July 20, 2010 at 10:48AM View BBCode
(Just ignore the "ping" of the aluminum bat...and position players who also pitch.)
happy
Whether or not football has become more popular is inconsequential to this argument. If anything, football gaining popularity is GOOD for baseball, because for the most part, sports fans are sports fans, so turning non sports fans into football fans will make it more likely that these fans end up becoming interested in baseball.
Also, LOL college football.
July 20, 2010 at 12:03PM View BBCode
Why would a ranking of the sports be the way to judge the decline or advancement of baseball? This is like saying that during the computer boom, Apple was "in decline" despite increasing in value like... a bajillion fold, because they fell behind Microsoft in market shares.Whether or not football has become more popular is inconsequential to this argument. If anything, football gaining popularity is GOOD for baseball, because for the most part, sports fans are sports fans, so turning non sports fans into football fans will make it more likely that these fans end up becoming interested in baseball.
Also, LOL college football.
sycophantman
July 20, 2010 at 01:11PM View BBCode
Wait a minute now, are people actually trying to argue against Craigs point about baseball being less popular to football these days? Isn't it pretty much unquestioned reality that football is more popular now? It's like saying water isn't wet anymore to try and suggest baseball is anywhere near as popular as football.
barterer2002
There are essentially 2 points being debated
1. Baseball has dropped behind football in terms of popularity and so Craig (and Tyler and Statue Joe) point to that as evidence that baseball is declining. The counterpoint is that baseball has more fans and more fans per team now than at any other time in their history, and also make more money and more money relative to inflation than at any other time which leads others (notably happy) to state that baseball hasn't declined but rather has merely increased less than football has.
2. On a tangent here but Craig et al have stated that baseball ranks third among the sports in this country because they are behind both the NFL and the NCAA football sports which are different. I contend that while I concede that the NFL and NCAA are different entities with somewhat different fan bases and issues facing them, that in the core they are football. Even if we are accepting all of Ham's points as fact I reject the idea that football and football are different on a fundamental level much as I would reject the idea that Conoco is different from Phillips 66 and is different again from Flying J in the service station industry or that Subway is different than Blimpies and is different than Quiznos in the sub sandwich industry.
July 20, 2010 at 01:20PM View BBCode
No Aaron that isn't what is being argued.There are essentially 2 points being debated
1. Baseball has dropped behind football in terms of popularity and so Craig (and Tyler and Statue Joe) point to that as evidence that baseball is declining. The counterpoint is that baseball has more fans and more fans per team now than at any other time in their history, and also make more money and more money relative to inflation than at any other time which leads others (notably happy) to state that baseball hasn't declined but rather has merely increased less than football has.
2. On a tangent here but Craig et al have stated that baseball ranks third among the sports in this country because they are behind both the NFL and the NCAA football sports which are different. I contend that while I concede that the NFL and NCAA are different entities with somewhat different fan bases and issues facing them, that in the core they are football. Even if we are accepting all of Ham's points as fact I reject the idea that football and football are different on a fundamental level much as I would reject the idea that Conoco is different from Phillips 66 and is different again from Flying J in the service station industry or that Subway is different than Blimpies and is different than Quiznos in the sub sandwich industry.
happy
Sports talk is dead, so this conversation is going to take a complete halt.
Tyson killed Craig, he killed Tyler, and the rest of us appear to be on the way out. So that's that. Just stop talking. Our enjoyable banter has come to an end, and this entire website has taken a turn for the worse.
July 20, 2010 at 01:25PM View BBCode
Here, I got an argument for you:Sports talk is dead, so this conversation is going to take a complete halt.
Tyson killed Craig, he killed Tyler, and the rest of us appear to be on the way out. So that's that. Just stop talking. Our enjoyable banter has come to an end, and this entire website has taken a turn for the worse.
sycophantman
So, yeah, I agree with everything.
July 20, 2010 at 04:34PM View BBCode
Ah, thanks Bryan, I didn't really want to read all that stuff on the earlier pages.So, yeah, I agree with everything.
Hamilton2
Well, if you are going to grant that all my points are in fact correct and still say "SO WHAT?" I suppose that I should just shut up now. :lol:
(Because to respond would not matter.)
((Also, that is a pretty clever little tactic, nicely done.))
July 20, 2010 at 09:45PM View BBCode
Originally posted by barterer2002
2. On a tangent here but Craig et al have stated that baseball ranks third among the sports in this country because they are behind both the NFL and the NCAA football sports which are different. I contend that while I concede that the NFL and NCAA are different entities with somewhat different fan bases and issues facing them, that in the core they are football. Even if we are accepting all of Ham's points as fact I reject the idea that football and football are different on a fundamental level much as I would reject the idea that Conoco is different from Phillips 66 and is different again from Flying J in the service station industry or that Subway is different than Blimpies and is different than Quiznos in the sub sandwich industry.
Well, if you are going to grant that all my points are in fact correct and still say "SO WHAT?" I suppose that I should just shut up now. :lol:
(Because to respond would not matter.)
((Also, that is a pretty clever little tactic, nicely done.))
sparxx
That's why god created Rotisserie baseball first. The real fans NEED stats. As an Orioles fan it's all I live for.
Football is September to January when the world needs it. The draft gives the junkies a fix, but you're dead from April though August.
July 20, 2010 at 11:04PM View BBCode
Football is played over a much shorter period of time. You can not compare the two in terms of popularity as there are too many differences. Baseball fans get the itch when pitchers and catchers report, in Feb. and run until October. Baseball teams play 162 games, football teams don't play even 20 games. It is a lot easier to get worked up over 1 game a week than it is to get worked up over 162 games.That's why god created Rotisserie baseball first. The real fans NEED stats. As an Orioles fan it's all I live for.
Football is September to January when the world needs it. The draft gives the junkies a fix, but you're dead from April though August.