Baseball Vs. Football: Past the Time for a Battle or a Battle for a Pastime?

The oldest debate in the books. Right up there with Coke and Pepsi, Coke and whores and Chocolate and cheese. The numbers speak for themselves: football trumps baseball in pretty much every statistical ratings category. But does this tell the whole story? Is this what it's really about? Ratings. Of course not. Only an idiot would pepper spray the room with football's off the radar ratings in this type of debate because you can't really compare the two.

Football will never be beaten. At least in terms of ratings. The NFL has structured their television package so superbly that during 17 fall weekends and about two months in the winter, they will never be beaten. Ever. The NFL has simply done what other sports CAN'T do. They turned their regular season into must-watch television. It's not that baseball or basketball or hockey don't want football's ratings. They're just incapable of achieving them due to the nature of their seasons and their schedules and their sports. Sundays in the fall are reserved for football whereas the baseball season covers three seasons of afternoons, evenings and late nights. It's hard to watch every baseball game, and while there are certainly hardcores who try, the game will never gain the event status that the NFL has created with their Sunday content.

Similarly, no NFL franchise will ever draw 3 million fans over the course of a season. Something about 162 vs. 16 games. This isn't rocket science. So how can we accurately gauge which sport is more popular?

I clearly remember a Sports Illustrated cover after the 1994 baseball strike that declared, "Football, the Real American Pastime". And there was some truth to that. Baseball was dead to a lot of people. Even if baseball made a ridiculous comeback in 1998, most fans still had their doubts. (Especially since most of what happened in 1998-the whole Sosa/McGwire thing-seems so cheap in hindsigh.) But let me be the first to say that I won't use that argument here. You'd have to be a blind fool not to think that, at one time or another, NFL players haven't dabbled with the juice. You know what I mean?