Baseball vs. football. Which sport is better?

[Guest]

ESPN ruins them both. Football would be so much better if it had an offseason.

 

Football has a much longer offseason than any of the four major sports, too long actually. It's a shame. It's completely disingenuous to whine about this when hockey and basketball go from October-June, baseball has a much more prominent "training season", everybody plays 6 months and the playoffs last into the beginning of November. You can pretend the media over emphasizes the NFL offseason, but baseball has its hot stove league, daily releases of multiple award winners, winter meetings, GM meetings, owners meetings, arbitration deadlines, first day of free agency, pitchers and catchers report, position players report and spring training. Baseball is discussed February-December every year. January is the only month without much discussion. Football is played September-December, with one month of playoffs and one week into February. The football hot stove league is much less a media infatuation. Most of February and March football is on the backburner. It heats up in April for the draft, but then goes away with only marginal local coverage on things like minicamps. It does not kick back up until July training camp.

 

As a big Bears and Cubs fan, it's pretty clear to me that anybody who complains about an overemphasis on one sport or the other just has a biased dislike of that sport. They all get hyped and try and get as much media attention as possible.

February and March are always the lowest traffic months for nsbb every year. It's weird to me, but it's a pattern over five years now.

[jersey cubs fan]

ESPN ruins them both. Football would be so much better if it had an offseason.

 

Football has a much longer offseason than any of the four major sports, too long actually. It's a shame. It's completely disingenuous to whine about this when hockey and basketball go from October-June, baseball has a much more prominent "training season", everybody plays 6 months and the playoffs last into the beginning of November. You can pretend the media over emphasizes the NFL offseason, but baseball has its hot stove league, daily releases of multiple award winners, winter meetings, GM meetings, owners meetings, arbitration deadlines, first day of free agency, pitchers and catchers report, position players report and spring training. Baseball is discussed February-December every year. January is the only month without much discussion. Football is played September-December, with one month of playoffs and one week into February. The football hot stove league is much less a media infatuation. Most of February and March football is on the backburner. It heats up in April for the draft, but then goes away with only marginal local coverage on things like minicamps. It does not kick back up until July training camp.

 

As a big Bears and Cubs fan, it's pretty clear to me that anybody who complains about an overemphasis on one sport or the other just has a biased dislike of that sport. They all get hyped and try and get as much media attention as possible.

February and March are always the lowest traffic months for nsbb every year. It's weird to me, but it's a pattern over five years now.

 

February drives people crazy and March is spring break time.

[CubbieBum]

I guess I will be representing football all by myself. Anyways ...

 

 

World Cup Soccer>>>NFL>>College Basketball>College Football>MLB>>NBA

 

After that I'm a once a week check the standings fan. That includes NHL, College baseball, MLS.

[TruffleShuffle]

ESPN ruins them both. Football would be so much better if it had an offseason.

 

espn only ruins things if you turn that channel on or go to their website.

[wvcbxl]

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to infer which sport I like better.

 

Women playing beach volleyball?

[Guest]

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to infer which sport I like better.

 

Women playing beach volleyball?

duh

[OleMissCub]

Opening of Ken Burns' Baseball:

 

It is played everywhere, in parks and playgrounds, prison yards, in back alleys and farmers fields, by small boys and old men, raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed; the only game in which the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.

 

American's have played baseball for more than 200 years; while they conquered a continent, warred with each other and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights, and with the meaning of freedom.

 

At its heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game born in crowded cities, an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating, and has excluded as many as it has included. A profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time. It is an American Odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers, and it reflects a host of age old American tensions; between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.

 

It is a haunted game in which every player is measured with the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.

 

The game's greatest figures have come from everywhere: coal mines and college campuses, city slums and country crossroads. A brawling Irish immigrant's son [John McGraw] who for more than half a century preached a rough and scrambling brand of baseball in which anything went so as long victory was achieved; and his favorite player, a college educated righthander [Christy Mathewson] so uniformly virtuous that millions of schoolboys worshiped him as The Christian Gentleman.

 

A mill hand who could neither read nor write [Joe Jackson] who might have been one of the games greatest heroes if temptation had not proved too great. A flamboyant federal judge [Judge Landis] who at first saved baseball from a scandal that threatened to destroy it, but later became an implacable enemy of reform.

 

A miners son [Mickey Mantle] from Commerce, Oklahoma, who made himself the game's most powerful switch hitter despite 17 seasons of ceaseless pain. A tight-fisted Methodist [branch Rickey], 'a cross', one sportswriter said, 'between a statistician and an evangelist', who profoundly changed the game twice. And there were those whose true greatness was never fully measured because of the stubborn prejudice that permeated the nation and its favorite game.

 

Two of baseball's best began life in rural Georgia: A swift and savage competitor [Ty Cobb] who may have been the greatest player of all time, but whose uncontrollable rage in the end made him more enemies than friends, and another no less fierce competitor [Jackie Robinson] who, because he managed to hold his temper, made professional baseball a truly national pastime more than a century after it was born.

 

And then there was the Baltimore saloon keeper's turbulent son [babe Ruth], who became the best known and best loved athlete in American history.

[Omar]

I would much rather watch a Bears football game than a Cubs baseball game. There are 16 Bears games, 162 Cubs... The anticipation/excitement per game is a lot higher.

[dew1679666265]

I prefer football, but not by that much of a margin.

 

Omar makes a good point about the excitement/anticipation being greater in football due to the shorter season.

[hardcorecubfan]

baseball

running-any CC, track, marathon

wrestling- college

Elephant polo like they play in India

[rawaction]

football is easily better than baseball. basketball's actually a better sport than baseball.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

football is easily better than baseball. basketball's actually a better sport than baseball.

 

Basketball is an awful sport. What is there to ever get excited about? Hooray, a basket! Only 40 more of those to go in the game, for each team!

 

Hockey > Cricket > Football > Baseball > Elite international soccer > Basketball > All other forms of soccer

[Derwood]

You're complaining about Basketball, but you list a sport where 2-0 is considered a rout higher

[Careless]

I prefer football games to baseball games, but Cubs seasons to Bears seasons. I'll watch a pro football game over almost anything else on at the same time.

[jersey cubs fan]

I prefer football games to baseball games, but Cubs seasons to Bears seasons. I'll watch a pro football game over almost anything else on at the same time.

 

Yeah, I can watch a random football game that I have no real rooting interest in, college or pro. But I don't think I've ever watched much more than a couple minutes of a non-Cubs baseball game, on tv at least. I guess that indicates I like football better.

[bcl412]

For me MLB, college basketball and college football are all on the same level. Than it's NHL and NFL then NBA. I expect college hoops to drop lower in the coming years while hockey is making a slow rise (this is the first time I would consider it equal to the NFL).

 

The way I rate these is how I would feel if my team won a championship. If the Cubs or Iowa hoops or football won a championship it would be one of the best things ever. A Blackhawks, Bulls or Packers title would be amazing but they wouldn't touch the level of the Cubs or Hawkeyes.

[OleMissCub]

basketball's actually a better sport than baseball.

 

reading that literally caused a physical reaction from deep within me. Do you really believe that? Basketball is fun and all, but to me it is just another game where a team of guys exchange an object back and forth and try and put said object into a goal of some sort i.e. soccer and hockey. There is nothing overly special about it as a sport in any way. If one thinks basketball is more interesting or fun to watch, then that's cool, but to say it is a better sport is just wrong. It isn't.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

You're complaining about Basketball, but you list a sport where 2-0 is considered a rout higher

 

That's exactly my point.

 

When a soccer goal is scored, you have reason to be excited.

 

There's nothing to get excited about until the final two minutes of a basketball game.

[TruffleShuffle]

well that sure looks like a fundamental misunderstanding of the game of basketball.

[Guest]

well that sure looks like a fundamental misunderstanding of the game of basketball.

 

You're either completely ignoring or completely misunderstanding his point.

 

A goal in the first two minutes of a soccer game could be the only goal scored in the game and would therefore determine the winner. A basket of any kind in the first two minutes of a basketball game means absolutely nothing because you know each team is going to score at least another 60 points (at the minimum) and realistically another 80-100.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

well that sure looks like a fundamental misunderstanding of the game of basketball.

 

Well, it's an oversimplification to illustrate the point I was making.

 

A basketball game is like a baseball season. It builds slowly over time with little battles along the way. There may be exciting plays, but there's never going to be one huge, game-changing moment early on.

 

In soccer or hockey, a goal can come at any time, and every goal is a game-changer. In baseball, the three-run homer in the first inning dramatically changes the odds of winning. In cricket, a first-over wicket has a profound effect on the balance of the game.

 

In basketball, you can have a player throw down an epic, acrobatic, driving basket after coming around a perfect screen and taking a monumental pass, and 15 seconds later it's erased by a bunny layup off of a flukey bounce to a wide-open Brad Miller.

[Butterscup1679666578]

I'd give football the slight edge. I love both but just like goony I can watch any football game no problem, where if it's not the Cubs, I don't care.

[Derwood]

Watching a 90 minute soccer game with the only goal coming in the first minute sounds like 89 minutes of wasted time

[Hairyducked Idiot]

Watching a 90 minute soccer game with the only goal coming in the first minute sounds like 89 minutes of wasted time

 

For some, it is. It's never going to be a sport for everyone.

[cubweiser03]

I get drunk and drink more beer when watching football than i do baseball, no denying that. Ill watch football for hours on saturday and sunday, but i like the 'fluidity' of the baseball season. When i retire and am crusty old i look forward to the opportunity of watching every Cubs game.