September has historically been a popular month on both the sports and seasonal calendar. This is the time where kids go back to school, the weather begins to cool off, and sports kicks into high gear. The month of September represents the time of year where the Major League Baseball pennant races start to heat up and football (both Professional and Collegiate) starts its season. However, this September has shown an odd change. Recently, when September rolls around the attention of fans around the country completely switch from baseball to football. The change does not seem logical, in that the MLB season is heating up and speeding into the playoffs, while the NFL is only just starting its five-month long season. However, the change is abundantly clear, the only question is...why?
A simple reason for why this shift in attention has occurred is that fans of poor baseball teams are looking forward to the clean slate that is the start of the NFL season. This may very well be true for some fan bases, I’m sure Mets fans have been looking forward to watching the Jets or Giants since May. However, this shift has been evident in fans for baseball teams that are actually good this season too. Last night, the Yankees celebrated yet another American League East title, but I (a diehard Yankee fan) was too busy setting my Fantasy Football lineup to celebrate the accomplishment. In Detroit, the Tigers are experiencing a magical run behind Justin Verlander, yet its the Lions stealing the headlines every week. It does not matter if your team is in first or last place, as soon as September rolls around fans are flocking from the baseball diamond to the gridiron.
Another, more in-depth reason for why this is happening is the culture of the two sports compared with the culture of today’s America. Football is the flashy, explosive culture; everything Football represents is the same as that of an action movie. The big hits, the violence, the possibility that at any moment anyone on the field could be knocked out cold. Football is popular for the same reason why Hollywood continues to employ Sylvester Stallone; American’s love the violent, explosive culture of things.
Baseball, on the other hand, is “your father’s sport” or “the nerdy sport”. Baseball purists call it the more tactical, strategic sport, but the bottom line is that people think that baseball is too boring, both to talk about and to watch. Fans would rather sit around the water-cooler and discuss that 50-yard bomb Tom Brady threw on Monday night than things like VORP, WAR, OPS, and BsR. Have no idea what any of those things are? Exactly. Its easier and more engaging to sit around and discuss football then it is the complicated advanced stats of baseball, and fans like that. Baseball also does itself no favors with its lengthy, 162-game schedule.
The baseball season starts (usually) on the first day of April, and runs all the way to mid-to-late October. A season that long and grueling is not attractive to fans in today’s America, a country where the attention span of the average person is similar to that of an intelligent squirrel. Football offers fans a way to dissect and discuss games for an entire week before moving on to the next one. In baseball, you have a morning to talk about the previous game before the team goes out again the next night. The baseball schedule does have its benefits for fans, there is nothing better than finishing a weekday of work or school and knowing that you can watch a baseball game that night, but in football Sundays (and sometimes Saturdays) are catered around the sport. Its not easy to watch every single baseball game of your team for an entire season, but missing a football Sunday is as close to a sin as anything else in sports. Football grasps the attention of fans because it has two days a week centered around the games. There are no doubleheaders, no 10 o’clock west coast games, its just an entire day dedicated to the sport.
Baseball may be the sport to watch during the summer, but it is undeniable to say that come September and October that it is more popular than football. There is something about the falling leaves and the windbreaker jackets that just scream football for fans across the country. Baseball will always be the nations pastime, but football is the nations present.
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