Here’s my take:

First, football is, and always will be, the undisputed heavyweight champion in terms of TV ratings. I’ll concede that right from the start. It’s a made-for-TV sport because ticket prices are so outrageously priced, and also because you see the action better on TV, since the cameras get you close enough to the mass carnage of bodies that you can see what’s going on. Second, and the biggest factor in football’s popularity is the WEEKEND FACTOR. Football games are an event because they happen only once a week, and it’s when the majority of people are not working, and because of that, each game is an event. Something to plan your week around. High school on Friday night, College on Saturdays, NFL on Sundays, with a Monday Night Football bonus after the weekend ends. There is no question that the weekend factor is a big reason for football’s TV dominance. Obviously you could not do this, but imagine for a minute that teams could play three or four games a week like NBA teams do. Over time, the NFL would be no different than the NBA in terms of TV ratings.

There is another, more subtle factor at play here with football. Football fills a need that a lot of people have for controlled violence. I can’t really explain this, other than the old George Carlin bit about baseball and football. In baseball in the stands, there’s kind of a picnic feeling. Emotions may run high or low, but there’s not much unpleasantness. In football in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty times during a game, you were capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love football. Always have. I’m a huge Bears fan. But imagine football played 162 times in six months, or even 82 times (again, just imagine that this were physically possible). Do you think football would be even close to as popular as it is today? I think not. One thing that baseball people, like myself, love about the game is the EVERYDAY aspect of the game. It’s there for you all the time. You get the know the players, almost personally it seems, even if you’ve never met them, because you see them so much over six months that you feel like you know them. You can’t have that in football, where rosters are so huge, and guys’ faces are covered by their helmets anyway, that there is no connection with the players.

I could go on and on, but one other thing that is brilliant about baseball. It’s the only sport that perfectly coincides with the yearly calendar, and in particular, the four seasons. As Bart Giamatti said, “it begins in the spring, when everything is new again, blossoms in the summer, fillings the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, just when you need it the most, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” It’s the 2010 season, not the 2010-11 season. I hope you can tell which sport gets my vote as our true National Pastime. Football may be the National Passion, but Baseball will always be the National Pastime.