Thank you. I didn’t realize that.
In the Chicago area, we had a A-level farm team in the western suburbs, the Kane County Cougars, for the past 30 years. In that time, the Cougars were affiliated with six different MLB teams at various points, but were only affiliated with a Chicago team (the Cubs) for two seasons.
(The Cougars are still around, but they were among the teams that were recently cut from MLB’s roster of farm teams; they’re planning to play in the independent American Association in 2021.)
I think part of it might be with fans of a “certain age.” Growing up the Giants stunk and there were a lot of kids that decided to be Cowboys or Steeler fans. Cowboy fandom seemed to stick more. Those people had children eventually and passed it down. Kids like to root for the winner and will jump on a bandwagon. Later the same happened to the Niners and Patriots. It’s been made easier now because anyone can see any team on any game day. Outside of the Yankees baseball hasn’t had many dynasties.
I drifted into my fandom on my own. My father watched football but wasn’t a great fan of any team. The Dodgers broke his heart by moving so he wasn’t much of a baseball fan anymore. I flirted with being a Steeler fan when they were winning but I was really too young to understand the game. When I did get older I settled in to being a fan of my local teams.
I’m in the UK (so that’s out-of-State. 
)
We’ve had plenty of NFL coverage here over the years. (I remember watching John Riggins score a touchdown in the Super Bowl. 
)
NFL shows also feature former players explanations of plays, formations and coaching styles.
I honestly can’t remember watching baseball on UK TV (and a quick Internet search shows no MLB scheduled.)
I lived for many, many years in a college town, and football or basketball traffic could bring the town to a standstill.
Even though I hate sports, and never watched games, I was still aware of the fact that a lot of individual players had followings. I imagine college students come from all over, not just the state where the school is, and if they go on to play professionally, may end up anywhere, and their following may continue to watch them wherever they go.
Colleges do have baseball teams, sometimes, but they never have the audiences that football and basketball have, because the school is in summer recess during most of the time the baseball team plays.
I’m sure that’s not the only reason, but it’s probably a contributing factor.
And, FWIW, location does have a lot to do with fandom. When some football team moved to Indiana from somewhere out east, suddenly, everyone in Indiana was a fan of the team, and tickets were selling out locally. Suddenly, everyone here, who liked football in the first place, felt some kind of affinity with the team, just because their home auditorium, or whatever it’s called, was here.
Your TV schedule projects into the spring? The baseball season doesn’t start until late March.
One thing that you have (or used to have) in the New York City area is a lot of boomers who are fans of the NFL Miami, Dallas and Washington teams. This because for much of the 1960s and 1970s when they were growing up the Giants and J-E-T-S stunk while these out of town teams were on tv often and in the playoffs.
I get the impression that the networks will show the good NFL teams more while for baseball FOX and ESPN will stick with Yankees, Red Sox Mets Cubs and hockey NBC goes with Rangers, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, Detroit, and Chicago as much as possible
IMHO some people enjoy being contrarian, and it’s easier to fall into that for football than for baseball. Here in south Texas, the Astros are the most popular baseball team and the Cowboys the most popular football team. During baseball season people don’t make a huge deal over every Astros game. That’s hard to do when there’s a game almost every day for 6 months straight. With football, on the other hand, the Cowboys game is the event of the weekend for many people, with flags flying, posts on Facebook, parties, and so on. The contrarians will thus tend to pick another team to be a fan of for football rather than baseball. Around here it tends to be the Steelers.
My WAG is that fantasy football and more big event type games makes it easier for out-of-state fans to get into players and teams.
When I was growing up, we had already passed the age of AM radio but there were some notable cable TV followings which built fandom across state lines. That era’s gone.
It certainly changed the way I looked at football. Until I joined a work league I knew the Giants and the teams they played during the year. I would watch some of the National games casually but not with a lot of interest. With fantasy I gained a much better understanding of the game and appreciation of players on other teams. I can see how that can have an effect on young fans who are not entrenched in their team by decades of fandom.
No offense meant to people who play FF, but I personally hate it. I mean, I’ve actually joined a few leagues and played, and it is an interesting game. But I can’t stand it when anytime it seems like there’s a conversation about football, it always shifts to “Oh that guy’s in my fantasy football league.”
I think the obsession with stats changes how we view what a ‘good’ player is. I don’t think stats by themselves define whether a player is great/HOF/all-pro or not, but I’ll never win that argument, lol. What about the running back who can actually pass protect? What about the receiver and tight end who can actually throw a good block? What about receivers who actually run their routes the right way, and not quit on their routes when they know they’re not getting the ball? Those stats will never show but teams can’t win without complete players and you’ve got stat geeks as reporters who don’t understand that shit, and then they get to control the narrative on who the best players truly are.
Perhaps so. On the other hand, fantasy baseball (often originally called “rotisserie baseball”) became a thing in the early '80s, has also been hugely popular for decades, and likely helped to spur the growth of fantasy football.
So, fantasy sports wouldn’t necessarily explain why football fans follow multiple teams and players more than baseball fans do.
My feelings are identical to yours. I’ve played a few times and even done all right but I can’t really get into it like some people do.
And what I really dislike is that I watch football as a fan of the game. I don’t like watching football hoping one guy gets enough yards or scores or that some team is able to prevent another one from scoring too many points.
It’s like fantasy football is only tangentially related to real football, and somewhat feels contradictory to it. I don’t enjoy football as much when I’m on a fantasy league.
True, but I can confirm MLB has never been a big thing on UK TV. The SuperBowl is free to air on the BBC tomorrow and has been widely covered in the media. Baseball never has been and is relatively obscure.
I read an anecdote some years back where someone lived in a college football town and was doing errands on a Saturday afternoon, listening to the game on the car radio. They stopped at a red light and waited, then just before the light changed the ball was snapped, passed, and intercepted. The guy who got it charged down field, got tackled and fumbled whereupon it was run back for a touchdown – fortunately for the correct team.
They looked up just in time to see the light turn back red. Nobody had moved, nobody had honked; they’d all been listening to the game.
ISTM that it takes more space and equipment, both coming at premium costs in places considered to be nice places to live, to run a decent professional sports franchise, including the farm teams. It also seems to me that American football uses a lot more space and a lot more equipment than baseball does. That would tend to curtail the number of sports teams for the more expensive to run sport.
Both of these are true with the Cardinals also.