Check out the QuickVote on CNN.com about whether baseball is the still the nation's pastime. It was 20% 80% No last I checked.
Actually I would bet that only changed in 94 when the last players strike occured. Unless you live in Buffalo, Green Bay, or anywhere in the mid west.
people in AMerica follow American football the same way the Europe follows Association Football. Americans don't follow baseball the same way, except seemingly in Boston and New York.
Baseball's slogan is that they are America's pasttime. Football's (American) slogan is that they are America's passion.
And MLS's slogan is what? That they are America's fifth most popular professional league? C'mon Garber et al. Time to get cracking on that slogan.
If NFL teams had venues of the size of motorsports, they might not be. Many teams in the NFL could fill 2 or more NFL-sized stadiums with the amount of people they have on waiting lists. I agree with Bluemovie, Americans don't follow baseball nearly as closely as they do the NFL.
Based on what? Nascar's handful of races? The Indy 500? The U.S. Grand Prix? Basically, most people have at most one shot a year to attend a major race. Baseball gets 100 million per year in attendance. What can compare with that? I'd rank motorsports as the #4 sport in the USA after football, baseball, and basketball.
Don't be so sure. Lots of small towns all over the country have dirt racing tracks, a lot more than have a pro team of any level. I know plenty of small towns, a thousand people or less, that have tracks that draw a few hundred people on the weekend. Added up, in the course of a year, more people very well may attend motorsports than anything else.
More small towns have minor league teams, and those baseball teams have many more games. Well, it's true in North Carolina, which is pretty much the epicenter of NASCAR, so I'd be pretty shocked if it wasn't also true for the nation as a whole.