Sports-pub poll proves NFL rules over MLB

There are polls and other data confirming that the NFL surpassed Major League Baseball as the American Pastime decades ago.

For those lacking iPads and a Wi-Fi connection, this fact also can be corroborated by frequenting a sports bar when the World Series is going up against "Monday Night Football."

Last November, during the deciding game of the Series, I was banished to the frigid outdoor smoking lounge at Miller's Ale House in Town Square, where I contracted a cold and emphysema watching the Giants banish the Rangers to the golf course.

Inside the cozy bar and restaurant, the Colts were defeating the Texans or somebody like that in a meaningless display of professional football.

Inside, somebody said the cocktail waitresses looked like Cameron Diaz in one of those hot-teacher movies, and that there might have been harp music at halftime, performed by angels.

Outside, I felt like McMurphy trying to get Nurse Ratched to turn on the TV in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with Sandy Koufax and Al Downing warming up in the bullpen before Game 2.

There was another pivotal World Series game Monday night, and it was up against another not-so-pivotal NFL game, Ravens vs. Jaguars, which is as meaningless as it gets now that the Lions are pretty good. And so I rounded up The Chief, in case a deciding vote would be needed to entice Cameron Diaz and her halter top not to switch away from the ballgame in the second inning, just because Ray Lewis was exhorting his teammates on the sidelines.

According to the Harris Interactive Poll people, 1985 was the first year football surpassed baseball as the favorite sport of Americans, and then only by a 1-percent margin. By 2010, the margin was 14 percent.

Yeah, I am aware that 1985 was the year Rusty Staub retired, but you can't put all of this on "Le Grande Orange."

Among the 2,331 adults surveyed by Harris, the NFL was No. 1 at 31 percent, followed by MLB at 17 percent. Then came college football (12 percent), auto racing (7 percent), the NBA (6 percent), the NHL (5 percent) and men's college basketball and soccer (4 percent). Lingerie football didn't make the list, which can only mean no sportswriters were among the 2,331 adults surveyed.

Of the 77 televisions at Miller's Ale House, 51 were tuned to football Monday night, 26 to the World Series. But the volume, the true litmus test in such matters, was 77 for football, 0 for baseball.

Kevin Furlong, who was wearing a Cardinals jersey with Mark McGwire's number on the back, demanded (in a friendly way) to see the manager. Furlong, 51, grew up in Harrisburg, Ill., 111 miles southeast of St. Louis in the middle of Cardinals Country. He was told they would be showing the Series with the volume turned up. He was told wrong. The manager, like the Red Sox in September, never showed.

There was no solace to be had in the outside smoking lounge, either. There was only cigar smoke and football volume, because KLUC 98.5-FM was doing a live remote and insisted on football volume, if not cigar smoke.

I held the door for a couple of Miller Lite girls, who were not baseball fans, either (but could have given Cameron Diaz a run for her money), and headed across Town Square for the Yard House, where 26 of 34 TVs were tuned to football with the sound turned up. At the Double Helix Wine and Whiskey Lounge, football was showing on three TVs, baseball on zero.

I'm sure it was the same at the more pretentious restaurants in Town Square, but I was wearing shorts, and the hostess at the Brio Tuscan Grille frowned when I poked my head inside. (I've always been more comfortable in places that spell "grill" without an "e.")

Just to prove there is an exception to every rule and Harris Poll, upon arriving home I called Mike Shannon's Steaks and Seafood across the street from the new Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis. Carmen the hostess said there are lots of TVs at the old Redbirds third baseman's place, too many to count, really, and that all except four were turned to the ballgame. With the sound turned up. Way up. They could probably hear Joe Buck and Tim McCarver across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis.

"C'mon down," Carmen said.

"But I'm in Las Vegas and wearing shorts ..."

"No problem," Carmen interrupted.

"... and a Cubs cap."

Click.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.