Sports Popularity in MN

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RailBaronYarr

RailBaronYarr

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I have a question for everyone, and I figured I would post it here. I know that hockey is very popular in MN - the HS hockey tourney is huge, we have 4 D-1 programs in the state, etc. But if you had to guess based on everyone you've talked to and watching sports over the years, how would you rank which sports are the most popular (both the watch and play) in MN by the total number of people?

If I had to guess, it would be:

1. Football
2. Baseball
3. Basketball
4. Hockey

I know hockey is really really popular, but I feel like it is only more popular than in other states. By numbers, people would rather watch/play basketball. Just throwing this out there.
 

RailBaronYarr said:
I have a question for everyone, and I figured I would post it here. I know that hockey is very popular in MN - the HS hockey tourney is huge, we have 4 D-1 programs in the state, etc. But if you had to guess based on everyone you've talked to and watching sports over the years, how would you rank which sports are the most popular (both the watch and play) in MN by the total number of people?

If I had to guess, it would be:

1. Football
2. Baseball
3. Basketball
4. Hockey

I know hockey is really really popular, but I feel like it is only more popular than in other states. By numbers, people would rather watch/play basketball. Just throwing this out there.
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At what level? Are we talking people that watch the NFL vs MLB vs NBA vs NHL? Are we talking college? High school? Or people that play those sports in youth leagues and high school? I think depending on those answers, you could have a totally different 1 through 4.
 

RailBaronYarr said:
I have a question for everyone, and I figured I would post it here. I know that hockey is very popular in MN - the HS hockey tourney is huge, we have 4 D-1 programs in the state, etc.
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actually, the state of minnesota contains 5 d1 men's (and women's) hockey programs...the university of minnesota, twin cities...the university of minnesota, duluth...scsu...minnesota state university-mankato...and ncaa tournament participant, bemidji state....:D:D:D

much to the chagrin of many on these boards, the state of minnesota is ultimately a professional sports state...ya' know...vikings, twins, wild, t-wolves...

in addition, we are a band-wagon state...with lots of ankles getting sprained hopping on and off the band wagon of whatever the 'in' sport happens to be...
 

To ask by sport is a bit subjective. The team popularities of the 7 'major' teams in the state IMO are:

1. Vikings
2. Twins
3. Gopher Basketball
4. Wild
5. Gopher Football
6. T-Wolves
7. Gopher Hockey

3-6 are somewhat fluid depending on who is doing well, though Gopher Basketball never really sinks below 3 except maybe during the depths after Monson's firing. The Wild, Gopher Football and the T-Wolves are all about who's hot at the time.
 

This is so seasonal. To me, there are only 3 seasons in Minnesota: Gopher Football, Gopher Basketball, and Twins Baseball. Like the actual seasons, they tend to overlap.

Overall in MN I'd say:
1. Twins
2. Vikings
3. Gopher Football
4. T-Wolves
5. Gopher Basketball
6. Wild
7. Gopher Hockey
 


That would be close to my list gopher Gold. The Twins don't appear as rabid as others but the intensity is watered down by the 938 games they play on a weekly basis. Baseball fans tend to be more passive because of that, plus you can watch or listen while doing other things easily like yard work, homework, or sex. Because of this you'll rarely have an event centered around a Twins game but a Twins game may be apart of a lot of events, picnics, drives to the cabin, whatever.
 

howeda7 said:
To ask by sport is a bit subjective. The team popularities of the 7 'major' teams in the state IMO are:

1. Vikings
2. Twins
3. Gopher Basketball
4. Wild
5. Gopher Football
6. T-Wolves
7. Gopher Hockey

3-6 are somewhat fluid depending on who is doing well, though Gopher Basketball never really sinks below 3 except maybe during the depths after Monson's firing. The Wild, Gopher Football and the T-Wolves are all about who's hot at the time.
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I'd be suspicious of any sports popularity list that doesn't have a pro football team as No. 1. In fact I heard a local TV anchor (Shelby maybe) say that the second most popular team in the state is the Packers. I don't know how he measured it but it certainly is plausible given the marketing strength of the NFL.
 

Personally I'm sick of the NFL. There are many reasons but one would be that it is always on ESPN. Really you don't need to have NFL Live at 2:30 every frickin' afternoon in March. It's become a 365 day season. Plus college football is about four times better. But much as I hate it the Queens are the most popular team in the state. I would rank them

1. Queens
2. Twins-My favorite Minnesota team and it isn't even close.
3. Wild-Having a season ticket waiting list of 10000+ says something
4. Gopher Basketball-Fan base stays with the team better than football
5. Gopher Football-TCF will help
6. Gopher Hockey-Small arena but still I've always heard its impossible to get tickets
7. T-Wolves-Never have built that fan base, it also doesn't help them that they suck

Schnoodler is right about the Twins and baseball you can do other things while listening to it. The also have great radio guys-Hallsy, Herb, John, Dan, Jack. They really messed up though by moving off of WCCO. I can't tell you how many night I feel asleep listening to the Twins then Dark on 'CCO.

If the Wild every win the Cup the State would go nuts. They have done a great job promoting youth hockey but it would be a good idea for them to sign a couple of Minnesota kids.
 

The Wolves would barely crack the top 8 team in terms of popularity. I'd argue that high school sports are much more popular than the NBA team. Shelby is spot-on about the Packers being right behind the Vikes in popularity.
 



GopherGold said:
This is so seasonal. To me, there are only 3 seasons in Minnesota: Gopher Football, Gopher Basketball, and Twins Baseball. Like the actual seasons, they tend to overlap.

Overall in MN I'd say:
1. Twins
2. Vikings
3. Gopher Football
4. T-Wolves
5. Gopher Basketball
6. Wild
7. Gopher Hockey
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No offense, but having Gopher football ahead of Gopher basketball is extremely questionable and having the Wolves ahead of them is laughable.

On this board Gopher football may be more popular, but among the casual Minnesota sports fan I don't think there's really any contest, at least not since Tubby came in. I don't know how it is on the BTN, but back when the week-end conference games were syndicated on WCCO or KSTP, Gopher basketball got huge ratings, much higher then football. When both are going well, the Wolves have never been ahead of the Gophers, and they certainly aren't now. They have been for a brief period in 2004, but that was a blip.

And noone loves the Twins more then me, but you really can't put them ahead of the Vikings unless your only measurement is the # of people who go to the games. The Vikings rule the roost in this town. It's not fair to compare tv ratings given it's 16 games vs. 162. But even Twins play-off games can't touch a Vikings regular season game. The best example I can think of is during the 2002 play-offs. Fox 9 showed the Vikings at noon and the Twins-Angels play-off game at 3:00 on a Sunday. All things being equal, the game on later in the afternoon should get the higher rating, but it really wasn't that close. Don't get me wrong, both were huge, but I think the Vikings game got around 40 rating versus a 25 for the Twins. Nothing gets 30 ratings and above on television except Vikings games and the Superbowl. (Maybe one day they will be one in the same.)
 

tomdog said:
The Wolves would barely crack the top 8 team in terms of popularity. I'd argue that high school sports are much more popular than the NBA team. Shelby is spot-on about the Packers being right behind the Vikes in popularity.
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That depends on what you mean by popularity. The Packers get huge TV ratings in the MSP market when they are on, so purely based on that, yes they are popular. But a large chunk of the people watching hate them and are rooting passionately for thier opponent. Twins fans by and large don't sit around watching White Sox games in thier spare time. But Vikings fans love nothing more then watching the Packers lose.
 

Here is my list:

1. Horseshoes
2. Croquet
3. Golf
4. Fishing
5. Sex (while listening to a Twins' game)
6. Reading GopherHole Message Boards
7. Carnival rides
8. Walking my dog
9. Teasing GopherLady
10. Reading Sid Hartmann
 

I grew up in a small town without hockey. As a result, people there didn't follow hockey at all. Drive down the road 15 miles, and there is a town with hockey. They followed it there. Compared to the rest of the country, Minnesota is insane about hockey, but football and basketball are more popular in the state.
 



howeda7 said:
No offense, but having Gopher football ahead of Gopher basketball is extremely questionable and having the Wolves ahead of them is laughable.

On this board Gopher football may be more popular, but among the casual Minnesota sports fan I don't think there's really any contest, at least not since Tubby came in. I don't know how it is on the BTN, but back when the week-end conference games were syndicated on WCCO or KSTP, Gopher basketball got huge ratings, much higher then football. When both are going well, the Wolves have never been ahead of the Gophers, and they certainly aren't now. They have been for a brief period in 2004, but that was a blip.

And noone loves the Twins more then me, but you really can't put them ahead of the Vikings unless your only measurement is the # of people who go to the games. The Vikings rule the roost in this town. It's not fair to compare tv ratings given it's 16 games vs. 162. But even Twins play-off games can't touch a Vikings regular season game. The best example I can think of is during the 2002 play-offs. Fox 9 showed the Vikings at noon and the Twins-Angels play-off game at 3:00 on a Sunday. All things being equal, the game on later in the afternoon should get the higher rating, but it really wasn't that close. Don't get me wrong, both were huge, but I think the Vikings game got around 40 rating versus a 25 for the Twins. Nothing gets 30 ratings and above on television except Vikings games and the Superbowl. (Maybe one day they will be one in the same.)
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I thought I'd just give my 2 cents before but I think I'll throw in some more.

You can base popularity on whatever you want. NFL is watched nationally no matter what state you live in, I know many people who watch every NFL football game because that is what they do. Football fans enjoy watching other football games. I chalk this one up to fantasy football. Also, people in MN are love/hate about the Vikings and 1/3 are Packer fans.

Baseball is different. Baseball teams are usually only followed by their region. Minnesotans love their Twins because they come off as wholesome people and I'd say for the most part, they are. No yacht parties here. I'm sure if you took a poll of Minnesotans asking whether they were fans of the Vikings, Twins, or both. It would go Twins, Both, Vikings.

Gopher football not ahead of Gopher basketball, really? On gameday next year, go to the booster area at TCF and take a head count, then a couple months later, take a head count at Williams. Or make it easy on yourself and listen for the ticket count at the end of the game. The sandal is still felt in the overall Minnesota fan base. If the basketball team makes a NCAA run next year and the football team is mediocre again, then I can see more people jumping on the bball bandwagon. Also, even students pay more attention to football than basketball. But as it stands, stadium, tickets, boosters, football is king at UofM still.
 

1. Vikings
2. Twins
3. Gopher BB (buzz about the program headed back to where it belongs after Monson debacle)
4. Wild (fans are intensely loyal but it's still a niche sport)
5. Gopher FB (if Brew capitalizes on new stadium, gets to Rose/BCS within 2-3 years, it'll be truly relevant to Joe Blow)
6. Gopher hockey
7. T-Wolves
1,999. Swarm
2,000. Lynx
 

This thread quickly went towards professional sports, but I believe the original question was what sports are played and watched by the most people in the state. I know a lot of people are just not fans, but no sport can rival soccer in terms of participation, even in a state like MN, which is cold half of the year. There are outdoor and indoor leagues everywhere.
 

GopherGold said:
I thought I'd just give my 2 cents before but I think I'll throw in some more.

You can base popularity on whatever you want. NFL is watched nationally no matter what state you live in, I know many people who watch every NFL football game because that is what they do. Football fans enjoy watching other football games. I chalk this one up to fantasy football. Also, people in MN are love/hate about the Vikings and 1/3 are Packer fans.

Baseball is different. Baseball teams are usually only followed by their region. Minnesotans love their Twins because they come off as wholesome people and I'd say for the most part, they are. No yacht parties here. I'm sure if you took a poll of Minnesotans asking whether they were fans of the Vikings, Twins, or both. It would go Twins, Both, Vikings.

Gopher football not ahead of Gopher basketball, really? On gameday next year, go to the booster area at TCF and take a head count, then a couple months later, take a head count at Williams. Or make it easy on yourself and listen for the ticket count at the end of the game. The sandal is still felt in the overall Minnesota fan base. If the basketball team makes a NCAA run next year and the football team is mediocre again, then I can see more people jumping on the bball bandwagon. Also, even students pay more attention to football than basketball. But as it stands, stadium, tickets, boosters, football is king at UofM still.
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I'm not really sure what 'booster headcount' has to do with overall popularity in the state? You may also be right about popularity with the students. But is also easier to make it to 6 football games then 20 basketball games. In any case, that also has little to do with overall popularity. All I know is that the basketball team has routinely sold out over the past 20 years save for the Monson era and the football team never has come close. Yes it's a bigger venue, but there are a lot more college football teams that sell out then there are basketball. Take Florida. They could sell out the Swamp for a game against the Citadel even if it was played at 2:00 on a Wednesday morning. But they could not sell out every game of the basketball season even after back-to-back national championships. That's just solid proof that they are a football school. But likewise filling the Barn for every conference game this year is solid evidence to me that Minnesota is a basketball school. If the football team was really that popular they could have sold out the Dome. Will they sell out TCF? Sure, it only has 50,000 seats, that doesn't tell me much.
 

Getting back to the original question (what people watch and play the most,) I would rank it like this:

1. Football
2. Basketball
3. Baseball
4. Hockey

To me, the key part of the question is play, and I believe RailBaron was asking across the spectrum-h.s., college, pro. I spent my high school years in S.E. MN and my elementary years in mid-central MN. In both these areas (save for the likes of Rochester and Mankato) there were no hockey teams and winter sports were dominated by basketball (and wrestling, for a small core of rabid fans I'd compare in zealotry to hockey fans). In general, I think h.s. basketball produces the strongest following in high school sports from the middle of the state on down. Plus, it's the one sport where practicing by oneself can be fun and getting a game together requires only finding one other person. That all being said, the popularity of H.S. football and the NFL (both Vikings, Packers, and the field), plus Gopher football dominates the "watching" segment of the audience.

If we're just looking at major/pro college teams, I think it goes like this, and this includes people tuning in at home, on the radio, etc:
1. Vikings
2. Twins
3. Gopher BB
4. Wild
5. Gopher FB
6. T-Wolves
7. Gopher Hockey

As much as I'm not a hockey fan, I think Gopher hockey deserves more attention than the T-Wolves, but I think just because it's a NBA team, they are going to get more attention than the hockey team, particularly when you have several D-1 hockey teams in the state drawing fanbases and attention away and also because college hockey is a pretty small sport.
 

I'm really not trying to be redundant, but if we are actually talking about playing the sport, regardless of age or level (young through professional), it's soccer. That's not to say it's a favorite for everyone, but nowadays, almost every child is playing soccer. I played year around from elementary school all the way through high school, often going right from a soccer event to a basketball one, or vice versa. Soccer is the most played sport in America, although it is certainly not the most popular or watched by most middle aged people, or even high school and up people. But, by number of participants, soccer wins.
 

1. Football
2. Baseball
3. Basketball
4. Hockey (number of fans is way overrated by media)
 

i think you cant really analyze highschool sports.. Football i think you could say is the biggest with certainty...but putting baseball up against basketball in highschool is not comparable, because basketball is during winter, not a ton to do in winter. Baseball is in spring and people have a lot going on as it gets warm out because they can do other outside activities... I dont know if i got my point across but whatever
 

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