BGleas

Celtics-Hornets 1pm on ESPN! Who's tuning in?

It is more lenient, and again its been over a decade, but I was the Celtics score keeper for a season as part of ky duties during the game, and the rule was assists on two dribbles or less.

Unless they've changed the rule recently, that is not true.

Agree to a certain extent and generally.

I also played college basketball so I love that game too. Why not just stay out of the conversation then? For someone that doesn't care, you've been pretty outspoken and immersed in the discussion. We're having a conversation about national and global appeal of the games, and you chime in that your singular viewing preference is all that matters to you. So why even join the conversation? Just ignore it.

I love both. I love the NBA because it's the most skilled and talented basketball in the world. I love college for the pageantry and atmosphere. As far as the actual game on the court, I think college basketball is actually pretty awful. It's tough watching teams struggle to shoot 40% and score 60 points. I don't know that I agree with your last paragraph. Remember that decade when the best players were all going straight from high school to the NBA? The college game really struggled with mass appeal during that era until the one and done rule came in. College basketball needs stars too, as even a guy like Zion brought millions of eyeballs to the game.

I don't even know what you're talking about? The discussion was what is more popular, the NBA or college basketball. It was a discussion being had on a message board.

NBA arenas are filled (pre covid) with middle-aged to older white people.

I disagree about the product on the court. But with that said we can disagree on that as its certainly personal preference, but I appreciate that you can also acknowledge that nationally and globally the NBA is more popular despite your personal opinion.

I dont really believe that literally everyone you know has no interest in the NBA. Regardless, your social, personal and professional network is still an incredibly small subset of the population (as is mine). You also live in NC (I think I'm right there?) and ill assume you're from Indiana, so a lot of your network is going to be from two of the very few markets that are more into college basketball than the NBA. (I realize I'm making some assumptions there). It's just a fact though that the NBA is more popular overall. I also don't think it has anything to do with age or race. Most of the people at NBA games are older white people.

Major market viewership is kind of what drives things. It's where the masses of the population lives, hence how popularity is measured. But, and I'll have to go back and reread the excerpt I posted, but I don't think it was specific to just major markets, I think it was overall viewership. It's certainly better data than anecdotal comments about "most people in DC". Edit: We could measure in revenue instead, where the NBA also wins.

So that is what you said. I'd bet if you took every college basketball fan out of the discussion that the NBA would be even more popular in comparison...

Did you just say, "take out all of the cities where the NBA is most popular, and then it probably isn't more popular?"

Yet they still outdraw in terms of popularity Georgetown basketball, Minnesota Gophers basketball, Georgia Tech basketball or LSU basketball. Duke/UNC compared to the Hornets might be the only one that college basketball wins. Who do you think more people know, buy merchandise, etc. in comparison, Bradley Beal or the best player on UMD? Karl Anthony Townes or the best player on the University of Minnesota? Zion Williamson or whoever plays for LSU (I can't even come up with a name)? Trey Young or any player on Georgia Tech?

Thank you!! I'm honestly stunned that were even having this discussion as if it's real or even close. Nationally and globally the NBA is infinitely more popular. It's arguably (depending on the data being used) the 2nd most popular sport in the US behind the NFL, and it's certainly more popular than college basketball globally. A defense of college basketball in this discussion isn't simply, "I don't like the NBA".

Do you have stats on that?

That's fine, I guess, but we weren't really discussing individual viewing habits.

Thanks for sharing those links. Of course there are going to be markets where college is more popular, as there are markets where college football is more popular than the NFL. Not every market is the same of course. Globally and nationally the NFL and NBA are more popular than their college counterparts (though I do believe college football might outpace the NBA).

I literally copied and pasted stats from an article 5 minutes ago in a quote of one of your posts.

Racial issues have nothing to do with it. The mainstream media publicizes what's popular and what gets eyeballs, that's why sports media is largely about the NFL, NBA and college football. Those are the sports that the masses care about. There's a reason sports radio nationally, not in any one specific market, is talking about NBA free agency in July, but is not talking about the college basketball transfer portal in April. The NBA has been more popular than college basketball for at least 30 years if not longer.

I get that most of you are college basketball fans. I am too, while also being an NBA fan. But if we're going to discuss this, and I'm fine to drop if we don't want to discuss it, but for the love of god can we stop with the "but me and my 3 friends don't care about the NBA so it can't be popular" posts?? Please!!

We're talking about the popularity of the sports, not the viewing habits of you and a few of your buddies. Literally almost nobody watches regular season college basketball games. From just one article: While the NCAA Tournament has undergone a recent resurgence, the same cannot be said for the regular season. The overwhelming majority of college basketball regular season games barely registered in the ratings, with nearly 60 percent earning a rating of 0.0 or 0.1 . More than three-quarters of the games had a rating of 0.5 or lower. Of the 979 regular season games examined by Sports Media Watch (excludes seven games for which ratings were unavailable), only 25 had a rating of 1.5 or higher. That includes both Duke/North Carolina games and the Big Ten Tournament title game, each of which had a season-high 2.6.

Honestly, Scott...Why even chime in on the discussion if all you care about is your own habits? You're one of 6-8 billion people. When discussing which is more popular between the NBA and college basketball your individual viewing habits are irrelevant.