the vanishing American

[calimac]

I sent a link to my last post to the Stanford music prof who'd convened the panel. He wrote back to say thanks, and commented that he was delighted with the full house turnout, "especially on Super Bowl Sunday!", a conjunction he'd mentioned at the time, too.

I get this at every concert or lecture I attend that happens to coincide with a major sporting event, sometimes even ones I wasn't aware of until the convenor mentions them: astonishment that there are actually people present who'd skip that in order to attend this.

You know, folks, there are a lot of us who don't give a hoot about the Super Bowl, and the audience was probably drawn from that not-small segment of society. For the last several years, the TV audience in the US for the Super Bowl has been about 111 million people. That's a lot of people, but at the last census, the US had 308 million people. So, considering that the population has gone up since then, that's at least 197 million who aren't watching it, 177% the size of the number who are.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I don't mind that other people are interested in sports. People are interested in all sorts of odd things, and I'm glad they have a hobby. What makes me grumpy is the assumption that everybody is interested in sports, which is not something you get when the topic is, say, gardening or train-spotting. It's not even remotely true, and I dislike the assumption that I am among 197 million Americans who do not exist.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. I have no idea who played, who won, and care less. The only thing I want to know is if these things are going to be in LA on a day I have to drive into the city, because I don't want to be stuck on the freeway for hours if I can avoid it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I keep a bookmark for the schedule of the San Jose hockey team, for the sole reason that their arena is close to the Trianon theater where I often attend concerts, and while it doesn't much affect traffic, a game there will clog up the local restaurants beforehand, in which case I'd best have dinner somewhere else.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I don't think sports ever have any impact on me, except that on Superbowl weekend there are long lines at the supermarkets. I'm more perplexed by seeing magazines that refer to what I presume are entertainers and celebrities by their first names, on the assumption that everyone in the world knows who those people are, or cares.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I wonder about those too. Generally speaking I only can guess who these first-name celebrities are if they're from the British royal family, even if the others are ones I'd have heard of if the full names were given.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's my usual experience too.

[eddyerrol.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. On Sunday I was flying home from a blues music festival I played at in Memphis, and I didn't even know it was Super Bowl Sunday until I saw the guy seated next to me on the plane enthusiastically watching the game on his phone.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

There's a bit of a fallacy there. The 197M Americans who didn't watch the Superb Owl are not necessarily uninterested in sports; they may (like me) fancy baseball and a few of the odd Olympic events. They may prefer curling, or bowling (which I'll watch when it's on at the gym), or basketball, or the Paralympics, or any number of things.

I would guess that the majority of Americans are interested in some sport. Not a huge majority, mind you. But a majority.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Granted, but that point only applies to the last rhetorical flourish. It doesn't make it any less surprising that many people have no interest in the Super Bowl, or in any other given sporting event.

Also, by your count I could be considered a sports fan. I've occasionally followed chess matches. But I don't think that makes me a fan.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I refuse to consider chess -- or poker, D&D, or Magic: The Gathering, all of which have been given time on one of the sports networks -- a sport. A sport involves some kind of physical prowess...

And the 197M Americans who don't watch the Superb Owl didn't seem to me like a "last rhetorical flourish," so much as the basic core of your complaint...

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, the last rhetorical flourish, i.e. one contained only in the final paragraph, was the assumption that "people who don't watch the Super Bowl" necessarily equals "people not interested in sports at all." I thought that's what you were pointing out as a fallacy, because in truth it is.

The core of my complaint was the assumption that because a lot* of people watch [Sporting Event X]*, everybody is interested in [Sporting Event X].

*In the case of the Super Bowl, N = about 110 million