To be honest, I think was bolted football into the America's pastime was the 1994 baseball strike. The playoffs and the World Series were canceled and fans had to watch something on during the late summer and early fall. That's when the around the clock coverage started.
Like I said before major college and pro football is marketed better than any sport. Football players back in the day were not humanized, all you saw were images of them on the field trying to take each others heads off. Then you started to see more elite players doing tons of commercials pitching mainstream products. That was something on baseball players used to do.
And then the Super Bowl. The first three games were not even sold out. But then the media and the league made it a big game over time because you had two weeks to talk about everything involved in the game.
As far as baseball being marketed to just one race, I don't think so. You got BBTN, you got games on cable and the Internet And it is the longest season. So there is no excuse for people not to care about it.
The day I knew football had taken over is when ESPN showed the entire University of Tennessee practice a few summers ago. I'm like why are they showing just practice? But then I realized because the people would want to see something like that.
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Man football surpassed baseball long before the strike. Take the baseball glasses off pottna. Hell, even before the strike MLB was chasing the NBA, and was losing ground to the NHL. The strike was just the nail in the coffin.
People love football because there's no favoritism in it. You're either good, or you're not, and from an NFL stanpoint no matter the market, if your team is managed, and coached right you know they have a chance to win, because everyone has the same money to work with. Also, the NFL won the fans over, when the players went on their 2nd strike in the 80's, and the owners used scab players. The quality of the game wasn't nearly as good, but it showed the fans, that no player is bigger than the game.
From a collegiate standpoint, the majority of Americans don't have pro franchises in their city, or state, so the locals get behind the college team, and that college team becomes their major sports fix.
Outside of NASCAR, no other sport bring their fans together like football. There isn't the racial divide in football like other sports, I don't know why that is, but you'll find a lot more black people defending Peyton Manning, being better than Donovan McNabb, then you would Larry Bird, being better than Magic Johnson.
Also, football is the only sport where the playoffs, and major bowl games are still on free television, and not cable. You know when the games are being played, what channel they're on, and you don't have to worry about the games starting after 10pm. In the NFL's case you know the playoff games are on, on the weekends, and prior to the BCS, the major bowl games were on New Year's Day, a day when everybody is off.
The baseball playoffs start when people are still at work, a lot of times you don't even know what channel the games are on. The NBA playoffs, man forget it. You don't know what days teams are playing on, what channel they're on, and if you live in the Eastern time zone, the games in the west don't start until 10:30, that's hard enough on the weekend, but during the week it's murderous.
Lastly, football is still pretty much a game that's just about All-American. MLB, the NBA, the NHL, are pretty much international games now. The Hispanics own baseball, the Europeans, and Canadians own hockey, basketball is all over the place, and outside of welter thru middleweight, the Hispanics, and Europeans own boxing now. With football you know the players, because they are people you've followed since they were kids. In the other leagues you don't know who those players are when they get drafted.
White people feel like it's pretty much a long shot to be in the NBA, and black kids are starting to feel the crunch too because of the international influence, blacks don't play baseball anymore, blacks don't play hockey, and the NHL isn't enamored with American hockey players, but with football, both blacks, and whites, still know it's there's.
NICE
I enjoy football on all levels, it started on the park with my little brother playing, but college football is by far my favorite. The atmosphere on a college campus on game day can't be beat. My Fall weekends are literally planned around football (travel, making groceries, whatever).