The True Sports Poll

In the wake of the NHL's return after a 301-day lockout, many are wondering how where hockey will fit into the sports landscape. Before the lockout, the NHL was quickly slipping off its mantle as the fourth major sport, and conventional wisdom says that the fans have left hockey to wither and die. However, I think that given the league's fan-friendly rule changes and the public's love of a good comeback story, I think hockey will have an unexpected mini-revival in the next few seasons. Don't etch a eulogy on the Stanley Cup just yet.

After yesterday's NHL announcement, ESPN put out a poll about where all the sports rank. The thing that I like about the poll is that it includes college football and college basketball, which for some reason, usually get left out of the debate. While no one can deny that the NFL is king, I would make the argument that college football is giving baseball a run for its money at #2. When you think about the intensity of the fans, the fact that games are now televised four nights per week, the fervency of the BCS debates at the end of each season and the fact that the sport dominates the entire American south, there's no doubt that college football is hotter than it's ever been. Plus when you think about it in terms of attendance, no sport comes close to the dozens of 90,000+ stadiums that sell out across the country. The recent rise of name-brand programs like USC, Oklahoma and Miami have attracted attention from big-city sports fans as well-- it's like when successful big-market teams garner nationwide interest in pro sports.

However, as hot as college football is, it still can't top MLB right now. The riveting playoffs of the past two years restored baseball to its full luster after a post-strike lull in the mid-90s. So here's how I would rank the top ten sports right now in my personal hierarchy:

1. NFL
2. Baseball
3. College Football
4. NBA
5. College Basketball
6. Golf
7. NHL
8. Tennis
9. Soccer
10. Boxing

 
Coda for Mitch

This week's Entertainment Weekly contains a long-overdue feature about the death of one of my favorite stand-ups, Mitch Hedberg. This was a guy with a totally unique style: quick one-liners, shy stage presence, and a cadence like a '60s beat poet. When I first caught his Comedy Central special a few years ago, I started out mildly intrigued and ended up with tears in my eyes. But despite the fact that stand-up comedy got increasingly mainstream in the last 20 years and every halfway-decent comic got himself a sitcom deal, Hedberg never made it big. His sudden death from a heroin overdose in March was a sad cliche: a cult-fave brilliant artist who was never appreciated in his time. So in his honor, here are my five favorite absurdist Mitch Hedberg lines:

* "People say that alcoholism is a disease. But alcoholism is the only disease you can get yelled at for having."

* "I like the FedEx driver because he's a drug dealer and he don't even know it."

* "I went to a doctor but all he did was suck blood out of my neck. Don't go see Dr. Acula."

* "I like escalators because they can never break. They can only become stairs."

* "I was gonna go get my teeth whitened but then I said 'Fuck that, I'll just get a tan instead.'"