Monday, September 17, 2007
By Ruth Ann Dailey, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteDoes anyone else out there feel a little skeptical about last week's big football survey?
Just to review what you've probably heard a few thousand times already: A new nationwide sports marketing poll has found that Pittsburgh can boast a higher percentage of female football fans than any other sports market in the United States.
The report said 34 percent of the women living in the Steelers' market identify themselves as fans, 5 percent more than in second-place Green Bay and two times the national average.
My problem with our first-place finish is this: Only 34 percent? Are they kidding?
The survey's threshold for being a "loyal fan" is rather low, when you think about it. Any woman interviewed only had to say she was either "very or somewhat interested" in the NFL to qualify as loyal.
Who else besides me thinks this, um, broad definition really should have given Pittsburgh a reasonable shot at 100 percent?
If I run through the list of women I know -- women from work, from the neighborhood, from church, from my kids' schools -- I can't think of a single one who isn't at least "somewhat" interested in the Steelers' fortunes.
Of course, if any of them does suffer from lack of interest, it's not something she'd readily reveal, like an embarrassing illness or hidden disfigurement.
When I first moved to town, back in 1993, I confess it took a while for me to catch on to the local religion. At first, I unknowingly blasphemed the Sunday afternoon game ritual by using that time to go to the movies.
In my defense, it was much easier to get baby-sitters on Sundays than on Friday nights. I eventually figured out this was because we had a big-screen television, and any sitter could get my kids to watch the game with her.
One teenager even had them change into their little black-and-gold jerseys. Clearly, native Pittsburgh mothers have trained their children well enough to bring other little converts into the fold.
I caught on after a year or two, and the attachment grew, amazingly enough, even though these were the Neil O'Donnell/Kordell Stewart years. As you know, faith through constant disappointment is the real thing.
Movies on a Sunday afternoon in fall? Haven't done that in years. The perfect Sunday now goes like this: Worship God in the morning, worship God's team in the afternoon.
And if you give relative newcomers like me a grace period to see the light, repent of past indifference and find their cheering voice, this would add to the ranks, what, one or two people per year?
I say we still have a shot at eventual perfection, if, in the Roethlisberger/Polamalu/Ward era, we haven't already achieved it.
So how many women did the researchers actually talk to in order to arrive at that suspiciously low 34 percent?
Scarborough Sports Marketing surveyed 224,583 residents in 81 U. S. markets, including 1,527 women in the Pittsburgh region, to arrive at their estimates. As surveys go, that's pretty thorough, but I'd still have to say it doesn't fit with my experience.
Similarly, think back to 2006. The Steelers' Super Bowl victory over the Seattle Seahawks averaged a 41.6 percent household rating nationwide and nearly 58 percent of the Pittsburgh region's television audience.
Although that's almost two-thirds of us, it still seems a bit low. I mean, do you know anybody who did not watch the Steelers' Super Bowl triumph? Maybe the Nielsens can't adequately count the huge number of Pittsburghers who watched the game at parties or bars -- or in Detroit.
Maybe the problem with the fishy "34 percent" figure from the survey lies in the question itself. After all, it asked women whether they are "very or somewhat interested" in the NFL, not in the Steelers.
Despite my childhood memories of Sunday afternoons and Monday evenings spent curled up in a beanbag chair in our paneled basement, watching every one of the football games my father loved, today my interest in the NFL at large kicks in once a week and lasts for about three hours.
But the Steelers? We care about them every day. If the survey people had asked about our team, they would have gotten the much higher numbers that common sense and the post-Super Bowl parade turnout indicate.
They either asked the wrong question, or they called us during a game.
