I noticed this story on wsj.com with the provocative headline: “The NFL’s Most Popular Team.”
Seems that the famed arbiter of TV show popularity, Nielsen, recently turned its attention to the NFL. And I quote:
In a first-of-its-kind study performed this summer, Nielsen Co., the media-research firm, developed a system for ranking the popularity of NFL teams based on each team’s local and national TV rankings, how often they’re mentioned on the Internet and how many visitors they attract to their official websites. The report, dubbed the Nielsen Sports Media Exposure Index, is the company’s first attempt to classify pro-football teams in this manner.
So, who won?
Well, not the team responsible for this:
But rather, the team responsible for this:
Yes, the Dallas Cowboys “out-populared” the Steelers by a whopping 19 points: 100 to 81.
I have yet to see any mention of this by the local media — maybe tonight on the news. But it sure gave me cause for pause.
The team is as popular as ever. BloggingTheBoys.com, a popular Cowboys fan website, gets about 1,500 visits every day from international fans in places as far flung as Hungary and the Cayman Islands, says David Halprin, who started the site in 2005 after being a fan for almost 40 years. He says when the team went through playoff embarrassments and heavy turnover during the past few seasons, website traffic actually increased. “They get rabid and try telling the team how to fix things,” Mr. Halprin says. “They start caring even more.”
I chuckled at this. My goodness! Hungary even! And then I went and found this: A list of Steeler fan bars around the world (preceded by a list of hundreds of such bars across the U.S. — 61 in Texas alone).
International
Beast Bar T-2 Camp Ramadi, Iraq
Belvedere Club 54 John Street Thorold, Ontario Canada
Big Bamboo Behind the Ritz-Portman Shanghai, China
Boix Noix Steelers Place Calle 3 #6 Valentin Gomez Farias Mexico DF
Buffalo Bronco Rua Joao da Cruz Vitoria, Espirito Santo, Brazil
Champs 3956 Saint-Laurent Street Montreal, Canada
Coco’s Outback Pub Thorbeckeplein 8/10, Rembrandtplein Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Desert Eagle Lounge Al Udeid Al Udeid AB, Qatar
Dickens Inn Rathbone Street Whangarei, New Zealand
Dos Locos Main Street Quepos, Costa Rica
El Torrito Old Town Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico
Fort Christian Brew Pub 55 A&B Kings Alley Walk Christiansted, St Croix U.S.V.I.
Garden Bar Nana Plaza Sukhumvit Soi 4 Bangkok, Thailand
Gringo Dave’s Puerto Aventuras, Mexico
House of Hussh 101 Alderwood Trail Mississauga, Ontario Canada
Iroquois Seefeldstrasse 120 8008 Zurich Switzerland
J.R. Rockers Ramstein Enlisted Club Ramstein, Germany
Jay’s Sports Bar Johnsonville, New Zealand
Joe Champ’s American Sports Bar Hohenzollenring 1-3 on Rudolfplatz Cologne, Germany
KBR MWR South Central Al Hillah, Iraq
Legends Sports Bar 3-16-33 Roppongi Mintao-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Logan’s Pub Rd #1 Urbanizacion Caribe Rio Piedras
Lupis Avenida Isla Verde San Juan, Puerto Rico
Mayor Cell Building 104 Camp Taji, Iraq
Mezquite Stop Ave. Garza Sada 2338A Monterrey, Neuvo Leon, Mexico
Mona’s 510 Ponce de Leon Ave San Juan, Puerto Rico
Mulligan’s Dundas Street Mississauga, Onatario Canada
Prime Time Sports Bar Lakeshore Rd Toronto, Canada
Public House In the center of Florence Forence, Italy
Shannon’s Pub Road No. 1 Guaynabo San Juan, Puerto Rico
Shark Club Bar & Grill 180 West Georgia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Sid’s 114-A Jupiter St. Bel-Air II Makati City, Philippines
Skinny Legs 12 Emmaus Coral Bay, St. John, Virgin Island
Stormy Weather 46-50 D’Aguilar Street (Lan Kwai Fong) Hong Kong, China
Tequila Barrel Avenida 5 @ Calle 12 Playa del Carmen, Mexico
The Black Bull Queen Street Toronto, Canada
The Corner Bar & Grill Av. Jose Larco – Miraflores Lima, Peru
The Famous Three Kings Pub 171 North End Road London W149NL, England
The Goose and Duck Chaoyang Gongyuan Ximen – Chayong Park West Gate Beijing, China
The Great Canadian Near Notre Dame Paris, France
The Office Sports Bar & Grill 3313 Bloor St W Toronto, ON Canada
The Palomino 109-7 Ave SW Calgary, Alberta
The Pittsburgh Bar & Diner 333 Crumlin Rd Belfast County Antrim, Northern Ireland
The Pomegranate ShunYi Beijin, PR China
The Squealing Pig The Diamond Monaghan Town, Co. Monaghan, Ireland
Thermae Soi 15 Sukhumvit Bangko, Thailand
Top of the Rock Lajes AFB Azores, Portugal
Walkabout St Mary’s St Cardiff Wales (UK)
And this. (another list of HUNDREDS of Steelers bars nationwide)
I tried to Google “Dallas Cowboy Fan Bars”…I got nuttin’. I did find this: meetup groups in 12 (count ’em 12) cities and 1 country (well, that would be 2 countries actually: the U.S. and Germany). A whopping 1151 members. (By the way, we have this in Germany.)
Again, I laughed.
And then I silently (and now publicly) thanked the Rooneys, on behalf of all the millions of females in Steeler Nation, for giving us the likes of this:
And this…
And this:
2010 Ladies Night Out
Posted Aug 29, 2010
The Pittsburgh Steelers are excited to host an evening of Steelers football and fun at Heinz Field for ladies only.
Registration is now open for the “2010 Ladies Night Out Event” at Heinz Field on Wednesday October 13 from 4-10 p.m.
The evening will include a Prime Rib dinner in the spectacular West Club Lounge with two current Steelers players on hand as special guests, providing insight into what life is like for them during the football season.
All attending will receive a tour of Heinz Field and be part of the audience in a live taping of the new PNC Steelers Huddle TV Show in the Coca-Cola Great Hall. The show will be hosted by Steelers wide receiver Antwaan Randle El.
Participants will also receive a gift bag featuring a ladies cut long sleeve Steelers t-shirt, 2010 Steelers Yearbook and a 2010 Team Photo signed by the two current players appearing at the West Club Lounge.
Registration will be on a first received, first served basis and expects to sell out fast. The cost of the event is $110.
Please click on the link and print out the 2010 Ladies Night Out Registration Form and return with a check or money order for $110 payable to the Pittsburgh Steelers and mail to the following address:
2010 Steelers Ladies Night Out
Pittsburgh Steelers
Heinz Field
100 Art Rooney Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
For more information, please call 412-697-7713.
The Steelers are grateful to have the number one female fan base in the NFL and we hope to see you on October 13.
Without ever, ever, not once subjecting us to this:
(Although, just so you know dear Rooneys, I’m sure I speak for many of your fans [not just women] when I say I really, really, really wish you’d done this: )
Nice try Nielsen. But we know exactly who “America’s Team” is (and it ain’t wearin’ no stinkin’ blue and silver…or hot pants).
This one is scary: I just might be a Person of Walmart.
Have you seen The People of Walmart? These e-mails go around showing pictures of people in the most ridiculous, hideous outfits you can imagine, supposedly taken at Walmart. (I can believe it, I saw a 30-something woman there last year wearing flannel pajamas and snow boots.)
Now, I’m not technically that kind of person of Walmart — I tend to dress in boring street clothes and make sure all private parts are fully covered.
But I did a really dumb thing the other day that just might qualify me to another kind of person of Walmart.
I hadn’t been shopping for a couple weeks, and we were out of everything (empty fridge bins and all). So I headed out to spend a lot of money replenishing. I spent a good hour and a half shopping, up and down and across the store.
I was just about to check out when I remembered a recipe I wanted to make uses mint. (I must be the only person in the world whose mint doesn’t spread all over the garden. We inherited a couple mint plants with the house, and they pop up every year, but don’t spread. So by this time of year, after I’ve used them all summer, they’re pretty sad — more flowers than leaves.)
So I headed back to produce to check for mint. $2.27 for a little bunch in a plastic container? No thanks — I’ll strip what I can from the sorry plants at home. As I turned to go back to my cart, I saw it.
My cart.
My cart with the bananas and the peaches and the birdseed and the soap and the (don’t tell) root touch-up kit. All the stuff I had picked up first on the other (nonfood) side of the store.
But no, there was my cart — really full with the coffee and bread and eggs and ice cream and chicken and ground turkey — everything except bananas and peaches and birdseed and soap and you-know-what.
Yep, seems that during my first pass through the produce section, I started filling up someone else’s cart midstream — someone who had also purchased bananas and peaches (actually nectarines I think) and maybe green onions.
Oh no. How stupid.
I remember almost doing that when I was putting food in the cart, but I caught myself and found the right cart, my cart, instead. (I even looked around to see if anyone noticed me almost taking their cart.) I guess the next time around I did it again, without catching myself.
So, here I am, in the very front of the store in the main aisle, trying to quickly transfer all the stuff from my original cart to the stolen cart, and putting the stolen items back in my original cart. Seriously, there were only a half-dozen items. How I took that cart, without giant bags of birdseed and an 8-pack of soap in it, I’ll never know. Must have been the bananas and peaches in the basket that threw me off.
I can just imagine the poor woman who came looking for her cart, cantaloupe in hand, and it’s nowhere to be found. I can imagine her swearing as she had to go fetch a new cart and start over, picking out new bananas and nectarines and green onions. Stupid idiots everywhere, she thought.
I sheepishly ditched her cart back in front of the nectarines and made my way to the checkout. I should have just put that food back in the right place, as there was no way anyone was going to retrieve it. But I was tired and embarrassed and didn’t even at least do the right thing in the end. Double-whammy bad.
And then later, as I was unloading at home, it occurred to me that the store likely had it all on tape. Walmart is full of cameras, so I’m sure my whole escapade is documented, from when I initially picked up the wrong cart to the big switcharoo in the front of the store to ditching the stolen cart near the scene of the crime. (Maybe I should check YouTube.)
(Oh, and the other ironic thing about all this — Mike will never leave our cart anywhere in any store. He sticks to it like glue — as if, like, someone would actually take it or something. I’m always jagging him about that. Yeah, like someone’s gonna take our cart. Uhhhh…woops, honey?)
Anyway, if you get one of those People of Walmart e-mails and I’m in it, sadly, it’s true. (Sorry, nice lady whose cart I stole.)
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
~ Colette
And this…
Writing by Ear 