Ladies Blog, Part 1

Ladies, you win. I can't do it. Too much information for me to tackle without continually telling you the post is coming. Therefore, I present to you Part 1 of a 2 part series, The Ladies Blog. Logical Betting is on hiatus for at least two weeks due to my going out of town for training, though I'm taking the rest of the survey data with me. I feel like I'm whipped by like 25 women right now... time to add another one to the "reasons to drink before noon" list. Without further adieu, here is Part 1:

You’ve been hearing about this for longer than you heard about the podcast before it came to life, and it’s finally arrived. Gentlemen and Fah, the ladies have spoken and their voices shall be heard today... and a couple weeks from now. I want to thank all the ladies who responded again for all of their input. Many of you said you hoped this helped the blog and wrote way more than you needed to, and I appreciate all of the time and thought you put into your answers. Hopefully this post does it justice. Over/under for number of my friends who just yelled “p***y!” across the computer: 7.5. I’ll bet the ranch on the over.

So back in February or so, I emailed the ladies of Logical Betting a list of questions, asking their opinions on a variety of sports and life related questions. We’re going to tackle them one at a time, highlighting their collective and most unique responses, with my unbiased opinions weaved in, of course. The Ladies Blog is unofficially brought to you by Victoria’s Secret – Victoria’s Secret, the ladies’ store that men love even more. Let’s roll ‘em out, list style. Is there any other way? By the way, I am starting this post while watching the first round of the Masters and Tiger is just teeing off. That is just not right, but I had to point it out.

1. Do you consider yourself a sports fan? If not, why not? If yes, what do you enjoy most about sports?

Yes – 76%
No – 10%
“Sort of” – 14%. Seriously, 14% said “sort of” or a very close version. How random is that? I really hope women can’t read each other’s minds, that would pose serious problems for the men of the world.

Anyways, considering that this is a sports blog, and I am pretty much obsessed with all things sports, it shouldn’t be a surprise that most of the ladies I talked to said they were sports fans. Nearly all who said yes responded that it was the passion of sports and/or their playing it as kids that made them sports fans. Even those who weren’t fans had nothing against sports, they just had other interests. The real question is whether my small sample represents ladies of the USA… hmmmm…

If you look at my numbers, I have 90% who are either full or partial sports fans. I honestly think that is probably close to the population as a whole. It’s probably slightly high, for the reasons I mentioned above, but if you include NASCAR as a sport (even though I don’t, remember most people do), I think you get really close to that 90%, especially as you move down the generations. As sports has become more ingrained into culture and the media, it’s almost impossible not to follow. That, and it seems like there’s a new athlete in the National Inquirer or People every freaking week so that even ladies who aren’t into sports are following Tiger Woods.

2. What is your favorite sport and why? 3. What is your least favorite sport and why?

Got multiple responses to this one and the next one, so going to list them together. One of our ladies gave us 6 favorites in one email, nice. Amongst the favorites, our winners were baseball, at about 27%, and football, at about 22%. College football, the NBA, and hockey all got about 12% of the vote. All of the following got one vote each: “team sports,” soccer, volleyball, “all things Michigan State,” track, and college basketball. As for why the ladies love their sports, most noted that the ones they liked were easy to follow, easy to understand, or they had or currently played them. Lots talked about the community coming together, or getting together with friends to watch games as the things they loved about sports in general.

On the flip side, we had a six-way tie for the least favorite sport, all with 15% of the vote: baseball, golf, football, hockey, NASCAR and ice dancing/Winter Olympics, which is really funny cause I originally took the surveys when the Olympics were going on. Most noted that these sports were “boring, too many games, hard to understand, and ego/athletes as “meatheads.” Had a few random votes for soccer, wrestling/boxing, and bowling, all for one of the mentioned reasons.

The most interesting thing I took from these is that football and baseball ended up leading on both lists. I think it pretty much confirms these two as the two main sports in our country. If I had statistical analysis software and got paid for this, I would have entered some of these answers and compared them with the self-ratings in Question 6 below to see about the contradictions in the easy to understand/not easy to understand, as both sports got responses in both categories. I wonder if the ladies are being forced into these sports on some level, since they are so mainstream. The guys definitely dictate what sports get marketed, since we spend all the money on tickets, gear, and beer. Probably no coincidence that football and baseball teams have begun selling pink jerseys and hats, and that they are extremely popular in the parks, since they probably figured the ladies are gonna be there anyways, so should make it more enjoyable for them. Guess the sports marketing people were ahead of Logical Betting on this one. Dammit.

6. On a scale of 1-10 (1 lowest, 10 highest), how much of a sports fan do you consider yourself? On the same scale, what would you rate your significant other?

Self – 6.0 average, Significant Other – 7.5 average.

A couple notes within the numbers… only one lady rated herself a bigger sports fan than her guy, with a 6.5 over a 5. Two ladies broke the scale, with one calling her guy an 11, and another calling him a “101,” which I coded as an 11. The ladies may recall that this question wasn’t really #4 on the survey, but I think it looks better here, so I moved it. And yes, that was a preemptive response to any and all emails from the ladies pointing that out. Thank you in advance for noticing.

Anyways, not a very big spread, and I think we’ll get some more insight into why when we post Part Two. You may argue that again, since this is a sports blog, I’m going to get higher responses; however, I really don’t think that’s the case. Sports are such a big part of our culture, that you almost have to be interested in it to fit in. I will admit, most of the ladies I know are at least somewhat into sports, as evidenced by my only getting three responses rating themselves under a 5. But I think a lot of ladies, both in my readership and around our country either take an interest because it’s a part of our culture or because their guys are so obsessed with it.

Which is a perfect lead in to Part Two! Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of Logical Betting’s Ladies Blog. Until then… “I once had a girl. Or should I say, she once had me.” Your welcome, Mojo.