The Favorite Sport in the U.S.A.
The favorite sport in the United States is professional football--by a long shot.
Baseball may be as American as mom and apple pie, but it's football we love the most. When 2,276 U.S. adults were asked by the Harris Poll to name their favorite sport, 35 percent chose professional football, compared with 31 percent a year ago.
Coming in a distant second at 16 percent is professional baseball, followed by college football at 12 percent.
Top 11 favorite sports:
1. Professional football: 35 percent
2. Professional baseball: 16 percent
3. College football: 12 percent
4. Auto racing, including NASCAR: 9 percent
5. Men's professional basketball: 5 percent
6. Hockey and men's golf: 4 percent (tie)
8. Men's college basketball: 3 percent
9. Men's soccer, boxing and horse racing: 2 percent (tie)
Coming in at 1 percent were: women's tennis, swimming, bowling, track and field and men's tennis.
Fun facts to know and tell:
 Since the Harris Poll began asking this question in 1985, professional football has always been No. 1, but it is even more popular today. In 1985, 24 percent said it was their favorite, compared with 35 percent today.
 Auto racing, which includes NASCAR, is most popular among older people aged 50 to 64 and those with a high school education or less.
 College football is particularly popular among recent college graduates aged 25 to 29.
Don't Say It! 10 Banned Words
What do "sexting," "tweet" and "bromance" have in common? They should all be banned! So say the guardians of the English language, whose day jobs are at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. This group annually takes on the role of word police by collecting a list of words and phrases that we have used so much they have become annoying. The solution? Ban them!
Here are 10 of the banned words and phrases on the 2010 list that were winnowed down from hundreds of entries:
1. Shovel-ready: Stick a shovel in it. It's done.
2. Czar: We have appointed a czar of such-and-such; clearly that's better than a leader, coordinator or director!
3. Tweet (and all of its variations: tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere...): People tweet and retweet, and it's used so many times, it's lost its meaning.
4. App: Is there an app for making thi
s annoying word go away? Why can't we just call them programs again?
5. Sexting: Any dangerous new trend that also happens to have a clever mash-up of words, involves teens and gets television talk show hosts interested, must be banished.
6. Teachable moment: This phrase is used to describe everything from potty-training to politics. It's time to vote it out!
7. Toxic assets: Whatever happened to simply saying bad stocks, debts or loans?
8. Too big to fail: Does such a thing exist? We'll never know if a company is too big to fail, unless somehow it does fail and then it will no longer be too big to fail. Make it stop!
9. Bromance: We're sick of combined words the media create to make them sound catchier, including frenemies, bromances and blogorrhea?
10. Chillaxin': Heard everywhere from MTV to ESPN to CNN, this bothersome term seeks to combine chillin' with relaxin'--and it should get an axin'.
|