Which Sport Gets the LEAST Respect?

[nsentv]

First off, the NFL isn't gonna be on the list. Here are the options:

Major League Baseball - ask baseball fans, and it's great. Ask other people, and you get many responses, varying from 'it's boring', to 'it's slow'. Well... that's not much of a variation, but still. That being said, the sportswriting media tries to protect it every chance, even putting various spins on the record low World Series ratings.

National Basketball Association - at every turn, a sportswriter finds it within himself to write a negative article about the NBA. Just go to USAToday.com and read the latest Saraceno piece. It's like clockwork, no matter the month, no matter what part of the season, no matter if something good or bad has happened. You can always count on a sportswriter to say the NBA is 'boring' or 'a league of punks/thugs/(anything that borders on the 'n' word).

National Hockey League - enough said, almost; the media treats it like it doesn't even exist; before this season, it got less attention on ESPN than the WNBA. It's never had a full Finals televised on over-the-air TV, and people gleefully write about its demise on a daily basis. Just look at ESPN's five-day-a-week crapfest, Around the Horn. Each time the NHL was brought up on that show last year, it was greeted with a very quick mute button.

NASCAR - beating the NBA, MLB and NHL combined in the ratings, yet still relatively uncovered by the media. ESPN's been trying to remedy this somewhat, by adding a few NASCAR shows here and there. Still, no 'Nascar Tonight' or 'Nascar Fastbreak'. Not to mention the fact that a lot in the media still view it as a strictly 'good old boys', 'red-state' sport.