Remember When I Said MMA Had a Long Way to go Before Being Accepted as a Real Sport?

well heres some proof that they have a way's to go.

The polling firm Harris Interactive regularly surveys Americans to find out their favorite sports, and the results of this year's poll are in. Check out the results and you'll see about what you'd expect: Pro football is clearly America's most popular sport, baseball is next, then college football, auto racing, basketball and hockey.

What you won't see anywhere is mixed martial arts.

The reason? MMA wasn't even one of the choices Harris Interactive gave to poll respondents.

Samantha Braverman, Senior Project Researcher at Harris Interactive, told me that respondents were asked to choose, from a list of 20 sports, which ones they follow. Then, if they followed at least one sport, they were asked to choose their favorite. Harris listed plenty of sports that aren't particularly popular in America -- horse racing, swimming, women's golf and so on -- but MMA wasn't listed as one of the 20.

So there are no numbers available regarding how many people consider MMA their favorite sport. For all the talk in recent years about the growth in popularity of MMA, I'm not aware of any hard polling data that tells us just how many Americans consider MMA their favorite sport, or the UFC their favorite sports league. For the people who would have chose MMA as their favorite sport (if given the option), that serves as a reminder of how far off the radar screen MMA still is.

But Braverman said that while Harris tries to ask about the same sports every time they take this survey, they'd consider adding MMA to the poll in the future.

"This poll is trended for many years (the earliest survey was in the 70's, and then in the 80's I believe it changed once to separate out professional and college level basketball and football)," Braverman told me. "Consistency is important, but at some point we may consider adding to the list as other sports (MMA and UFC included) continue gaining in popularity."

MMA wouldn't approach football or baseball, and probably wouldn't even approach soccer or hockey, but the sport has grown enough that it's at least worth asking how many Americans consider it their favorite.

http://www.mmafighting.com/2011/01/25/in-poll-of-favorite-sports-mma-is-overlooked/

I know which sport I'm the biggest fan of.

This is an established poll. Reasonable explaination.

Damn there were 20 sports and no MMA??? What did they have Curling???

The Double Dutch rudder was probably a fucking option, but not MMA?! WTF?!

The survey was flawed without MMA included. It also depends on the demographic of pollers, I know of most people I know whether huge fans or not, MMA would be in the top 10 without a doubt.

Harriss is a pretty big poller LA, this is a big deal as far as showing were MMA legitimately stands in the minds of non 35 and under year olds

20 sports were listed such as swimming and boxing. No mma, there is still work to be done

I understand that, but without MMA included they're basically saying MMA wouldn't fall within the top 20 anyways, it's an ignorant error IMO by the poll creators, especially with some of the other choices. No one is saying it finishes top 10, but around 15 in a properly conducted poll seems reasonable. It doesn't bother me that some of the older generation is still in the dark about MMA. As time passes, MMA will continue to grow with our generation the those that follow as the older generations die off, I can only imgine how high it can go in the future.