Will More People Watch Browns vs Bills or Dodgers vs. Braves?

It’s October – probably the second or third best sports month of the year – which means it’s time for everyone to compare TV ratings of the MLB postseason to those of the NFL regular season! Everybody pretends to not care, but the privileged few media members who have Nielsen accounts always race to tweet out ratings the morning after.

Last year on one Thursday night, Game 4 of the Yankees/Orioles series was very competitive against a snoozer on the NFL Network (Steelers/Titans), narrowly losing 5.7 million viewers to 5.2 million viewers.

Two reasons why MLB probably wins tonight:

1) The Browns and Bills is a matchup of two largely irrelevant teams. Neither has a recent playoff history. Neither will be in this year’s NFL playoffs. There are barely fantasy football implications (I have Josh Gordon of the Browns; the only others are probably CJ Spiller and the Browns defense). People will watch for the gambling aspect – Browns are -3.5 or -4.

[Ed. How could I forget Jordan Cameron!!!!]

2) The Dodgers are probably the biggest MLB postseason attraction this year, with some of the most popular players in the playoffs. The Braves have Brian McCann, the mouthy catcher who seems to think he is the one who decides how much batters are allowed to celebrate. Puig vs. McCann has the potential to be better than Stevie Johnson vs. Joe Haden or Brian Hoyer vs. Kiko Alonso.

The NFL Network vs. TBS. Should be fun.