Do you ever try to do something simple, and it all blows up in your face?

 

This happened to me recently on the AllEars Instagram. It all started so simply, but it ended with me being yelled at over golf and synchronized swimming.

Allow me to tell the tale.

After reading that two of the Power 5 Conferences wouldn’t be participating in college football this fall, I got to thinking: I wonder what sports the AllEars followers enjoy?

So I posted a little poll on our Instagram Story. There are only four slots, so I picked the three most popular sports in the U.S. (football, basketball, and baseball) and one “I don’t watch Sports” option.

The overwhelming choice was Football! Great! I had my answer, and it was exactly what I suspected. Moment over…except…it wasn’t.

Within minutes, my inbox looked like this:

“NHL!!!!’

“Where’s the NHL?!”

“Eh, HOCKEY!!!!”

“What about HOCKEY?!”

“You forgot hockey!!!!!!!!!”

I got close to a hundred messages from angry Bostonians and Canadians (I assume) furious that “hockey” wasn’t a part of the poll.

I have nothing against hockey (granted Miracle and The Mighty Ducks are the extent of my knowledge of the sport), but still, I felt bad and didn’t mean to leave out a clearly very popular choice!

So, I decided to do a second poll with hockey, along with the next most popular sports (soccer and tennis) according to the internet. I even threw in an “other” option, but naively thought, I wouldn’t get a bunch of other messages because I had covered all the sports. (Don’t get me wrong — I love getting messages!!)

Hockey was clearly the winner this time, but…

…GUESS WHAT. Now my messages looked like this:

Golf fans rapidly (or leisurely, it’s a pretty slow sport) flooded me with exclamations of their beloved pastime! And while they were the loudest (well, it was mostly polite clapping), they weren’t alone.

Swimming fans dove in, too (including synchronized swimming?????), along with gymnastics, equestrian, boxing, and auto-racing.

In the end, I gave up. I didn’t dare risk another poll with golf, nascar, and swimming for fear of cheerleading stomping into my inbox (it’s a sport!! I agree with you! I watched CHEER on Netflix!!).

But I learned a few very important lessons:

1. Football is the most popular sport in the United States of America, and the same holds true for AE Insta Followers.

2. Hockey fans are crazy (crazy passionate).

3. You can’t make everyone happy — especially when it comes to sports.

4. The thing I like about sports is the camaraderie and passion, and this experiment proved no different.

5. The world would be really boring if we all liked the same stuff.

What is your favorite sport? Let us know in the comments!

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