Texas Hold'em: The New 4th Sport

I watch a lot of sports on TV and I follow very closely to what's happening in the sports world.  It's nothing for me to get in 20+ hours of college and professional football (especially Notre Dame and the Dallas Cowboys) on the weekends during football season and I keep up with all 82 games of the NBA season.  I follow baseball closely too as I attend as many Rangers games as I can with my sons at the ballpark.  It's pretty clear that these are the "Big 3" sports (football, basketball, and baseball).

So, who's #4?  Hockey wants to be, but when your games are primarily televised on local networks and ESPN 2, that's a pretty clear sign that you're not getting it done.  I would say that with the very rapidly rising popularity of UFC fighting and other mixed martial arts, that there's a race for 4th place, but Poker is winning in a squeaker. 

UFC's popularity is evident in the high number of pay-per-viewers.  No longer is it grouped in with professional wrestling.  I'd like to see the top pro wrestler take on the top MMA fighter.  Now, I'd pay for that!  Even boxing can't keep up with MMA, but that's another story.

So, you have poker, and more specifically - Texas Hold'em.  You want to watch Texas Hold'em on TV?  No problem.  You have head's up poker being nationally televised on NBC.  You can turn on all-night poker every week to 2 weeks on ESPN.  FSN regularly plays the World Poker Tour (WPT) final tables and who can miss re-runs of the World Series of Poker (WSOP).  They're on all the time.  The 2010 WSOP is right around the corner too.  And finally, we have GSN - the Game Show Network, to play High Stakes Poker with all of our favorite poker pros.

As poker fans, we don't have to wait for our game to be in-season (sorry hockey).  And we don't need to pay for expensive pay per view tournaments (although if you're like me, many of you would).  Poker's in season all year long and available to everyone who has a working TV.

Football, Basketball, and Baseball:  You're on notice.  How long before we're watching a WPT final table with Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, and Gus Hansen instead of whatever you have to offer?