SF Giants seem more popular than 49ers

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Giants pitchers and catchers report Tuesday in Scottsdale, Ariz., which finally might be the cure for the Bay Area's lingering Super Bowl hangover.

Especially because the Giants now appear to be the Bay Area's favorite sports team.

Not long ago, such a thought would be heresy. For years, the 49ers were considered the dominant force in local sports. We were a football-first market.

Apparently not anymore.

The evidence of our relative apathy was right there in black-and-white when the Super Bowl Nielsen television ratings were released. Baltimore was the No. 1 market in the country. Naturally. It had a team in the Super Bowl.

New Orleans was No. 2, which is interesting because the locals seemed eager for the tourists to empty out of restaurants so they could resume eating crawfish, pork belly and oysters to their hearts' delight. Maybe the locals knew something weird would happen inside the Superdome.

Baltimore's neighbor, Washington D.C., was No. 3 - understandable because until Robert Griffin III came along, the Ravens provided the only watchable football in the region.

The Bay Area? The other market with a team playing in the game? The sixth-largest media market in the country? Not in the top 10. Not in the top 20. No, our market was No. 28 of the 56 markets Nielsen measures.

Behind Dayton, Ohio. And Jacksonville, Fla. And many others.

San Francisco Giants fans on the field during fan appreciation day at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013. San Francisco Giants fans on the field during fan appreciation day at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013. Photo: David Paul Morris, Special To The Chronicle Photo: David Paul Morris, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close SF Giants seem more popular than 49ers 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

That's a shock. I know it was a beautiful day and I know a lot of people watched the game in parties or bars, which lower ratings. I know the game started at 3:30 p.m. PST and that we are very, very busy, multidimensional people.

But 28th? Behind Milwaukee? For the 49ers?

Where have you gone, Joe Montana? A region turns its lonely eyes to you.

The low ranking isn't merely because people turned off their televisions when the 49ers fell behind 21-6. The measurement takes in the entirety of the game, minus the blackout. And the numbers actually went up a bit in the second half.

For years, it has been assumed that the 49ers were the biggest fish in our crowded sports pool. They certainly were in the 1980s and '90s. But, in recent years, it has been difficult to get a real measure of their market force because they were such a bad team.

This season, they returned to the top, back to the Super Bowl, barely three months after the Giants won the World Series. So we had a real way to compare the two teams.

I did a lot of analysis in my laboratory. Just kidding. I don't have a laboratory, but I do have a black Labrador asleep at my feet as I write this, and for these purposes, her input is just as scientific.

Football always kills baseball in the ratings. And the Super Bowl is an event, historically drawing the biggest nationwide ratings of the year. In direct comparison, more Bay Area televisions were tuned to the Super Bowl than to the World Series.

But during the 2012 World Series - a ratings dud around the rest of the country - the Bay Area was involved in a way you would expect of a home-team market. Detroit and San Francisco were the two top markets in the country. KNBR's radio ratings were though the roof at the time of Sergio Romo's final pitch to Miguel Cabrera.

What's surprising is that, compared with the rest of the country, the Super Bowl wasn't must-see TV here.

For those of us whose business it is to track the pulse of Bay Area sports, there's a different vibe with the 49ers than there once was. Under Jim Harbaugh, the team is intriguing, controversial and watchable, but it doesn't create rabid passion.

Give Colin Kaepernick more than 10 games as a starter and he might incite the type of fervor that his predecessors did. But, for now, the 49ers' personalities haven't captured the imagination of the Bay Area the way Joe, Jerry, Ronnie and Steve did.

Part of the explanation is that the old 49ers Faithful compare these players and coach to the glorious past and find they come up a little short. And the new 49ers Faithful haven't been given much reason to be faithful yet.

The Giants, in contrast, have engendered deep passion. The players are treated like rock stars or beloved family members. People are on a first-name basis with them.

On Saturday, a beautiful day, 35,000-40,000 fans flocked to FanFest. Hundreds of thousands - maybe a million - played hooky from school and work to watch the players in a parade on Halloween. The Giants are a movement. A regional force.

"They're on a magical run," sports-business consultant Andy Dolich said. "They have the personalities, the story lines. It's a love affair. People are head over heels."

And they've turned us into a baseball town.

The feeling around the Giants is similar to what the 49ers created a generation ago. Back then, it didn't matter what time the game was on or how nice the weather was. If the 49ers were in the Super Bowl, everyone was watching. Everyone.