Football players wear helmets

NFL seems to be about the team/sport more than individual players. There’s no individual NFL player that’s more popular than most NBA superstars I feel.

At the highest level, absolutely yes

I don’t think you’ll find anyone currently in the NFL more popular than Lebron or Curry

I even think if you look at the past 25ish years of the NBA and NFL, you could argue that Lebron, Curry, Kobe and Shaq are more famous than anyone that’s played in the NFL, Brady would probably be 5th behind those 4 as the most famous nba/nfl’er

It’s a numbers game ²²⁄₅₂ players vs ⁵⁄₁₂. Also NBA highlights can be far more flashy and the players aren’t covering their face with a mask.

It’s honestly just the helmets imo. NFL players are harder to recognize when they’re not on the field.

Yes.

Longevity - NBA players can play a lot more years before they start to slow down and even when they do stop playing at that most elite level they are still very public by virtue of being exposed 82 games per year. Outside of QBs, NFL players are usually planning to wind down going into their 30s.

Peak - NBA players can become superstars very early in their careers. Look at Shai and Luka and it’s highly likely they aren’t even at their peak yet. They build up fame in their early seasons and by the time they are established they are usually playing the best ball of their career. NFL players usually don’t get exposed until they hit their peak which usually happens in the late 20’s early 30’s. Brady and Rogers are two of the few that got exposure early and played for 20 years.

Quantity - This is the biggest one. Mark Cuban once said that the unique thing about basketball is that the player count is small enough that you can very easily learn the entire roster of multiple teams. There’s a lot of B-players that can be incredibly popular just being on a starting 5. I don’t know of any one of my friends who knows every single player on their favorite team. You usually know 4-5 key offensive and defensive guys each. Everyone else is just a piece to fill a hole/make a hole. I’m a Bills fan and I don’t know if I could name 4 guys on our bench. When someone is injured they could pull a guy off the street to fill in and I wouldn’t know any better.

NFL careers are much shorter than NBA careers, especially outside of the QB position. People have less time to latch onto an NFL player before they’re gone. Also NFL players wear helmets so their in game emotions are a lot more hidden.

Other than QBs and players married to Taylor Swift, yes.

NBA is a star driven league. The NFL is about the shield, it doesn’t matter who’s playing. Hell the Seahawks just won the super bowl with 1 star player JSN, who brokeout that same year forreal. 

NFL viewership is so high because they’ve achieved almost perfect parity compared to any other sports league and each team plays less than 20 games, not 82.

When your team plays once per week rather than four times it’s easier to tune in and the outcome of the game is much more impactful.

Yes easily. Everyone loves football, but only a few players get anywhere near the levels of fame of NBA superstars. Someone else said it’s because they wear helmets which dehumanize them so I can see that

Tiger woods was more famous than all of them aside from Jordan and LeBron. People don’t realize the global reach golf has. You could even argue Venus and Serena

if your post ends with excluding, then you have your answer

Maybe LeBron and Curry but after that there’s at least a dozen nfl players before you get to the next nba one. Especially considering the current crop of superstars are more foreign born than ever it’s not particularly close if you’re constraining it to an American context.

Definitely feels like the player visibility has a lot to do with it. Other factors play into it as well. NBA is a game with more “flair”. Most NFL players only play one side of the ball. Then think of how many NBA players sell shoes compared to NFL players. Several to what? None? Hell you have football (and baseball, golfers, etc) players getting custom hoop shoes as cleats. Basketball is also international, whereas “throwball” (as a British friend of mine called it lol) is not. The comparison isn’t really close tbh.

Chris Paul said it best IMO. Most of the time NFL players have their helmet on so you don’t actually see a face. And because of that NBA players are more recognized.

For that past 3 years or so Travis Kelce is the most recognized athlete by people who don’t care about sports at all. He easily surpasses LeBron and Curry on a scale of all Americans

most famous athlete in America has always been a basketball

lol worst take ever in this sub

Tiger woods, tom brady, for a few years michael phelps, and if just by name probably tony hawk are definitely just as famous as the top nba guys

NFL players wear helmets. I dead ass think that knocks their fame down in comparison significantly (except for the top top top guys)

We have survey data on this topic, Lebron is more well known than most NFL players but after him NBA and NFL players are basically neck and neck in terms of fame and popularity.

https://yougov.com/en-us/ratings/contemporary-sports-personalities

Younghoe Koo played in LA. He’s Korean. LA has a massive Korean population.

The NFL did nothing with this.

The helmets create an anonymity. Beyond that the NFL prioritizes the league over individuals. American football itself is very much a team game and the NFL has always pushed teams and the league. Occasionally pushing a quarterback.(due to the outside influence a quarterback can have.). The NBA has put individuals front and center, and you can trace that back to the doldrums the league was in in the late 70’s and early 80’s. But when Bird and Magic arrived the NBA now had to incredible players, with amazing personalities on teams in maybe the exact right market for those players at that time. And then came Michael. If you need an understanding of how populMichael Jeffery Jordan was in 92, watch the Last Dance episode specifically on the Dream Team in Europe. You can see how and why the NBA pushed individuals, and the individual can have more impact in basketball. Sorry for the ramble.

I would say LeBron is the most recognizable athlete in America.  Second would probably be Taylor Swift.

Yeah. I think cause there’s more dudes on the field in a football game and they all wear helmets while in basketball it’s 5 on 5 and you got more nba players in ads like state farm and Gatorade. Also football is a much more team sport while basketball allows players to be flashy and score on their own.

NBA stars of course. The NFL’s popularity is more team-centered. You’d have people from Alaska violently rooting for some team like the Cleveland Browns and they don’t have any connection to Cleveland at all. The NFL has done a great job marketing its teams instead of its players. And I think the results speak for themselves. The NFL is unarguably more popular than the NBA.

Yes because you can see their faces. Plus the crowds are closer to the NBA players.

There’s so much that goes into it that leans NBA.

1. Face mask in the NFL

2. NBA superstars play most minutes of a game while NFL stars basically have to play 50%

3. NBA stars have a longer career to build their fame while the NFL lifespan is much shorter

4. Great NFL players can be on bad teams (Calvin Johnson, JJ watt, Adrian Peterson etc) while NBA stars already make up ¹⁄₅ of a starting lineup, much easier to be relevant/have national broadcasting

5. Much more TV time/Opportunity for clips. NBA runs from October to June playing 82+ games. They will pop up on your feed more compared to NFL players unless you’re marrying Taylor Swift

6. Scheduling. NBA’s flexible schedule guarantees games during people’s biggest days off (Christmas, MLK, Presidents’ Day, Easter etc..) and they usually pack the schedule those days. NFL is pretty restricted Sunday/one game Monday/one game Thursday. NFL rakes in Thanksgiving though.

7. Superstars in the NFL have a higher chance of getting a blank stat line. There are so many players Bijan can have a 60 yard game, Justin Jefferson can get a 3 catch game etc.. while an nba star basically has guaranteed touches and will score at least 20 a night

Yes, individuals make a bigger impact in games in basketball, they don’t wear helmets and usually hang longer careers. QBs are pretty famous though, and share those same traits

I think the main thing is that NFL players wear helmets that partially cover their faces. The full range of expressions and emotions is visible all the time in basketball. In football, for most plays, you only know which guy you’re looking at because of his jersey number. 

American football is not a global sport, basketball is, same as soccer and baseball

By a long shot. You get to see basketball player’s face. Many ppl dont even know what their favorite football player face look like.

yes, no question, but more americans would rather root for laundry than stars and prefer the NFL

Lebron is bigger than most nfl superstars. 

Most nfl superstars are bigger names than most nba superstars. 

My mom is gonna be like shai gorgeous who? But she definitely knows pat mahomes or even non-star QBs. 

NGL as an European I don’t know a single NFL player aside Tom Brady.

The average guy who’d doesn’t watch sports can probably name 7 NBA players but probably not a single NFL one besides Brady

Is the sky blue?

Mahomes, Lemar, and Allen are more popular than anyone in the NBA besides LeBron, in America that is.

Average NFL game views 18million
Average NBA game views 1.8 million

It’s not really close

what non-us nationals even watches NFL

You forgot about Tiger. At his peak he was the most famous athlete in the US by far.

yea b/c there’s less of them

The biggest names, probably. Currently it’d really only be Lebron. NFL is just too massive here otherwise.

So yeah, pretty well answered here by most my breakdown:

Football is more popular than the NBA because of culture and schedule, people watch the games each week because they are event viewing, there’s just one per team per week, and home games ~once every 2 weeks. I think this schedule is vital to the NFL’s success, as it is easy to plan events around games, and each game has massive importance.

The reason that nba players are more popular despite the disparity in popularity is a few things:

1. In my opinion the most important: players are more visible and recognizable, not wearing anything over their face.

2. The nature of basketball is that a single player has considerably more impact than football, both because there are way fewer players receiving play time per game, but also because a single player can dominate possession and defensively in ways that American Football players simply cannot, with the only players in football to match NBA superstars’ involvement on ONE END being the quarterback.

3. Basketball is an international sport, so while it may not factor directly into your question (when you say most popular athlete in America, I’m not sure if you mean among Americans, or athlete who plays American sports and their general popularity) I do think this wider spread popularity would help the popularity of the top athletes.

4. More anecdotal, but I think there are more nba fans who are happy to just follow the career of their favourite player(s) think how many LeBron fans there are, he could go to literally any team and they would continue to cheer for him. I’m a bigger basketball fan, but from my knowledge that’s much less common in the nfl, where 99% of fans just cheer for their nearest team (or the nearest team to where they grew up) and would happily hate their favourite player if they left for another team.

5. Edited to add: career lengths, as the average nba player, and NBA superstars have longer careers than their NFL counterparts, people are much more likely to develop long term attachment to them.

The other thing worth noting is that the NBA isn’t THAT much less popular than the NFL, so those other factors listed are big enough to make up the difference.

Tiger Woods and Tom Brady were as famous as any NBA player except Jordan. And Lance Armstrong is up there (the cheating increased his already massive fame although it obviously lowered how much he was loved).

All-time you’ve got people like Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Serena Williams.

Overall I agree that on average an NBA superstar is more famous than top stars from other major sports. Dr J, Kareem, Magic, Bird, Barkley, Kobe, Shaq, LeBron, Curry, Wemby all mega-stars with Jordan on top.

Who is more famous SGA or Lamar?

that’s a good question actually ngl🤔

Yes I think it’s still the case.

Id say its more likely theyll get recognized from not wearing a helmet and being freakishly tall

NBA players as individuals simply carry more notoriety in pop culture than the NFL. You can see cities and fans from all over absolutely caring about the 4th/5th best player on a team whereas that may not always be the case for an NFL team. It’s also simply more marketable just in terms of shoes lines and popularity.

Yes, obviously. An NFL superstar is one of 22 starters, an NBA superstar is one of 5. An NFL superstar can’t win without a great team around him, meanwhile prime LeBron could take a team to the Finals basically by himself. Also basketball players don’t wear helmets so you can see them. Basketball has had the biggest stars in American sports since Magic and Bird.

Only LeBron otherwise it’s not even close, basketball is behind baseball in overall popularity, with ABS and world baseball classic MLB is surging. the only thing basketball has going for it is individual player marketing of superstars. The league’s image, home grown player development aau style trash system, dependence on private equity money and gambling/Saudi money, and style of play has nose dived the league from its peak around 2012 to 2021. Most of this rests on Adam Silvers lap and we have all seen where his priorities lie lately.

In the 80s, Joe Montana was a lot more popular than Magic Johnson or Larry Bird. Baseball players like Ricky Henderson, Cal Ripken Jr., Doc Gooden/Daryl Strawberry, etc all probably were more popular too.

Basketball was still very much the 3rd or 4th most popular sport at that time, and college basektball was more popular than the NBA. The Big East conference alone had better ratings for regular season games than the NBA Finals between Bird and Magic

Magic/Bird and early Jordan have an inflated since of popularity because the NBA has surpassed baseball in general and the NFL at the individual level.

It wasn’t really till Jordan in the 90s that basketball players started to become more popular than NFL or MLB guys. The 80s is just heavily romantcized today as the beginning of that trend

we literally cant get away from a fucking punter no matter how hard we try. the NFL can make motherfuckers that look like the mannings into superstars that get 4 commercials every break.

Only a running back can have individual* success in the NFL. But they don’t really get those kind of opportunities anymore. The number of chances they get per game has lowered a lot, so they can’t really take over the game night after night for years like a player can in the NBA. Plus shorter careers etc etc. 

It’s pretty silly to exclude the most popular NFL players when making the comparison though

All of this “soon to be Wemby” talk is really premature. He’s not a native English speaker. That’s partly what holds back Luka, Giannis and Jokic.

A big issue is that there’s nothing really aspirational about the way Wembanyama plays. Kids can’t aspire to be like him the same way that they could for a guy like Curry.

You saw this is in the finals where Wembanyama served as a foil for Brunson and the Knicks who had protagonist energy (I’m biased as a Knicks fan but it’s true).

The very top of the NBA (pretty much just jordan and lebron) are at the top.

Then you have current/recent/legendary NFL guys like Brady/Mahomes/Manning/Brees.

Then it’s fantasy relevant NFL - top QBs like Allen/Burrow or skill positions like Chase, Jefferson, Barkley, Henry, Robinson, Gibbs.

Then it’s top current NBA (Shai, Wemby, Harden, Durant etc…)

The US leans towards football in part because of pure viewership, but also because of fantasy and sports betting. Jordan/Lebron are kind of NBA outliers because of the sheer individual dominance; they are just unbelievably special for being massive outliers for their eras. Football doesn’t have as many guys like that because the sport is so reliant on team dynamics comparatively. Brady is the only one that kinda comes close to them.

Just my perspective/experience ymmv.

The amount of replies that aren’t even close

The players yes. The game itself no.

Brady and Mahomes are/were definitely up there…

Only NFL star that is close enough was Tom Brady and he is pretty much the QB goat

Nba does social media the best

There are 5 players that play both offense and defense and are much more pivotal to the outcome of the game. There’s also just way less people in the NBA in general. In football there are 22 players that play specific roles and their faces are covered the whole time. It’s a much more positional game and more dependent on team work. Not to say that’s not true for basketball, just less so.

First, the NFL has 53 players on the main roster, where as the NBA only has 15. Most importantly though, is that a singular NBA player usually has more impact on the team/game than a singular NFL players. The NBA has 5 players from one team on the court at one time, the NFL has 11. And In the NBA, they play offense and defense, in the NFL they only play one side. NFL players also wear helmets obstructing their face.

The only player I can say that would be on a similar level is Tom Brady. No one else really comes close. Maybe Mahomes currently. Travis Kelce definitely doesnt count since a lot of it is tied to being married to Taylor Swift.

Who is even the biggest star of the NFL currently?

The best players in each sport from the last 5 years are Patrick Mahomes in the NFL and Nikola Jokić in the NBA. I love Jokić but if we’re being truly honest, Mahomes is WAY more famous in the U.S. as per the OP question.

It’s hard to measure it. NFL players are more anonymous but it’s a way more popular league.

Yeah

Funny to ask, then immediately say excluding mahomes and kelce. 

You never heard of Tom fkn Brady??? Troy aikman, joe montana ?

Until the swifties got involved I’d wager a lot of euros wouldn’t even know who tom brady was

Perhaps you are familiar with Joseph Clifford Montana Jr? Or Daniel Constantine Marino Jr? or Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr?

Only the top s tier ones.

Depends on the era. Joe Namath likely would have been more famous for a while. And then theres the OJ Simpson run.

But otherwise, NBA players will always be more famous. Basketball is global. NFL is barely starting its stretch out of the US.

yea overall but imo it all depends how they brand themselves especially with football. casuals can name 10+ superstars in the nfl too.

Usually.

Tom Brady an exception

Leather Egg Violence isn’t very popular outside of the US. People may tune in for the Super Bowl, but a lot of us are mostly there for the spectacle.

NFL is team driven. NBA is star driven.

22 NFL starters before you even discuss kickers and special teams players, vs 5 NBA starters

NFL helmet mask and pads vs NBA show face and physique (many NFL players are huge athletic marvels too but you cant see the scale under all those pads and standing next to other guys in pads)

17 NFL games vs 82 NBA games

I will chime in with a narrow slice of insight. Anthony Edwards is arguably the American face of the League after LeBron and Steph retire. And yet Justin Jefferson is the most popular athlete in the state. It’s not even really close. And it’s across all ages. Every kid here does the griddy. People underestimate the popularity of the NFL.

You can name players on a nba team but you can’t name players on a nfl team. That’s how you should which is more popular

Being in the NBA is a very difficult task. You have to excel at something very difficult.

I’m not sure Jordan was any more famous than Bo Jackson in the US.

Define America. If its the continent … what is the NFL? is what you’ll probably get from most while everyone at least has some knowledge about the NBA because of Jordan and Nike.

Is fame facial recognition or name recognition? If it name recognition, the answer is absolutely not. The nfl is orders of magnitude more popular

The average NBA player is more popular and recognizable than the average NFL player but this take seems a bit off base.

I’m almost certain if you go outside the Internet bubble and poll middle America, your 45 year old redneck uncles and grandpas in the middle of Ohio or Arkansas, they’d recognize Travis Kelce 5x more than Wemby, Jokic, Luka, Giannis combined.

I wouldn’t say inside America (viewership numbers are still higher for NFL?. But outside of America? NFL stars get absolutely moged by NBA stars. When LeBron or Jordan attended Europe matches they never ever got this sort of reception lol. In fact soccer/european fans wanted their autographs.

If NBA ever does its Europe expansion it’s going to go hard especially in France, Spain, Greece, and Turkey.Basketball is loved in Europe. It’s always funny to me that America is doing all these games nfl in Europe to compete with soccer globally when basketball is right there and way more loved in Europe. Basketball is the only American sport I consider has a chance to reach World Cup levels. If only NBA puts a vested interest in FIBA

It’s debatable. Like sure LeBron is one of the most famous people on earth. Then a big step down to Steph and KD I am not certain that they are more famous in America than Tom Brady, Patrick Maholmes or Travis Kelce. More people probably know who Jason Kelce is than say Dame or Jalen Brunson.

You can tell how famous a football player is by whether they need to wear a jersey or pads in a commercial so people have a context clue that “this is a football player”. There aren’t many football players that can be a pitchman in civilian clothes.

i would say yes other than maybe top 5 QBs (and even then id probably still say nba)

I mean football players were helmets that cover their faces.

Outside of qbs football players are rarely noticed out in the wild
By regular folks. They wear helmets and nba players don’t and mba players are mainly noticeably tall. They’re so tall most folks go “whoa that guy is tall is he in the nba”. There are more mba players with sponsorship deals as well. The nfl likes to promote “the nfl” over the player. It’s vice versa with nba players. Steph is more known than the most famous nfl player (mahomes) and it’s not close. I’d say 5 nba players would Get noticed for who they are before Pat mahomes is. The 5th most famous nfl player would be on par with perhaps the 20-25th most famous nba player (guesstimate)