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KC has a bye this weekend and will make its debut in this year’s postseason on Jan. 18 or 19 when it plays at home against the lowest-seeded team in the AFC that wins in the opening round.

But the power of the NFL in St. Louis extends far beyond the Chiefs, according to TV ratings figures compiled by viewership-tracking firm Nielsen, and paints a clear picture. St. Louisans who say they abhor the NFL for allowing the Rams to leave town nearly a decade ago are either exaggerating, fibbing or are in the vast minority.

We’ll focus here on Sundays, when the league plays most of its games and there generally are four contests shown on TV — usually two at noon, one that starts at 3:25 p.m. and the nightcap that begins at 7:20 p.m. (Twice, there were five games show, two in each of the afternoon slots and one at night.)

The regular season wrapped up last weekend, after 18 weeks, and ratings are available for the first 17 of them. In that span, there were 74 Sunday NFL games that aired on St. Louis television, and the results are interesting when compared with the two professional teams in the market that have a conventional television presence: the Cardinals and Blues. (The vast majority of the City SC’s games are exclusively streamed by Apple, which does not release viewership figures.)

Last baseball season, viewership-tracking firm Nielsen reported that the Cardinals’ local telecasts on what then was Bally ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Midwest were seen in an average of 3.9% of the market.

In contrast, 64 of those 74 Sunday NFL telecasts in St. Louis surpassed that rating. That’s 87% of them.

Taking it another step, the Cardinals’ top-rated game last season came when 9.4% of the market tuned it to KTVI (Channel 2) when it carried Fox’s national telecast of the club’s game in Birmingham, Alabama, against the San Francisco Giants. It was an event that was intended to honor the legacy of the Negro Leagues but also turned into a tribute to Giants legend and Negro Leagues alumnus Willie Mays, who died a few days earlier.

But 47 of those football telecasts drew a better rating than that best-rated Cards telecast of the season. And it’s not just the Chiefs drawing those big viewership numbers — 16 contests not involving KC outdrew the Cardinals’ best figure. Leading the way among non-Chiefs contests was the Green Bay-Minnesota matchup on Dec. 29, shown on KTVI (Channel 2), that drew 13.3% of the market.

The viewership contrast is even more profound when those Sunday NFL games are compared against Blues numbers this season. All 74 of those football contests have surpassed the hockey team’s average rating for local telecasts this season, 2% of the market as of Jan. 1, and 47 did better than the best Blues rating thus far this season — 6.4 for TNT and TruTV’s national telecast of the team’s Winter Classic outdoor game against the rival Blackhawks on New Year’s Eve at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

The NFL has several major advantages over the Cardinals and Blues:

• Most of its games, including all the aforementioned Sunday contests, appear on over-the-air TV, whereas all Cards and Blues local telecasts for more than a decade have been on cable, which generates lower ratings — especially in recent years.
• Its regular season is compact — it was exactly four months from opening night, Sept. 5, to the final game, on Jan. 5. Last year’s MLB opener (not counting a couple games played in Korea) was on March 28 with closing day six months and one day later, on Sept. 29. The NHL season (not counting two games in Europe) began on Oct. 8 and is scheduled to run through April 17, a total of six months and nine days.
• NFL teams play only 17 games, compared to 162 for MLB clubs and 82 for NHL teams, making individual football contests much more meaningful that those in those other leagues.
• Football is better sport for TV, with its gridiron fields and large ball in comparison to quirky ballparks and fast-moving pucks that are hard to follow for some.
• And, of course, football is the most-bet sports in the country, and the spread of legalized sports wagering in recent years, plus the lasting popularity of fantasy football, only fuels the flames.

Whatever the reasons, the evidence is in, and it’s a slam-dunk case. St. Louisans love to watch the NFL, not just the Chiefs, in droves — no matter what they say.

Spinning the Globe

The Globe-Democrat, the morning newspaper in St. Louis for decades, last published in 1986. Now, nearly four decades later, two alums of its sports department are in the spotlight as they have been named the sportswriter of the year for the states the Globe used to cover — Missouri and Illinois.

This week, Rob Rains was named the recipient of the honor for Missouri and Mark Potash the winner for Illinois, as recognized by the National ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Media Association. Rains has his own website, , and Potash works for the . B.J. Rains, son of Rob and Sally Rains, was named the sportswriter of the year in Idaho. He has a website (), that covers Boise State athletics.

Named sportscaster of the year in Missouri was Blues radio play-by-play broadcaster Chris Kerber, and the winner in Illinois was Chicago Cubs radio play-by-play announcer Pat Hughes.

A Classic move

The NHL moved this season’s edition of the Winter Classic from New Year’s Day (Jan. 2 in the years the holiday fell on a Sunday) to New Year’s Eve in an effort to end a television ratings slide.

That didn’t work, as the Blues’ 6-2 victory over the Blackhawks drew a record-low number of viewers, according to Nielsen. So the NHL announced Thursday that the game next season would be played on Jan. 2, a Friday, with the Florida Panthers entertaining the New York Rangers at LoanDepot Park in Miami, home of baseball’s Miami Marlins.

The event last week in Chicago drew 920,000 viewers between TNT and truTV, according to ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Media Watch, the first time the audience fell below the 1 million level in its 16 editions. The rating in St. Louis also was the lowest among the three times the Blues have appeared in the extravaganza.