NFL PLAYERS STRIKE: DAY 10 : Times Poll : Half of L.A.’s ‘Real’ Fans Will Tune Out Strike Games

About half of the hard-core pro football fans in Los Angeles are so turned off by the National Football League players’ strike that they will tune out the non-union games scheduled this weekend.

That is the indication of a Los Angeles Times Poll survey taken this week. Among 397 people polled in L.A. County, 12% said they normally followed pro football “a great deal,” and 13% said they followed it “a lot.”

Of those groups, however, only 48% said they will watch a game on TV this weekend, 1% said they will attend a game, 4% said they will listen to one on the radio, 46% said they will pay no attention at all to the games and 1% said they weren’t sure.

Surprisingly, 37% of those polled who said they follow pro football “not much” said they will watch it on TV this weekend.

The key to those responses was in another question: “Do you expect (this week’s games) will be just as interesting as before (or) not worth paying attention to?”

Only 14% of the hard-core fans said the games will be “just as interesting,” while 42% said they will be “less interesting” and 38% said they will be “not worth paying attention to.”

Asked how much they missed pro football when last week’s games were canceled, 56% of the hard-core fans said they missed it “a lot,” the other 44% “not much.”

Only 14% of the casual fans said they missed it “a lot.”

Also, a national public opinion survey showed Americans overwhelmingly siding with NFL owners rather than with the players in the dispute.

The Wirthlin Group survey, conducted last week among 1,000 American adults, found that 47% of all respondents said they sided with the owners rather than the players, and 25% said they had no opinion.

In 1982, a similar poll found that sentiment was evenly divided.