Study Shows CT Residents Don’t Like Pickleball One Tiny Bit

Today is National Pickleball Day,  August 8th. In honor of the day I wanted to take a look at CT's relationship with the sport.

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"Don't mention it." This is a phrase people throw around to deflect thank you's but in Connecticut it may be a warning about pickleball. A new study from the gambling site called Betway analyzed Google Data to see which states were high on pickleball and which states did not like it and CT was tops for negativity.

Connecticut got a positive sentiment score of 9.67% despite having over 400,000 Google searches about the sport. These are the Top 6 most negative pickleball states:

1. Connecticut - 9.67 % positive sentiment score

2. Idaho - 10.60% positive sentiment score

3. Mississippi - 11% positive sentiment score

4. West Virginia - 11.10% positive sentiment score

5. Vermont - 11.50% positive sentiment score

6. New York - 12.9% positive sentiment score

Just to put that in perspective the state with the highest positive sentiment was Wyoming with 45.50% positive sentiment score and searches for "how to play pickleball" increased by 104% in the last twelve months.

As a unit, we do NOT dig pickleball and I think I know why. Connecticut's identity is very much rooted in it's history and the protection of our history. We love old buildings, documents, streets, traditions, even old pizza places. Why in the hell would we love the flavor of the month sport?

Look, I'll play pickleball because I'm competitive but I'm not going to like it. The whole time I'll just be saying, why can't we play something else?

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FOR THE RECORD: Pickleball is not as new as some believe, it was invented in 1965 by two bored suits who lived just outside Seattle Washington. But in the grand scheme, 1965 is still new when it comes to sports. Football, baseball and basketball are the kings of sports and all were all invented in the 1800's.