When the NFL was in the middle of its lockout this summer, fans across the nation were freaking out, worried about Sundays without football on the docket.

The NFL lockout ended without missing any games.

The NBA is involved in a lockout of its own, yet the uproar exhibited by the fans has not been nearly the same. This is as the NBA is coming off the most hyped final series in recent memory, when the league’s biggest star, LeBron James, tried to prove he could handle the pressure.

Why is the outrage that existed this summer not there for the NBA? There is an obvious answer: The NFL is just more popular than the NBA.

The NFL has a system where parity reigns king, and a team from a town with a population barely north of 100,000 can win the championship. The NBA, however, is dominated by the big market teams picking on the little guys, signing the best players to big contracts and forcing the small market clubs to relocate to another market to try and compete.

The other thing working against the NBA lockout is timing. When the NFL lockout hit its peak in late June and July, the only other sports news fans had to focus on was the baseball season.

In the Internet age of rumors and instant information, fans don’t have attention spans long enough to focus on just one sport. Sure, for one weekend golf or tennis is thrust into the spotlight because of a major tournament, but those sports fade to the back of people’s minds just as fast as they came to the forefront.

People aren’t noticing that the NBA is cancelling games. The fans have so much else to focus on right now. Football is halfway through the season, and the playoff races are starting to heat up.

Even the cities out of contention are engulfed in a competition for the right to select the next “sure thing quarterback” in Andrew Luck.

College football is involved in one of the most unusual seasons I’ve ever witnessed. People are talking about the possibility of two teams from the same conference meeting in the BCS championship game.

When will fans start to cry out for the NBA the same way they did for the NFL? If the sides don’t come together quickly, they’ll have to wait until the NFL playoffs come, when fans are being eliminated weekly and looking for something to fill their need for sports.