Popularity polls come and go. As the baseball playoffs begin, the NFL is boasting that one poll shows it is more than twice as popular as the national pastime.

For a deeper insight into the American psyche, consider the sports that are loathed the most.

No. 1 on the list, by far, is dogfighting — hated or disliked a lot by 81 percent of the public, according to a poll conducted by the Sports Marketing Group in Atlanta. Makes you wonder what the other 19 percent were thinking.

No. 2 is pro wrestling, and No. 3 is bullfighting, a sport that Americans who haven’t been to Spain or Mexico or read Hemingway don’t get, never see and, apparently, don’t want.

Then there’s pro boxing at No. 4, loathed by 31.3 percent of the public. Need we say more than Mike Tyson and Don King?

The genteel PGA Tour is the No. 5 most hated and disliked sport (30.4 percent), followed by the PGA seniors’ Champions Tour (29.9), the LPGA Tour (29.2), NASCAR (27.9), Major League Soccer (27.6) and the ATP men’s tennis tour (26.5).

Golf, even in the age of Tiger Woods, still turns off many Americans with its snooty and sexist country-club image. The image may not fit reality, but perception is everything in polls.

Three times as many black fans — 13.4 percent — say they love or like the PGA Tour now compared to 1993, doubtlessly because of Woods. But that hasn’t put much of a dent in the number of people who still can’t stand the sport. Ten years ago the hate/dislike figures on the PGA Tour were roughly the same — 31.9 percent.

NASCAR turns off almost as many with the opposite image: red, white and blue — or as some see it, redneck, blue collar and white skin — even if it is has broadened its appeal to millions who don’t fit that description.

Soccer still seems like a foreign film with subtitles to many Americans, and men’s tennis has lacked a few small essentials: stars, diversity and compelling rivalries.

They are all held in lower regard by more people than the NHL, the Arena Football League, the Indy Racing League, women’s college basketball and the WNBA.

But the big story in this list of sports Americans hate most — based on a telephone poll of 1,000 respondents that is a prelude to a larger study later this year — is what comes next: the NBA, with 19.7 percent of the country hating or disliking it, and Major League Baseball, with 17.5 percent strongly against it.

Ten years ago, only 12.5 percent of white Americans had strong feelings against the NBA. In the poll this year, that soared to 21.1 percent of whites who hated or disliked the NBA. The number of black respondents who felt that way stayed virtually unchanged at under 3 percent.

“There’s been a seismic shift in the fan base of the NBA,” Lavalle said. “If the league keeps going in the same direction, it’s going to be in deep trouble.

“Baseball is on the decline, and it could be dying if it doesn’t change the way it’s structured.”

In other words, both sports may be going to the dogs.