How and why did Football became so big in the US?

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LoyalKopite@reddit

In America baseball spread through radio, nfl, nba spread through tv and FOOTBALL ⚽️ spread through internet.

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LoyalKopite@reddit

That is American exceptionalism but it is still football ⚽️.

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TheBimpo@reddit

College football came first and spread throughout the country very similarly to how club soccer spread throughout Britain.

The NFL capitalized on the interest in the sport by giving those collegiate athletes a place to continue continue their careers.

As professional football grew, televisions became commonplace in American homes and American cities were making huge population gains in the post World War II era. People were moving away from small towns and farms and into suburbia, where they became a huge base for the local NFL franchises.

The game presents exceptionally well on television, with plenty of breaks in the action to allow commentators to explain strategy or the previous gameplay.

As color television became popular, the NFL agreed to play a “Super Bowl” against their rival league, the AFL, pitting the two leaked champions against each other. Shortly after, the two leagues merged and became what is known today as the NFL.

The NFL prioritized making a few of their teams “national teams“, whereas college football followed more of a regionalized model. So you ended up with Pittsburgh and Dallas fans across the country while both teams enjoyed success through the 70s.

Meanwhile, a prominent collegiate program like Alabama or Michigan became increasingly limited to just being able to be accessed by people from that area. Fans in Colorado were unlikely to ever see Ohio State or Tennessee play on television.

It wasn’t until the explosion of cable television in the 80s that allowed fans across the country to see college teams that were not near them.

It was kind of a perfect combination of timing, demographic changes, and explosion of television.

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ternic69@reddit

Thanks chat gpt

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MechanicalGodzilla@reddit

Also, violence is entertaining. Even hockey can't compare to football in terms of violence. I actually think this is why soccer isn't as popular in the US, despite high youth participation rates. It's like the anti-violence sport.

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TillPsychological351@reddit

Plus, watching football familiarizes us with the physics of how human bodies react when they collide into each other. Which is why all the flopping in soccer looks so incredibly fake.

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j_a_guy@reddit

There’s a lot less less flopping in soccer than most Americans realize. It’s really painful to get kicked in the ankle/foot/shin, but it’s usually a bruise that is pretty easy to play through after a minute or two.

If an American Football players goes down holding their ankle it’s almost always an ankle sprain which structurally messes your ankle up for weeks.

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veryangryowl58@reddit

Eh. I mean, it's not the flopping, exactly - it's the theatrics afterwards, which seems to happen whether it's real or not. The rolling around screaming and grabbing their faces. It's embarrassing.

One of our NFL players broke his arm last week, and then dude just stood up, turned to someone next to him, casually said, "It's broken," and walked off to get it treated.

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coyote_of_the_month@reddit

watching football familiarizes us with the physics of how human bodies react when they collide into each other while wearing 20 lbs worth of protective gear.

I'd say if anything, it makes soccer look fake because we're not used to seeing unarmored people colliding.

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Crafty-Strength1626@reddit

Try watching rugby

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MechanicalGodzilla@reddit

Yeah, I actually think the flopping is worse in men's soccer. My daughter plays on a serious travel team, and we watch a lot of NWSL and womens world cup soccer and the ladies look somehow "tougher" than the men.

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Double-Bend-716@reddit

The ladies are way tougher.

They’ll motion towards the refs like, “wtf where’s my call!?” But if they don’t get they just get up and keep playing.

I like watching both MLS and NWSL. NWSL is definitely a slower game, but they’re both entertaining in their own ways

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DoinIt989@reddit

>It's like the anti-violence sport.

In Soccer, the fans are violent instead of the players.

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MechanicalGodzilla@reddit

Ha, yeah. My wife and I wandered into a Scottish pub during a Rangers-Celtic game a few months ago, it was an interesting experience.

The parents on the sidelines at my kids' soccer games are also an interesting bunch

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cryptoengineer@reddit

OTOH, US football fans are far less violent than European soccar fans.

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chupamichalupa@reddit

Don’t forget our vecinos to the south.

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TheLizardKing89@reddit

100%. I’ve never seen an American football game where the fans have to be segregated from each other.

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SenorPuff@reddit

When the Raiders were still in Oakland they were notorious for a few violent incidents.

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monstercello@reddit

With barbed wire fencing and a line of riot police between them lol

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lntw0@reddit

Oh man this was my true culture shock on the continent. The fights were genuinely frightening. I've lived on both US coasts and have never been that consistently concerned. Crazy shit.

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Adnan7631@reddit

There’s a big problem with this theory… soccer was very popular in the United States up until the 1930’s. People described it as the second most popular sport in the country, only behind baseball. Then the sport collapsed during the Great Depression and American football almost completely took over.

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danhm@reddit

And also all the stuff that's popular without tackling. Basketball, baseball, olympic swimming, lots of stuff.

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MechanicalGodzilla@reddit

Those are popular (except swimming!), but they are orders of magnitude less popular than football. Like the difference between a million and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.

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LedRaptor@reddit

Orders of magnitude is a bit of an exaggeration. Yes football is by far the most popular but it's not that much bigger than basketball or baseball.

NFL total revenue was $20.5 billion for 2023. It's hard to get a figure on college football because there isn't one central league but it is a lot less than the NFL (the top conferences generate less than $1 billion each).

The NBA generated a revenue of $13 billion for 2023. It's hard to get figures on college basketball too. MLB generated around $11.6 billion for the same year.

Is football far more popular? Yes. But it's not orders of magnitude more popular than other sports.

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MechanicalGodzilla@reddit

How does stadium attendance and tv ratings compare between those sports?

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LedRaptor@reddit

Quick Google search shows MLB had 71,348,366 for total attendance. NBA had 22.52 million. NFL had 18.85 million. College football had a total attendance of 37,237,555 for 2022 (couldn't find 2023 total numbers but they were up a little). Couldn't quickly find figures for college basketball.

I can't be bothered to look up the TV ratings right now but of course the NFL will be the most but again, I doubt its orders of magnitude more than basketball or baseball. Also, one must consider that baseball and basketball have way more games per season.

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MechanicalGodzilla@reddit

NFL games average 18 million viewers. The next most is NBA games, with 1.5 million viewers.

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LedRaptor@reddit

There are 82 NBA regular season games as opposed to 17 regular season NFL games. It's not really an apples to apples comparison there.

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timothythefirst@reddit

That’s more so because the nfl was just smart enough to make their sport much easier to watch for the average viewer, with several national tv games every weekend, and only the least interesting games being regional broadcasts. And those games that are regional broadcasts are free to anyone with an antenna. Compared to the NBA, NHL or MLB where the vast majority of games are regional broadcasts that you need certain cable providers to see.

I know humans do have some proclivity towards violence but that’s not why football is the most popular sport. If that was it everyone would just watch ufc.

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veryangryowl58@reddit

Some people consider sport a proxy for war that feeds our (meaning humans') natural tribalistic and aggressive impulses without actually having to kill each other. Football is definitely the most "warlike" sport as its basically a series of small battles between peak humans. You basically even have growing "casualty lists" as the season goes on, which is the less fun part.

I think that's the reason other countries have hooliganism and we don't. Our "fighting" takes place on the field.

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GOTaSMALL1@reddit

I think the issue with soccer isn’t that it’s “anti-violence”… it’s that it’s “faux-violence”.

There’s a reason the term Grass Diving exists.

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Luka_Dunks_on_Bums@reddit

You also forgot 1 part for college football, there was only 1 national game a week on for 1 network until 1984 when a federal ruling declared this tactic a monopoly and forced the NCAA to allow more network coverage.

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rogun64@reddit

It was also because there were only 3 TV stations for most of that time. My recollection was that it was more like 1 game per station and Notre Dame was always on NBC. I think most every Notre Dame game was televised, but other "big" teams were only on TV once or twice per year.

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Luka_Dunks_on_Bums@reddit

True but also not completely true. In 1951 Penn and Notre Dame made TV deals with ABC to broadcast their games, the NCAA hated that because they believe it would kill people going to games, so they bought out those contracts at the end of that year. They then made a deal with NBC the next year, to air 1 game a week as their national game of the week, this continued until 1955 when the NCAA modified their broadcast schedule to have 8 national games and allow regional games to be aired the same day until 1984.The Bowl games were fair game for any network.

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ArrivesWithaBeverage@reddit

The game presents exceptionally well on television, with plenty of breaks in the action to allow commentators to explain strategy or the previous gameplay.

And show commercials, so more $$$ for the networks.

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Vast_Reaction_249@reddit

It's American. It may be a riff on soccer or whatever but it's American. Same with baseball and basketball.

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Tacoshortage@reddit

Because it's the best dang sport anywhere.

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EnvironmentalKick388@reddit

The game of football is boring AF. It has a few exciting moments every once in a while, but I could easily put it on to fall asleep at night. The atmosphere is fun to a point, then it’s just drunken obnoxiousness. Basketball and hockey are way better.

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Derplord4000@reddit

Basketball and hockey are way better.

Ha, no.

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Redbubble89@reddit

College has always been big and a part of the culture. It's part of the community around these universities. It went from the Ivy league to being dominated by the southeast.

The NFL was formed in 1920 but outside of a few players wasn't really followed for decades.

The first major game was the 1958 NFL Championship. It was the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants and the Colts won with Johnny Unitas. The game aired on NBC and had 45 million viewers and was blacked out in NY because the game was at Yankee Stadium. A Texas billionaire named Lamar Hunt, saw it's popularity and started a rival league called the American Football League. Within 5 years, this rival league merged in 1966 and this started the Super Bowl era. The NFL has always been tied with the TV. It is once a week and on a Sunday when most people are off. There are 4 national games a week.

MLB has too many games. NHL is more northern. NBA didn't have a surge in popularity until the 80s and it's starting to struggle with regular season viewers. Soccer has had way too many leagues over the decades and it's always about interest. NFL has played it's cards right with working with TV networks and promoted fantasy sports.

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Weird_Surname@reddit

I’ll add as a former NBA fan. NBA has too many games. There are too many foul parties. The games are too long. Best 4 should be only one game before elimination like March Madness.

Never been a baseball, soccer, or hockey fan so can’t add any input there.

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Aspect58@reddit

The NFL also has the most equitable revenue sharing and salary cap system. Everyone starts with the same resources, and success is determined by how smart and efficient you are in using them. An owner and front office that are complete idiots can’t spend their way to success despite their incompetence. Just look at Dan Snyder.

This is almost the exact opposite of MLB where teams with huge checkbooks can grab all the best players. When there’s a 5 to 1 ratio between your highest and lowest team salaries, the fans of the low end, small market teams are going to eventually give up on the sport.

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Redbubble89@reddit

The last time the MLB asked for a cap baseball was canceled for a year. They have revenue sharing in baseball and every franchise right now would sell for a billion. They just choose not to spend. Marlins can average 10k a game and still be profitable with all the revenue sharing that other teams bring in.

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timothythefirst@reddit

They have revenue sharing in baseball and every franchise right now would sell for a billion. They just choose not to spend.

That’s why it drives me absolutely insane when people think MLB needs a salary cap. It’s like the biggest misconception in all of sports that people fall for, for some reason. It’s nothing more than an excuse for the owners to be cheap.

I’m a Detroit sports fan. 10-20 years ago the tigers were in the mix for damn near every single free agent, the owner would spend whatever it took because he wanted to win a World Series. And the team was definitely not losing money during that time. I watched them sign hall of famers like Pudge Rodriguez and give huge contracts to some of the best players of all time. Then the owner died and his son took over, and outside of the miracle run this year, they’ve been dog shit ever since because the owner just doesn’t care about winning as much.

If you added a salary cap to baseball it would just turn into the nba, where I’ve never seen the Pistons sign a single superstar as a free agent in my entire life. Because why tf would a superstar come to Detroit when Detroit can’t pay them a dime more than Miami or Los Angeles can.

People think a salary cap would add competitive balance, because on the surface, yeah sure it sounds fair. But in reality it’s the complete opposite. All the smaller markets in colder/less desirable regions are stuck just praying they get lucky in the draft because they can’t offer anything that would sway a superstar free agent to go there. Being a small market nba fan has been absolutely miserable in recent years, all the media talks about is which big market team is going to take your best player.

People think they want a salary cap but really they just want owners who care about winning.

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pinniped1@reddit

Gambling and a hard salary cap.

Those two things make the entire league interesting to the entire country, thus driving massive national TV numbers which drives huge revenue.

Other sports are more provincial. I go see my NBA, MLS, and MLB teams play in person, but I rarely if ever watch two random teams play on TV until it's deep in the playoffs.

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Icy-Student8443@reddit

the real question is did the americans make football (american) or someone else 🧐🧐🧐

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EffectiveNew4449@reddit

Soccer and rugby didn't exist in their current forms.

Football came from the same origin and established itself as a uniquely American sport around the same time the other two were standardized.

Had it never been created, I could see soccer and rugby having become much more popular.

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Bear_necessities96@reddit

I wish Rugby were more popular

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PartiZAn18@reddit

Such a better game to watch and play.

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veryangryowl58@reddit

Lol. Let me guess, you call the field a "pitch" and when your friends talk about what NFL games they watched over the weekend you tell them all about how there's too much stoppage time compared to rugby, the superior Euro-adjacent sport?

Rugby sucks, btw. It looks like a bunch of grown men playing hot potato.

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Bobcat2013@reddit

They dont really hit either as much as people like to claim.

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Bluewaffleamigo@reddit

Without a forward pass it's soft.

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Educational-Sundae32@reddit

Colleges for the sport in general and TV for the NFL itself

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Texlectric@reddit

Television. Football translates so well to Television. The long pauses, the intense action for a few seconds, and when something big does happen, the viewer has time to react and watch. The long pauses allow a information dumps, tension build, and character development from the announcers. Then they set up the play, a handful of seconds of 22 giants attempting to implement the game, with all eyes being able to see them still, then all move at once! And if it's a big play, it'll take an additional few seconds to play through, where all eyes can have the same timed reactions. Other games don't have these things to that really enhance the viewing experience.

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Archduke1706@reddit

I think television is the best answer. Football was not as popular when it was only available on radio or in person. It really took off in the 1950's and 1960's after television became widespread.

The turning point was the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. This was a thrilling overtime game that got great tv ratings. This soon led to expansion in the NFL and the creation of the AFL in 1960. Within a decade or so, football has surpassed baseball as the most popular sport.

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FistOfFacepalm@reddit

Colleges were filling up huge stadiums long before TV was a thing

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arcticmischief@reddit

50,000 people watching a game is a far cry from 15+ million watching on TV.

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FistOfFacepalm@reddit

I guess? But the question was why did football get so big. It was big before TV so TV can’t be the answer.

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timothythefirst@reddit

Yeah but the question being “so big” means they’re asking how it got to be as big as it is today, and tv definitely had a lot to do with it being as big as it is today, that’s not to say it wasn’t big before tv, the point is tv made it bigger.

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ThiccBlastoise@reddit

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_football

A 10 second wiki search found the history of American football, feel free to peruse it as it’ll give a more comprehensive answer than a reddit user

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EdSheeransucksass@reddit

Do you do this for every Reddit post? Because you have a lot of work to do seeing as how 80% of questions on Reddit can be solved by quick Google searches.

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Cheap_Coffee@reddit

Yeah, but wiki searches don't yield karma.

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pooteenn@reddit (OP)

I don’t care about Karma though, was just asking

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Bear_necessities96@reddit

Tl;DR

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ThiccBlastoise@reddit

No idea, I didn’t read the whole thing because it’s long and I don’t care enough about the answer

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itanicnic1@reddit

Without fantasy football (and gambling) the NFL would not be nearly as big.

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spareribs78@reddit

Because of Jim Thorpe

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webbess1@reddit

"Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings." Will Rogers

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toomanyracistshere@reddit

George Will, not Will Rogers. Very different people.

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TheLastRulerofMerv@reddit

This question prompted me to armchair investigate. Apparently the game more or less exploded nation wide after the 1958 NFL Championship Game, sometimes called "The Greatest Game Ever Played".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_NFL_Championship_Game

Before 1958 the national past time was indisputably baseball. That was by far the most popular sport. After 1958 the country saw a shift towards football.

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LeadDiscovery@reddit

TV and now internet/streaming - Football is a great product to present on the TV to fans and it offers ample opportunity for advertising which generates the revenue necessary to incentivize investors to support and grow the game. This had a snowball effect.. the more fans, the more advertisers, the more investors got in on owning teams and supporting industries. Now its a mature ecosystem.

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Real-Psychology-4261@reddit

I do think TV is the biggest reason it became so big. The format of the game lends itself well to tension-building, talking about the characters, slow-motion replay, getting closer to the action than you can in real-life.

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Taanistat@reddit

In short, violence is thrilling. American football seems much more gladiatorial than most other sports and appeals to a wider variety of people than ice hockey, which also gets quite violent because football could be played in any climate, whereas ice hockey required cold weather in the age before television. Even after the age of indoor hockey arenas and widespread television coverage, it hasn't become massive the way football has due to the same stigma...it's a "cold weather" sport.

What I find a bit mysterious is why Rugby hasn't caught on simply due to it being both fast-paced and violent.

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Freedum4Murika@reddit

Even on modern TV's, a hockey puck is nearly impossible to follow. Back on the CRT TV's you'd never see it you'd just go off the body language of the players

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drewcandraw@reddit

Not only is football tailor-made for television, football can be played with a ball in any open space. Most junior highs and high schools have football teams as do a lot of colleges and universities. At school, players are provided a lot of their equipment as well as facilities to train. As such, a lot of football fans have formed connections to the game by playing it as children, whether on the playground or under the Friday night lights.

If you don’t live in a place where you can flood your backyard and skate all winter long, which is to say very few parts in the United States, hockey is a sport for rich kids. By comparison to football, very few schools have hockey teams. Those that do typically rent ice from a local rink and the players’ families shoulder the cost and the burden of getting their players to practice, often very early in the morning or very late at night.

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iltfswc@reddit

In addition to the answers here, it is the sport most people prefer to bet on.

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deebville86ed@reddit

Basketball and baseball are actually the most betted on in America. Mostly because they're on pretty much every night.

And tbf, sports betting only became legal here within the past few years. American football was already wildly popular by then

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This video explains some of it

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TipsyBaker_@reddit

Avid marketing

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Thelonius16@reddit

It’s good for TV.