What do you think is unique about America that made college sports so big where it fails to become big in other countries?
Posted by Crafty_Visit4115@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 156 comments
New-Process-52@reddit
Amwf
New-Process-52@reddit
I like american football
Remarkable-Hawkeye@reddit
One factor is that college teams don’t leave. When a pro team moves across the country, often changing their logo and colors, it’s hard for that fan base to stay engaged. Plus they feel abandoned, disrespected, etc. College teams have extremely loyal fans for generations.
No_Stand8812@reddit
Until very recently there was a very big taboo against amateur athletes making money. So if you were an 18 year old sports prodigy in anything except baseball you couldn’t go to college, play sports, and get paid. So you had to go to college and play sports.
So colleges, especially big programs, became de facto professional sports teams because they had access to talent that had no other options. I’m
jessek@reddit
Colleges are in a lot of places where there are no nearby professional sports.
Severe-Pomelo-2416@reddit
For a long time, Columbus, Ohio had no major league professional sports at all. No one wanted to compete with OSU. We are still the largest city in the US without an NFL team, and NBA team, or a MLB team. Ohio Stadium regularly sells out 110,000+ seats. The biggest NFL stadiums seat 80k or so.
Far-Government-539@reddit
Crazy example of this is that San Antonio doesn't have a professional football team... but does have a 65,000 seat stadium that sells out the one game they play in it each year lol.
jessek@reddit
Yeah the stadiums that schools like UT and Pennsylvania have dwarf NFL stadiums.
ProofAd6177@reddit
This. That’s why college football is so huge in the south. Many states like Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, etc. don’t have professional football teams so College level became the next best thing.
LiveMarionberry3694@reddit
I mean Texas has 2 pro football teams and college football is still massive
Bubba_Gump_Shrimp@reddit
The real reason is CFB was already big before NFL even existed. OSU/Mich had been playing for 25 years when the NFL was formed, and the NFL struggled until Red Grange and others breathed life into it.
By the time the Cowboys joined the NFL in 1960, UT, TAMU, Baylor, and TCU had been playing CFB for almost 70 years.
ComprehensiveEar6001@reddit
If what you consider what we do on the field at Baylor to be "playing CFB" then yes.
Bubba_Gump_Shrimp@reddit
LOL
toastythewiser@reddit
Texas is football mecca. We take it seriously from middle school to nfl.
notonrexmanningday@reddit
My grandparents had the same season tickets to their local high school football games for over 60 years. When my grandfather died, the preacher asked for his tickets at the funeral... I mean, they were 50 yard line.
Historical_Term2454@reddit
Doubtless, but TX is huge, and the Texans are new while the Cowboys have sucked since Aikman.
Cinisajoy2@reddit
The Texans are not new. The Houston Oilers moved to Tennessee and a few years later, Houston got the Texans.
The_Amazing_Emu@reddit
Hence, the Texans being new
notonrexmanningday@reddit
If 26 years old is new
BlueSoloCup89@reddit
I’m thinking they meant the fanbase isn’t new. Bud Adams announced the move after the 1995 season (didn’t move until after the 1996 season), and the Texans were awarded in October 1999. So not too much time that the fans were without a team. They definitely did lose some Oilers fans who became jaded with professional franchises (I’m one of them), but the Texans for the most part were able to pick up where the Oilers left off support-wise.
Historical_Term2454@reddit
Ahhh so they are new. Lol
Cinisajoy2@reddit
No. Because the infrastructure was already in place.
SnoozeTaquito@reddit
So the current iteration of the Cleveland Browns is not a new team? After they had an entire expansion draft? Even after the original Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens?
MalarkeyMcGee@reddit
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make but the current Cleveland Browns got to keep all the history of the original team, so yeah they aren’t “new” and most Browns fans would not consider them new.
Bubba_Gump_Shrimp@reddit
No the Browns are not a new team lol
Cinisajoy2@reddit
Old team renewed.
notonrexmanningday@reddit
The Texans are 26 years old, and the Cowboys still make the playoffs regularly. If you're trying to argue that the Cowboys aren't popular in Texas, sir, you are sadly mistaken.
Gwtheyrn@reddit
There are two other NFL teams that used to be in Texas before moving.
The Tennessee Titans began as the Houston Oilers.
The Kansas City Chiefs used to be the Dallas Texans.
notonrexmanningday@reddit
But the colleges that are massive aren't in cities with pro teams.
That's basically true everywhere except LA and Miami.
Quantify_a_Kiwi_6050@reddit
Not just college, even high school football is massive in Texas.
WTAP1@reddit
The universities football teams predate the arrival of tulhe pro teams.
Prize_Consequence568@reddit
You know what they mean.
NSNick@reddit
Not to mention the pro sports teams the South does have weren't established until the 60s and after because of segregation.
CartoonistAnnual4672@reddit
it also doesn't help that most of them have sucked for most of their histories
Valuable_Recording85@reddit
It doesn't hurt that the NCAA grew very large on the backs of unpaid athletes.
ArkansasTravelier@reddit
Can attest to that, I’m an Arkansan and I’d feel comfortable betting everything that I own that you couldn’t walk into 5 random businesses in anywhere in Arkansas and not see decor, clothing or a mutual about the Arkansas Razorbacks, even by people who have never even gotten within a mile of that University.
Unable-Bison-272@reddit
Many would prefer college not just as a next best thing. I find way more relaxing to watch. It doesn’t bombard you like NFL broadcasts do. It’s not as strident, more chill.
Vachic09@reddit
College football predates the professional league, so there's also a legacy element.
Hot-Iron-7057@reddit
Outside of maybe baseball, college sports also became popular first in the US. If you think about the humble beginnings of sports fandom, it was really just cheering for local boys to beat boys from a town over.
In parts of Europe those were small soccer clubs, in the US those were colleges.
BearPotatoFrog@reddit
This is the answer
OriginalSilentTuba@reddit
Definitely this. Here in the NY/NJ metro area, college sports are no where near as big. Plenty of people follow college sports, but it’s nothing like it is in the south. The pro teams have massive fan bases, even when they’re terrible.
Not_an_okama@reddit
Sports markets in NYC, LA and SF have the added bonus of lots of people from all over the country moving there. This will attract people to games to cheer for the away team that they grew up rooting for.
sharpshooter999@reddit
Go big red! Also, being about 3 hours from KC, we watch a lot of Cheifs/Royals games too. My friends on the western side are all Broncos/Rockies/Rockies/Nuggets fans. Seriously though Colorado, one of your Rockies needs a name change
jessek@reddit
The Rockies need to do a lot of things but the other three are doing great.
Cinisajoy2@reddit
Stay home on Husker days in Lincoln. The traffic is horrible.
jd732@reddit
So, like a normal day in Jersey?
sispbdfu@reddit
The eeriest thing is Sunday in Paramus.
theEWDSDS@reddit
Keep in mind, on Saturdays in the fall, Memorial Stadium is the third largest city in Nebraska
Fragrant_Spray@reddit
This. If you look at most bigger markets where they have pro sports (NYC, LA, Boston, Philly, Seattle, Denver, phoenix, Pittsburgh, Miami, and Chicago for example) the pro sports are dominant. The only real exceptions seem to be in some the south. Atlanta, Dallas, (and maybe New Orleans) are the exception. Not really sure about Houston, I haven’t spent any time there.
beyondplutola@reddit
In LA, USC football is an exception followed by UCLA. They’re bigger than a number of pro teams, eg Chargers, Kings, Clippers, Galaxy, LAFC.
Rhomya@reddit
Eh… in some cases, yeah, but the Gophers have a huge following despite every sport having a spot in the Twin Cities.
I think it’s more of Americans just really love sports. It’s a huge part of most people’s youth, it’s central to most families, and it’s something enjoyable
WideGlideReddit@reddit
☝️ This
Apprehensive-Lock751@reddit
Also Sunday is church day in the South.
10ioio@reddit
Nebraska mentioned
SplitOpenAndMelt420@reddit
Yup. I grew up on Long Island and we had no less than 8 professional teams in our region, so no one I knew was into college sports
PerfectlyCalmDude@reddit
True for those places. There are other places with pro teams that also have strong followings for their college teams.
First_Insurance_6847@reddit
Unfit people living vicariously through college sports. Ever notice how many sports fans overall are unfit/unhealthy?
ghost-church@reddit
They can be more convenient but I don’t love their tendency to eat up the local real estate market…
roboh96@reddit
I think it's because the biggest sports in the country (American Football and Basketball) originated at the college and high school levels, respectively. The sports grew outward from collegiate leagues, and it always has been that the best college athletes are the eventual professionals. That isn't the case with any sports in most other countries.
AndrasKrigare@reddit
I'm curious about the difference with the UK though. Association Football (soccer) originated in universities there as well.
I wonder if part of the difference is that at the time that modern soccer was developing, college attendance was comparatively low, so there was a really large number of people who wanted to play that didn't have a shot at college. For the US, it may have been high enough that the sports continued to develop there.
Wolf_E_13@reddit
For sports other than baseball, they originated in US colleges. They were college sports first and that fandom later carried on to professional leagues which came much later.
RTR7105@reddit
Sports in the US started from the bottom up. College football predates professional football. By nearly two generations in the South.
The Cowboys and the Dolphins are both barely 60 years old.
Various_Knowledge226@reddit
Baseball really started top down though. It professionalized way earlier, which made college baseball not all that important and pretty minor in the grand scheme of the sport
merp_mcderp9459@reddit
Other countries have student athletes; we have athlete students
sleepygreendoor@reddit
Well… Find me an NFL, NBA, or MLB team in Alabama, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, North/South Dakota, West Virginia, Maryland, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Oregon, Iowa, etc…. You see where I’m going with this?
GSilky@reddit
Advertising. NCAA is a multi billion dollar enterprise that preys on people's nostalgia. Most of the hoopla is gambling. The only people I am aware of that bother following college sports are people who live in a university town without pro sports or college graduates.
PatrickRsGhost@reddit
I think it's because college sports tend to feel more local. While some of the players do come from other states, a lot of them come from a city or town in the same state as the college itself. So you have that sense of hometown pride.
Even if they're not from the same town as the college itself, there's still that sense of hometown pride when some kid from, say, Alpharetta joins the Georgia Bulldogs or Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets as a defense tackle or small forward and helps the team win the regional or national championship.
It's stronger than when some team like the Atlanta Braves or Chicago Bears win a championship, stacked with players from all over the country, most of them traded from other teams and not recruited from college or high school teams.
Supermac34@reddit
College Sports pre-dated Pro Sports (in many sports, such as football) by many decades (50-70 years).
hunkerd0wn@reddit
The civil war
colliedad@reddit
Let's reverse the question: what sports are there being played in other countries that would be good candidates for college teams in those places? Soccer has its own huge structure, so probably not them. Rugby? Cricket? Basketball in a few places?
Crafty_Visit4115@reddit (OP)
Hockey in Canada maybe but Canadians tend to view university as a place solely for learning, at least to a much larger extent than Americans.
WhatABeautifulMess@reddit
Hockey has more kids go pro/juniors rather than college compared to at least American Football. I think other sports as well, but I'm less familiar with those. The vast majority of NFL players come through NCAA football.
colliedad@reddit
And that's probably true in the other countries as well. In the U.S. college sports is a pipeline to professional sports. Most fail the filter, but a few get through.
icyDinosaur@reddit
Most European countries have multiple team sports that are popular, even if they don't come close to football/soccer in popularity. But they are often organised very similarly to European football/soccer.
colliedad@reddit
That makes sense, and keeps the burden of supporting it on the people who are excited about that sport. U.S. colleges spend an inordinate amount of attention on sports venues and programs. ure, they pretty much pay their own way, but why is this a specific college function? (You'll be able to guess I went to a small school.)
Lopied2@reddit
Because America got the British tradition of "sports with education" but just made it much, much more common and with more sports. It's a protestant thing really.
Jonathon_G@reddit
College is super different in the US than it is in most other parts of the world
FabulousDiscussion80@reddit
50 states all with their own universities sets up a lot of Interstate and Regional rivalries. The sheer number of college teams provides opportunities for so many students to compete.
schwepervesence@reddit
In Alabama, college football is king. High school football is right behind it.
SavannahInChicago@reddit
Shameless capitalism. Those schools profit so very much off of college sports. So much money comes in from them.
Severe-Pomelo-2416@reddit
I think it is because we have always put amateur sporting on a pedestal. Baseball existed as a major league sport for 12 years before Cincinatti paid players in 1869. Football started as a college sport for 40 years before the first paid player in 1892.
Mayes041@reddit
I think a lot of other people have made good points that are a bigger factor than what I'll say. But I think another aspect here is that college sports are tied to a location. If you like University of Florida athletics, it's always been in Gainesville. You can have generations of traditions and passionate fans form around your college teams.
But our pro teams are privately owned. When I was in Baltimore I heard so much about how much people loved the Baltimore Colts. Then basically overnight the team packed up and moved to Indianapolis. One guy said his dad was the biggest fan you ever saw but after the Colts left he never watched another football game. I think the private structure stops people from connecting with pro teams here. In the UK your team might suck, but they've always been your team and always will be. But in the U.S. that team you had so much passion for can up and leave when a billionaire thinks they can make more money. I think that's a non trivial part of why college sports can attract more fanatics. It can be more personal
Charlesinrichmond@reddit
college culture is very different in the US, and a much bigger deal. Only equivalent I've seen in Europe is the Oxford Cambridge Boat race etc
nx01a@reddit
In some states, the colleges are pretty much the only economic drivers of note or the only opportunity for professional sports, so it tends to be more of a focus. Same with high school sports in some areas.
Awkward_Tip1006@reddit
Probably because that’s how the culture is, college sports in America are huge, you can get a scholarship to play a sport at a university, in Europe the sports are rec level to play for fun with friends and there’s some local soccer teams that are higher level than rec
MarionberryPlus8474@reddit
I saw a documentary with Steven Fry where he went o (I think) a Clemson football game. He was overwhelmed by the intensity as well as the huge production involved—big marching bands, fireworks, etc. He said that things going on like this all over the country even in small and medium sized cities was a remarkable display of wealth. I never thought of it but it’s true.
ayebrade69@reddit
I believe he was at the 07 Iron Bowl
Boogerchair@reddit
Money
solrac1144@reddit
$$$$$$$
Slight_Manufacturer6@reddit
Maybe because colleges in the U.S. are more private than in other countries so they put a greater effort into promoting it and making it big.
Voodoo330@reddit
State pride. I don't think people in other countries identify with their home state quite like the US does. College sports gives state pride and state rivalries, which have become huge.
icyDinosaur@reddit
Swiss people do this a lot too, to the point we have our own word for it, but we channel it through professional clubs.
Predictor92@reddit
American Football and Basketball ( Basketball less so due to the YMCA though) started or gained popularity as college sports, the NFL and NBA were founded to take advantage of the popularity of these college sports, not the other way around.
zmj82@reddit
This is it. Arguably both were invented at colleges. I also agree with people saying only sports in the region.
pgm123@reddit
Completely true, but I do wonder why. Professional basketball existed from the early 1900s at least at a semi-pro level (players couldn't support themselves playing full time until the 1920s). I know part of it was reputation (the pro game was considered violent for ruffians), but that doesn't totally answer why that happened or why that mattered.
fatpad00@reddit
I would guess a huge reason professional sports as we know it exist is because of TV.
Advertising money probably made a unified national league viable.
ants_taste_great@reddit
It's just that most countries tend to have clubs for athletics. In the US, universities became the clubs. But even that is starting to change a bit as we have moved to specialized schools like IMG, multiple prep schools, etc.
Paul721@reddit
Well in general it’s only football and basketball which are big collegiate sports in the US. Hockey the vast majority of players who make it to the NHL do not play collegiately. Same for baseball. Sure there is still potential pathway but it is not the norm.
Apocalyptic0n3@reddit
Two key things:
Adorable_Dust3799@reddit
College sports are the stepping stone to pro. Athletes are recruited in high school for college teams, and sucess at the college level means being scouted for pro. They'll spend time in the lower level teams before moving up, but the big scouting is done in college.
DankBlunderwood@reddit
I believe you're thinking about it in the wrong way. Americans don't actually care about "college sports" in general, we care about two specific college sports: football and basketball. The reason is because these sports *originated* with colleges and only half a century later did anyone think to form a professional league. Those fan bases are therefore much older and entrenched. The other feature of college sports that appeals to fans is that they will never move. Professional teams are here one day and tomorrow they may decide another city will make a better home. That won't happen in college.
Vast_Iron_9333@reddit
In the late 1800s there was a huge physical education movement in the United States that made it's way into college campuses..the idea was that physical education was essential part of developing soldiers and was lacking among the Union forces during the civil war. As the U.S. became a military power we have fully embraced a sports centric culture that has made its way fully into schools and universities.
College football became a popular spectator sport before there was ever a pro league. Why it became so popular, I can't say, but football is a great spectator sport, so if the only league was a college league it wouldn't surprise me that it became popular in its day. Due to its success, schools started giving scholarships to attract the most talented players, backed by "boosters" who were either wealthy alumni who were fans or businesses that sponsored the teams for advertisting purposes. Later college basketball gained some popularity and the same thing happened. The school's reputation became connected to its general athletics success so they all began to offer scholarships in all sports not just football and basketball.
In the 70s, the supreme Court ruled in what became known as title IX, that every university athletics program had to give equal funding and opportunities to female athletes as they did to the men, so by rule women's athletics were put on equal footing, and they grew in funding and participation with the men's programs.
Later in the 80s ESPN took advantage of the burgeoning cable TV industry, focusing primarily on broadcasting college games to fans across America that weren't being aired on TV before. Television money started entering the world of college sports, which led to today's climate where athletics departments have enormous budgets, coaches of college football teams make millions and the players can make millions on NIL deals, some becoming household names since their games are broadcast nationwide like the pros.
It all started though because after the civil war we made an investment in teaching physical education and e.g. sports in our schools. Now it's an essential part of the American experience, I couldn't imagine an America without sports, sports and more sports.
BocaGrande1@reddit
College sports aren’t big . Football and basketball are big everything else exists because of them and or title 9 . College football & basketball are effectively minor league feeder systems for professional sports. This set up does not exist elsewhere in the world . Their ability to draw large crowds and pull in revenue is mostly due to the location usually being in places without a strong professional team set up and ability to pull on heart strings of alumni
ArchitectureNstuff91@reddit
I think that's just how the system developed. Started out as an Ivy League thing, then it spread from there.
s_m_t_x@reddit
The US is VERY big. People in smaller communities still like rooting for something. Why not where you went school? Not that different than smaller club soccer in Europe
FireHammer09@reddit
Our professional sports where you "know the guy" and are just regular but athletically amazing people don't really exist. So it's college.
P00PooKitty@reddit
Having a billion of them everywhere
socabella@reddit
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned yet, Americans take sports seriously from a young age. Kids are pushed to train in sports from elementary school and it isn’t seen as purely fun the way it is other countries (where sports aren’t taken as seriously until kids are older).
Kids as young as 7 will train daily and travel to compete nationally in sports. High school games are televised where I live because many of the players will go pro and people want to follow their journey.
AdRevolutionary2881@reddit
Is beaver a senior?
nathanwilson26@reddit
In the us 2 of the 4 major sports football and basketball became popular well before their professional leagues ever began. College football was more popular than the NFL through at least the 1950s. And college basketball was more popular than the NBA through the the 70s.
So college sports have a longer history to develop their fan base. These sports also benefit from still being entertaining even when the players are not as talented as professionals. The drama of college football is in part due to its unpredictable nature. The final four’s one and done format makes for extremely entertaining and high stakes games.
These sports remain popular because gambling.
whyisthissticky@reddit
Population. In 2024 there were 19 million university students in the US. In 2024 there were 2.4 million. There are just more athletes (and fans) in America.
Primary_Excuse_7183@reddit
Big country. there’s only so many pro teams but there’s an appetite for localized sports.
College bridged the gap.
Top_Forever_2854@reddit
money
Kman17@reddit
So I think the best mental model is to really kind of compare it to how European soccer works.
In Europe, each country has their own professional soccer league - such that every midsize town has a "pro" sports club.
Then, they have their "champions" league, where the top 20-30 clubs from across Europe compete in a championship. Typically, those 20-30 correspond to the top metro areas (ie, the successful / storied clubs with larger fanbases and money).
In essence, the European systems basically let midsize cities have less competitive "pro" teams where relegation and poaching of players kind of naturally feeds into top teams.
In the US, midsize cities don't have "pro" teams - only the top 20-30 metro areas do. The smaller cities instead have big time college teams. Then the pro teams select players from the colleges when they graduate.
It ends up being shockingly similar, functionally. European relegation systems aren't *technically* a farm system, but lets be real - in practice it kind of is.
ninjomat@reddit
European soccer grew up in an industrialised continent where most places were already settled with small towns and cities that were urbanising. It makes sense in that landscape that towns and sports clubs affiliated to them became the essence of the sport.
In the US at the same time aside from the east coast and the Great Lakes regions a lot of the country was still rural frontier. The universities were set up as part of territories (see the morril land grant act) often before any big towns were there that would play host to civic instructions for clubs to become attached to.
If I live in Bridgeport Connecticut in the late 19th century there’s so many things going on in my town, or just the town over. A baseball team might be formed for the factory workers, or the fire department, the local army regiment, just to represent the town itself or there’ll be enough people in town with disposable income and free time to start a team.
If I live on a ranch in Nebraska having gone out there to homestead, there’s nothing like that. The only place of any size is Lincoln which the government set out as the big town and is funding a university there to provide rural and agricultural education. That’s where I have to go to find a team and the college team is the biggest show in a small town without much else.
Lotan44@reddit
I mean even smaller cities or towns have big football clubs in some cases too. Newcastle are playing in the champions league this season and it's the 16th biggest city in England and Sunderland are one of the most successful clubs in England and it's the 35th biggest city
Kman17@reddit
I mean sure, you get "exception proves the rule" types of cases and historical oddities.
Just like how Green Bay Wisconsin has been an NFL powerhouse.
ninjomat@reddit
The morril land grant act is a huge part of it. In rural areas on the frontier, colleges had more financial stability than most emerging civic institutions and so they became the heart of their communities, and their sports teams came to draw far more attention.
Compare that to urban areas in the heart of the original 13 colonies where baseball teams tended to grow around well established civic institutions, workplaces, factories, athletic clubs, military regiments etc.
BusterBluth13@reddit
~100 years ago in Europe, sporting clubs were sprouting up and playing soccer and other sports. The colleges filled that role in the US.
Redbubble89@reddit
Because not every village of 40,000 has a non-league soccer club.
Between South Carolina, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and the Dakotas have nothing. Even Missouri is going to be down to the Cardinals and hockey soon. Oklahoma only has basketball. They aren't small states either.
adhdnme@reddit
Don’t forget Kentucky! We don’t have professional sports either, so we adopt the closest team in every sport, generally.
Practical-Ordinary-6@reddit
College football predates NFL pro football by decades. It basically invented and pioneered the game in the US. It was colleges and college coaches who came up with the rules and evolved the game into its modern form. Serious rivalries existed from day one. It was a rough and tumble game that suited the American culture even in educational institutions. Mind and body. It was the pro game feeding off the established college game that allowed it to even exist in the first place. That history is different than that of baseball, which was a game that didn't develop through the college system and even to this day is not as tied to colleges as football is. All the best football players come from college teams where they hone their skills whereas in baseball lots of players come up through the minor leagues and don't go near a college.
Dave_A480@reddit
Because the US doesn't have the same sort of sports pipelines that international soccer does.....
There's no league relegation, and club sports only recently became a thing....
For most of the history of pro sports, with the exception of baseball, the path to major league fame was high school varsity play followed by college....
Baseball it was high school to minor league play (baseball having the closest thing to soccer's relegation system you'll find in the US)....
So college sports got big as a way of watching the next generation of stars before they hit the big time..
Also it's big-est among populations that never have any chance of attending the colleges in question..... Especially in states without a pro team.....
Acceptable_Slice_325@reddit
We're stupidly rich and can pour insane amounts of resources into all kinds of sports and colleges alike, so the quality of those sports is way higher as a spectator.
-Random_Lurker-@reddit
Entire states full of wide rural areas with not much else in them to do.
ELMUNECODETACOMA@reddit
Just a clarification in case it gets lost - college football and baseball are big for the reasons given. There is no equivalent popularity of college baseball because baseball did have a professional league structure well before 1900.
Minor league baseball was quite sumilar in structure to association football in the rest of the world, with semi-pro teams even in tiny towns, and an organized structure of independent professional leagues in larger and larger cities up to the majors.
The exact relationships changed over time, and what we have today only vaguely resembles even 100 years ago, but even now baseball is a totally different animal.
adultdaycare81@reddit
You have to remember how big and populous in America is. Our college system is the size and scope of a European football league.
Sweaty-Speed6506@reddit
Americans love sports, and there are a large amount of states that don’t have pro nfl teams. Also from my experience, college kids play the game a lot harder than NFL players because they are competing for a place in professional football, whereas NFL players are playing for a paycheck that they recieve whether or not they win that game.
dangleicious13@reddit
The lack of independent lower division professional leagues and professional academies.
BlaggartDiggletyDonk@reddit
For starters, other countries don't really have college sports to begin with.
BeauLimbo@reddit
Also think the USA has a much more sophisticated system for sports broadcast and a large enough audience to watch. College football and basketball programs can get a LOT of money from TV deals, it's often the money from those (and all the various licensing deals for merch/jerseys, etc) that fund other sports programs with less of an avid following.
RichardRichOSU@reddit
A few factors are involved that can be traced back 100-150 years ago. High School sports are big, so college sports are almost an extension of that. This goes back. Collegiate sports were bigger around the world in the 1800s as a whole, with the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race jumping out as a major sporting event that even continues to this day. Lastly, professional sports were viewed as a less savory profession, which you can see with the advent of the modern Olympics (we can set aside reality since perception is what matters here). Professional sports didn’t become a big deal in the United States until about the 1920s, with Babe Ruth becoming the first sports celebrity in this country. At this point, college football was well established and the popularity of this spread to other sports as a way for people connected to the area to have pride in their region.
4Q69freak@reddit
Pro baseball was popular before Babe Ruth. Pro baseball’s popularity goes back to the end of the 19th century. Ty Cobb, “Shoeless”Joe Jackson, Cy Young,and Honus Wagner were all stars before Ruth.
Pro football was becoming popular in the ‘20s with company sponsored teams like the Indian Packing Company Packers and the Decatur Staleys forming the NFL in the late ‘20s. But college football was already a popular sport.
College basketball was also already popular before the ABL was formed in 1925 (it later merged with the NBL in 1949 to form the NBA).
To tie these altogether, there was this guy who was a star in all three sports at the University of Illinois from 1913-17. He was an outfielder with the Yankees in 1919, before being hired by the A.E. Staley company of Decatur, IL to be a player coach for their company football team. He bought the team the next year and moved them to Chicago. George Halas changed their name to the Bears to relate to baseball’s Cubs and changed their colors to orange and blue to honor his Alma mater’s colors.
kyrokip@reddit
Colleges are often in towns with no professional teams. It gave residents something to root for.
SteadfastEnd@reddit
It is mainly that the U.S. has no meaningful junior leagues in pro sports (almost nobody cares about minor league baseball.) Also, college sports leads directly to players being drafted into pro sports.
Cowboywizard12@reddit
Attending Minor League Baseball games is hella fun, they generally have good food and the tickets are so reasonably priced.
Of course baseball is the only sport I follow so I'm biased
BlueSoloCup89@reddit
Minor league baseball and minor league hockey are criminally underrated. Though minor league hockey probably gets a bit more fan support.
HereandThere96@reddit
Money, money, money. College football makes tons of money. In Texas, the highest paid state employees are the head football coaches at the biggest state universities.
BlueSoloCup89@reddit
I think this may be the scenario in a majority of the states now. It definitely is when including basketball coaches as well.
Cinisajoy2@reddit
And the coaches at high school and college level can lose their jobs if the team has a losing season.
HereandThere96@reddit
True. But $5m goes a long way even if you're only there 1 or 2 seasons.
Cinisajoy2@reddit
High school coaches don't make that much.
blipsman@reddit
College sports often predate their professional counterparts! At the point the NFL was founded, college football had already been around for over 50 years!
Cowboywizard12@reddit
Othe countri3s don't have bored Southerners.
The southern obsession with college sports is fucking baffling to me. They'll root for a college even though they never went to college at all.
Its like Southerners Value the sports more than the education.
Which is just a fucking backwards way to look at higher education
Catalina_Eddie@reddit
Large swaths of the country with no professional sports team.
ssk7882@reddit
In many parts of the country, you'd have to travel for many, many miles to see a professional sports team play. The local teams are college ones.
SabresBills69@reddit
unlike in other parts of the world, college sports is used as a developmental program for professional athletes. in Europe soccer teams sign and develop their prospects around 12-16 yrs old. baseball does this with Latin American countries.
major college sports are in smaller cities away from large markets where they are the only thing locally in terms of bigger sports
in college the big sports are basketball and football. a littke less for ice hockey. For baseball and other sports there isn’t as much money making asvwithbthe others. In baseball , most only get a partial scholarship. Same with other secondary sports.
Cinisajoy2@reddit
Sports brings in money to the schools.
Eat--The--Rich--@reddit
Money. It makes a shit load of money. Any time you have to ask why something is the way it is in America, the answer is money.
Mrs_Noelle15@reddit
Alot of places that don’t have a professional sports team support their college teams instead.
Ecstaticleaper@reddit
you can make alot of money from it, America is the capitalist king and if you can get people to pour money not only into the expensive schooling but also expensive games (and those games have overpriced food and constantly try to sell you merch) it’ll stay around
TillikumWasFramed@reddit
College sports tend to get big in states where (1) the state team is good, and (2) the state in question does not have a team in the national league in that sport. E.g. University of Alabama football, a state that does not have an NFL team; University of Kentucky basketball in a state that does not have an NBA team.
(I'm not saying college sports are SOLELY popular in such states, but I think it's the case for a lot of states.)
Penguin_Life_Now@reddit
Paid television coverage, College Sports were not nearly as big as they are today until the Universities started getting paid BIG money for television broadcast rights about 40 years ago.
MyUsername2459@reddit
Until pretty recently almost All pro sports were in the largest cities especially to the eastern US.
In a lot of the country there simply is no major professional team nearby. The highest level of sports played outside the largest cities is at the college level.
There are a number of states where there is no major professional teams.
When combined with the fact that the highest level college sports function as a feeder system for the professional leagues, meaning they attract the best talent early in their careers, this makes college sports have a lot of prominence across most of the country.
Tommy_Wisseau_burner@reddit
https://youtu.be/XtfdbvmK78c?si=_2GguMfOrhbC8Byb
DOMSdeluise@reddit
the professional leagues using them as free developmental leagues means there is a lot more attention on them. also at this point it's just inertia - if you go to, say, an SEC school, it's going to be pretty easy to get real caught up in the sports culture if you care about sports at all.