Sport Popularity by Region

Rongo · Feb 26, 2012

Patton said:
The roots of the NFL started here in Ohio with the Ohio League in 1908, IIRC. Which might explain why the Cleveland Browns have almost a religious following in these parts. Despite being the worst ran sports organization of three major professional teams in Cleveland, they are always the most talked about.

It is amazing, isn't it? It's scary to think what would happen if the Browns actually won a Super Bowl. (Not that we'll have to worry about that any time soon). Oh well...

HammockHank · Feb 26, 2012

Baseball in Cuba can be traced back to Cuban youth studying in the US during the American Civil War introducing the sport when they returned. The one student mentioned by name is Nemiso Guillo who brought a baseball and a bat back from his studies at Springfield, Alabama in 1864. American sailors also had an influence as they played the sport while docked in harbor.

According to the accounts I researched the game took off like a rocket and it's popularity was linked to it's being played as a form of political protest against the Spanish authority.

By 1868 there was already a club established in Havana and by 1874 a baseball league was formed.

tjadams · Feb 26, 2012

dimmit said:
This is kinda a random topic but I thought I would throw it out there because I find it interesting.

Random topics are the backbone of this board.

Soccer (not Euro football) used to be nothing when I was growing up.
It was baseball, football and basketball.
Now, soccer is played in just about every public & private school. There are
soccer leagues everywhere with thousands of kids, boys & ....., playing. It is
everywhere. I think technically since it is one of the cheaper sports to have, a lot
of schools opt for it.

tjadams · Feb 26, 2012

HammockHank said:
By 1868 there was already a club established in Havana and by 1874 a baseball league was formed.

For spring training, a lot of US baseball clubs, in the teens and 20s, would travel to Cuba and scrimmage the local Cuban teams at Almendares Park and play against José Méndez.

srb7677 · Feb 26, 2012

tjadams said:
Random topics are the backbone of this board.

Soccer (not Euro football) used to be nothing when I was growing up.
It was baseball, football and basketball.
Now, soccer is played in just about every public & private school. There are
soccer leagues everywhere with thousands of kids, boys & ....., playing. It is
everywhere. I think technically since it is one of the cheaper sports to have, a lot
of schools opt for it.

Soccer has also, for a very long time, been the most popular sport played in the world at large. So the fact that the sport is becoming more popular in the USA will allow you to more effectively compete in this truly international sport. Already, your national men's soccer team, whilst perhaps still not yet in the top division of international teams, is growing in quality all the time as new talent is nurtured. And your women's soccer team is already one of the best female soccer teams in the world.

On the other hand, on this side of the Atlantic, baseball is hardly ever, and American football very infrequently, played. Even basketball has relative minority interest here.

The reverse, I believe, is true of our second and third most popular sports, rugby and cricket, which have substantial followings here, but are almost unheard of in the USA.

monsieurdl · Feb 26, 2012

Hockey in Canada, New England, and the Midwest is something vastly underappreciated by the rest of the United States- our major sports network, ESPN, routinely gives it second class status and relegates it below auto racing.

Even though it is treated shabbily, the following of professional and collegiate hockey is very strong regionally. The problems we face here is the NHL trying to put teams in regions where it doesn't belong, and watering down the sport. I often wish that I had access to "Hockey Night In Canada" all the time, but I'm at the mercy of the cable company!

HammockHank · Feb 26, 2012

tjadams said:
For spring training, a lot of US baseball clubs, in the teens and 20s, would travel to Cuba and scrimmage the local Cuban teams at Almendares Park and play against José Méndez.

Yes! Thanks for taking an interest in Cuban baseball, TJ

. Several clubs used Cuba for spring training the latest being the Brooklyn Dodgers in the late 1940's and early fifties.

throughthepastdarkly · Feb 26, 2012

monsieurdl said:
The problems we face here is the NHL trying to put teams in regions where it doesn't belong, and watering down the sport.

The same will soon be true of the NFL where they're exploring the possibility of a market for a professional team in London, which is just plain dopey.

I think the NHL doing what they're doing with Florida, Nashville, Phoenix etc. is trying to stimulate interest to expand the market rather than reward cities that would provide a solid following.... they may take it for granted that Quebec & Hartford will be part of the market but latch on to respective regional powers.

I don't agree with this even from a market-expansion POV; rivalries are crucial to a dedicated following. The NFL has been sensitive to this for years (case in point keeping the cowhands in the NFC east). This new NHL realignment probably aims to do the same, but it will be many years before the rivalries grow for the southern teams if at all.

Ancientgeezer · Feb 26, 2012

srb7677 said:
..................

On the other hand, on this side of the Atlantic, baseball is hardly ever, and American football very infrequently, played. Even basketball has relative minority interest here.

There was an attempt to promote US style baseball in English youth clubs ( as opposed to Englsih and Welsh baseball) in the mid-1960s and several American teams played exhibition games--but it is just too similar to rounders to be taken seriously. You may also recall the attempt to kick-start American football with the NFL promoted World Football League featuring the London Monarchs and the Cologne Centurians amongst others. I understand it collapsed some years ago.[/QUOTE]

The reverse, I believe, is true of our second and third most popular sports, rugby and cricket, which have substantial followings here, but are almost unheard of in the USA.[/QUOTE]
FYI the USA has more active Rugby clubs than the UK, although one suspects that the drinking is more important that the game. George W Bush actually played for Yale! There was a serious attempt to get cricket to the US masses after the 2007 World Cup as the tv rights are now over US$1 billion and even American networks are beginning to notice. But it basically collapsed after trials showed that the attention span required just didn't suit the TV market.

History Chick · Feb 26, 2012

dimmit said:
My understanding is that rugby is very popular in Wales even though it is a English public school boy game.

Union maybe but as far as I can tell, rugby league is no more popular in Wales than it is in England. There's only one Welsh Super League team and they aren't exactly the best team in the league. Rugby is also popular in Australia - seems like half the players and coaches in Super League are Australian. I can't comment on the historical reasons for this though.

FYI the USA has more active Rugby clubs than the UK, although one suspects that the drinking is more important that the game. George W Bush actually played for Yale!

Yeah, rugby is popular at icy league schools but not professionally - I don't think there is any pro rugby in the USA? And what rugby is popular is generally union, I think - though the USA did recently qualify for the first time in history for the 2013 Rugby League World Cup.

redcoat · Feb 26, 2012

While football(soccer), cricket, and rugby are the major sports where I live, there is also a sport which has little following in the rest of the country, but is quite popular in the area (South Manchester/Stockport) where I live.
This is Lacrosse, which has a number of amateur clubs in the region and is played in some local schools.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockport_Lacrosse_Club]Stockport Lacrosse Club - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

dimmit · Feb 27, 2012

MrKap said:
Yeah, James Naismith was a Canadian, and invented it in New England because of the weather.

James Naismith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It could be regional, Basketball doesn't have the following that Hockey does in Canada, although Canada seasonally experiences just as much if not more winter than Indiana or New England.

It's probably largely due to the promoters. In the case of BasketBall, it seems to be largely an academic game with educational institutional support.

Something like Hockey in Canada though, to my understanding just is not an academic sport and is a past time which gained in popularity.

Football, is an ivy league sport to my understanding. All throughout the USA. Moreso than basketball ever was. I am not big on sports, but I would guess based on the spectacle that is the Super Bowl, it's the biggest sport in the USA.

So maybe that says something about the historical clout of the academic institutions in Canada, historically? Maybe they didn't support physical education as much? I don't know. The USA compared to Canada, population wise is enormous by size as well.

Actually McGill University in Canada was the first to introduce the use of an oblong ball to the sport of American and Canadian football. They played Harvard University just after the American Civil War at a time when each university had their own particular code of football (some resembled rugby and others resembled modern soccer). Harvard at the time had a rugby-like code but used a round ball. After the McGill game, they adopted the oblong ball and this Harvard code (called the "Boston game" I believe) was eventually adopted by the other universities in the North East US.

Do Canadian universities not have organized sports programs?

dimmit · Feb 27, 2012

redcoat said:
While football(soccer), cricket, and rugby are the major sports where I live, there is also a sport which has little following in the rest of the country, but is quite popular in the area (South Manchester/Stockport) where I live.
This is Lacrosse, which has a number of amateur clubs in the region and is played in some local schools.

Stockport Lacrosse Club - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting. I played lacrosse in college.

In the United States, lacrosse is a very regional game as well. It is very popular in the Mid Atlantic (Maryland in particular but also Virginia and North Carolina) and very popular on Long Island in New York.

I also believe it is the national sport of Canada.

Ancientgeezer · Feb 27, 2012

tjadams said:
Random topics are the backbone of this board.

Soccer (not Euro football) used to be nothing when I was growing up.
It was baseball, football and basketball.
Now, soccer is played in just about every public & private school. There are
soccer leagues everywhere with thousands of kids, boys & ....., playing. It is
everywhere. I think technically since it is one of the cheaper sports to have, a lot
of schools opt for it.

What do you mean by "Soccer (not Euro football)"?
The word "Soccer" to describe the game now controlled by FIFA derives from "Association Football" as opposed to "Rugby Football" caused by the split in the UK organising body in 1862.

shivfan · Feb 27, 2012

Athletics is popular in Jamaica due to the success of quartermilers Arthur Wint, Herb McKenley and George Rhoden in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics....

Vintersorg · Feb 27, 2012

Soccer is the most popular sport in Belgium (and I wonder why, it's the most boring sport I've ever seen), followed by cycling.

throughthepastdarkly · Mar 1, 2012

Vintersorg said:
Soccer is the most popular sport in Belgium (and I wonder why, it's the most boring sport I've ever seen), followed by cycling.

Ouch.

Fantastic brews, though.

dimmit · Mar 1, 2012

Vintersorg said:
Soccer is the most popular sport in Belgium (and I wonder why, it's the most boring sport I've ever seen), followed by cycling.

It's an easy game to begin to play (all you really need is a round ball) and thus, I think that is the reason it became so popular all over the world.

RusEvo · Mar 1, 2012

dimmit said:
It's an easy game to begin to play (all you really need is a round ball) and thus, I think that is the reason it became so popular all over the world.

Yes it is essentially very simple and any able bodied person can have a go, rich or poor, fit or unfit. But soccer scales nicely also, to the professionals it is a complex and skillfull game.

I dont like it a lot but I see why it is popular.

dimmit · Mar 1, 2012

RusEvo said:
Yes it is essentially very simple and any able bodied person can have a go, rich or poor, fit or unfit. But soccer scales nicely also, to the professionals it is a complex and skillfull game.

I dont like it a lot but I see why it is popular.

Of course. I don't mean it's easy, as in it's easy to master. It's actually a very complex sport.

I meant that it's an easy game for say, a poor kid from Brazil or a poor kid in Africa or maybe a poor kid in Belgium after WWI or WWII, to begin to play.

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Sport Popularity by Region

Rongo

HammockHank

tjadams

tjadams

srb7677

monsieurdl

HammockHank

throughthepastdarkly

Ancientgeezer

History Chick

redcoat

dimmit

dimmit

Ancientgeezer

shivfan

Vintersorg

throughthepastdarkly

dimmit

RusEvo

dimmit

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