I was talking with my brother about this today because college softball was on TV today. He brought up a very good point. I wrote a post speculating why we don't care about college baseball, but he brought up a very good point that I hadn't considered.
The two main colleges sports we care about is football and basketball. But he said that's because those sports originated in the college game and then became professional sports. Football was originally created by the Ivy Leagues schools as an off shoot of rugby. Basketball was created by Dr. James Naismith based off of a childhood game that he perfected while he attended college and subsequently first caught on in college. But baseball did not start off in the college ranks. The MLB has a rich history dating back to the mid to late 1800s and then became a college game.
So throughout history, America has watched college football and basketball and only professional baseball. But because America likes professional more than amateur sports, we of course grew to like the NBA and the NFL (and its professional roots). But since baseball was already professional, America tended to ignore it when collegiate athletes played it. And why should they watch the college ranks, they were essentially already watching the best of the best anyway?
Now I like this theory a lot. But I also think mine theory of the minor league system and foreigners holds its weight as well. Since apparently Baseball Prospectus is losing all of its top talent anyway, maybe they could do a professional historical and sociological study to find the exact causal link. I am really curious about this issue and am open to all legitimate ideas.
Also Journalissimo, maybe if you actually wrote for this blog you could have written this piece, but now I call dibs on all copyright! Woo hoo!
I blame the aluminum bats. Seriously, baseball is played with wood. There are so many players who excel at the collegiate level despite not having baseball "skills" that it takes away from the game. I doubt i could follow and care about college baseball, even if it was big, simply because the stats are almost meaningless. It's worse than pumping steroids into every college player.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree aluminum bats inflate stats and that may play a factor, I think it's negligible.
ReplyDeleteCollege basketball has a smaller 3 pt line so its easier for college kids to make threes. College QBs run a shit ton and have different "non-pro" style offenses that inflate QB stats (just look at Tim Tebow and Graham Harrell). All college sports have things that make the athletes look better than they are.
If college baseball went to wood bats, I think people would still not care about the sport