I know that the answer is ‘scholarships’ for college, but like, why? I’m in the UK and even schools that have a big reputation for sport are nowhere near as intense as the states. Reading parenting subs atm talking about signing up 5 year olds for specific sports so that they’ll have a shot of making the team in high school. That just feels insane to me.
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you are vastly over estimating how hard highschool sport is to get into. If you have never played a sport before highschool, you can probiably make the team. No one I know watches highschool sport except maybe their home team at home comming, or if their child is playing. but do well in highschool sports and you are more likely to get a college scholarship.
College is not even that big except for basketball and baseball
5 year olds are on sports teams because its good exercise and an opportunity to work as a team, and because they usually want to.
Money, mostly.
But it also very much depends on the state said sport/child is in.
A football team in… Idaho isn’t going to be nearly as competitive as a big school in Texas
It’s partially lottery ticket, partially hoping they can get “free” education at the next level because of early investment.
It’s a source of revenue for the college. Having sports teams builds nostalgia and loyalty towards the school in alumni and that makes them more likely to donate money. With D1 schools (the big universities where sports are televised) having successful sports teams means more people have heard about the school. The sports teams themselves also bring in revenue through ticket sales.
It’s similar to yohr local FC.
Except they’re children and people put as much pressure on the teenage athletes as they would players of their local club
Size, population density, and culture. If you’re in the UK, you’re never too far (relatively) to a decent professional football squad. In the midwestern U.S., you could be 500 miles from your nearest top-level professional team. There’s just not enough money and population for even lower-level professional teams to make sense. So all the tribal sports solidarity has to find another outlet, and that’s high school or college sports.
That’s for the fandom part. For the competition to make teams part, that’s just in prestigious, selective schools with students trying to get into prestigious, selective schools, and having sufficiently wealthy parents to go all out.
Tradition is a part of it. College sports go back to at least the turn of the 20th Century. A lot of the places that are most into college sports also don’t have a pro sports team – if you’re from, say, Alabama and love football, college might be much more attractive than rooting for Atlanta or New Orleans or something.
Said place also tend to have a lot of local/ regional pride, and with fewer pro teams or other outlets to express that pride, college sports make a good proxy.
Incidentally, high school baseball is pretty big in Japan, though I couldn’t say why specifically.
For football, back in the day college was the Premier League. The pros were just getting started . College also has a smaller market to work with. Yokals love them. I could be wrong on a lot but look at S.E.C. football. Creme a la creme. My Pac 10 or 12, or now the Pac 6 can’t compete in football.. R.I.P the league of Champions. Had a few sorry, and good luck
States have their own economies. Cities and towns all have their own economies. It’s all about attracting people to your city to sell them shit so you can fix some roads.
In other countries there are sports clubs organising by themselves. Structures outside of government reach, civil society.
High school and college athletes do not get paid. Schools with big sports programs make a ton of money off of it, so they have plenty of money for scholarships. You have to remember that everything in America is for profit, and we do love our free labor.
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