This week I will be stepping over from my normal perch at Karr's Chronicles to the Toe-to-Toe section for a friendly debate with Mr. Rose about college athletics at a broad level. Now that the college basketball season has ended, there is a noticeable void in college athletic coverage at the national level. The fall season highlights college football, the winter highlights college basketball, and the spring currently highlights nothing, creating a void that is begging to be filled. Jordan's answer is lacrosse; my answer is baseball.
Football and basketball have at least one key feature in common that makes both sports highly marketable at the national level, and that is the absence of substantial climate advantages for certain regions of the country. This may seem obvious, but national appeal is a feature that no spring sport currently shares with football and basketball, making nationwide broadcasting difficult.
There is an argument to be made that football teams are more successful in warmer climates, and recent success by Florida and LSU would lend credence to that claim. However, programs like Michigan and Ohio State and, more historically, Pittsburgh and Dartmouth demonstrate that there are no significant regional advantages in the sport. Sure, USC and Florida win a lot of football championships, but so does the Big Ten.
In basketball, there are even fewer regional advantages, since games are played indoors, obviously. Schools from all areas of the country have been successful, from Duke and North Carolina in the East, to UCLA and Stanford out West, to Kansas, Indiana and Kentucky in the Midwest. Fans everywhere can support their local basketball team knowing that there is always a chance of winning a championship.
Spring sports, in contrast, are riddled with regional advantages that make national appeal less likely. College baseball has been dominated by teams from warm-weather climate areas, and the reason is primarily that teams are able to play outside year round, while teams from cold-weather climate areas are forced to improvise with less-than-ideal indoor facilities. The same argument can be made for tennis. And while college lacrosse does not have regional climate advantages, it does have a strong regional appeal that isolates interest in the sport to the Northeast region.
So which is the most likely to garner national support and become the marquee collegiate sport of the spring season? Jordan will probably argue that lacrosse is the most exciting spring sport, and that its appeal is spreading from its Northeast base of operations. I disagree with neither point. However, the support for lacrosse is not national, and it won't be for quite some time. My large, public high school in Indiana did not offer lacrosse, and you would be hard-pressed to find many high school lacrosse teams in the Midwest. With nearly all lacrosse players coming from one region of the country, and with almost all major teams congregated in one area of the country, how can collegiate lacrosse become a sport that is regularly broadcasted nationwide? I find it highly unlikely.
In contrast, nationwide support for baseball is already there. Baseball is, lest you forget, America's national pastime, and that is a huge advantage for gaining increased exposure for collegiate baseball players. Furthermore, the college baseball season starts in late February, meaning that baseball fans who can't wait for the Major League season to begin in April can watch a full month of collegiate baseball while they wait for the pros to begin play. But college baseball is rarely broadcast before the College World Series tournament, and that is a shame. A concerted marketing campaign to get people to watch baseball should have no problems getting national ratings surpassing the potential of any other spring sport.
The avid baseball fan base is a profitable market, and broadcasting companies should take advantage of this fan base to generate nationwide viewership for the collegiate baseball season. Not only is the quality of baseball very high, the storylines are more intriguing, if less glamorous, than A-Rod gossip. Every year we hear new fascinating stories about collegiate baseball programs for a week or two during the College World Series, but why can't we hear them more often? The month of March poses an opportunity for broadcasters to hook baseball fans before the Major League season starts, and that support could very well carry over throughout the season. There are always times in April, May and June where baseball fans are fed up with their favorite Major League team. If broadcasters would build up support for collegiate baseball earlier on, baseball fans could have somewhere else to turn, some other team to support, and collegiate baseball athletes could finally get the acknowledgment they deserve.
