Stadium Capacity

[tarcanes92]

College American Football? Really, They get 100,000 people to watch College Football? Thats like our equlivent of Filling up Old Trafford, Emirates Stadium or Even Wembley for a Youth League or FA Cup Match or a NextGen Series Match.

sort of, but not quite...

(just to establish, football will stand for American football)

99.9% of football players in the US play for their high school team. When they graduate, their only realistic option of having a pro career is to first play college football since the NFL has a rule that you can not be drafted until 3 years after your graduating high school class. So, the best players between ages 18-22 are playing college football. Unlike baseball and hockey, there isn't a minor leauge or juniors system for the player to go into nor can you go pro right after high school.

College Football (which is amature) became popular in the 1890s to 1900s. Professional football didn't become popular until the 1950s (the NFL started in the 1920s), part of which was due to the popularity of TV. The college game was the popular version when it started.

Since college football became popular before TV, they needed large stadiums. The Yale bowl (for Yale University) was built in the 1910s and had 70,000 seats. Most large college stadiums are old, have been expanded upon multiple times and tend to have cheaper seats. NFL stadiums, on the other hand, are new and full of luxury boxes since they need to generate money to pay the players.

Colleges and universities of today's biggest and most popular teams (who are also the ones with the largest stadiums) are state sponsored schools, so they appeal to the general population. They have alot of alumni (schools that have existed for 150 to 225 years) and your university isn't going to threaten to move. So there is a lot of loyalty to the school that goes beyond football. The NFL, while it has a large number of fans, teams are newer (10 to 90 years) and can threaten to move. NFL loyalty can be a bit more fickle.

College football is played on Saturday. You can watch games from noon to midnight on 8 or more different channels. You can choose from 20 or so different games each Saturday. There are no blackouts (there is no 3 pm blackout like in the UK). Any team can be on tv. If you have a 100,000 seat stadium and only 80,000 show up, you can still be on tv. The NFL, on the other hand, is played on Sunday. The home stadium has to sell-out by Thursday or the game is blackedout in their home market. So smaller stadiums help ensure sellouts and the game will be on tv. Until the 1970s, the NFL actually blacked out all games in their home market, even if they were sell-outs.

Some of the largest college stadiums are in the south east (which lacks the large cities of the north east and midwest) and didn't have any pro football teams until more recently. So, college football was their only option. Currently there are 124 colleges playing top level football. Of those 124, about 60 of them are seen as the best schools in the top conferences. The NFL has 32 teams and just about all of there are in large cities.

College football needs money to pay their coaches (top coaches earn millions), to upgrade their stadium, practice facilities and travel. Money comes from tickets, tv contracts, alumni donations and student fees. NFL teams pay all of the above and also have to pay multi million dollars in salaries. The money comes from tickets, tv contracts, and corprate sponsors who buy luxury boxes in their stadiums.

Last, you have 300+ million americans with disposable income who could potentially fill football stadiums. The UK has 60+ million people to fill their stadiums. Large metropolitian areas in the US have fewer popular teams. Chicago has 1 NFL team and 3 popular collage teams in their area (only 1 that is actually in Chicago). London has 9 teams in the PL/championship. So the fan base of American football teams tend to be more city and regionally (state) based (commercial on the rivalry between Alabama University and Auburn, two schools in the state of Alabama, whose fans cover the entire state Alabama vs. Auburn Nursing Home - YouTube). Teams in the UK are more neighborhood based. (funny American ESPN commercial on the subject ESPN Commercial | Born Into It - YouTube)

That wound up being longer than I thought it would be...

[July Fourth]

That wound up being longer than I thought it would be...

Well I don't mind it being that long because its a very good explaination of why College Football in the United States is very popular.

So most of the best players that play American Football are actually in the college system as opposed to the NFL?

[tarcanes92]

Well I don't mind it being that long because its a very good explaination of why College Football in the United States is very popular.

So most of the best players that play American Football are actually in the college system as opposed to the NFL?

The best players are in the NFL (age 22 and up), but 99.99% of them played college football in the NCAA (between ages 18-23).

The typical path of an NFL player....

You play youth football as a kid (Pop Warner is a popular organization...the Little Leauge (baseball) of football, if you get that reference). You pay a few bucks to join the leauge. You play outside of school against other kids in the community.

When you are a teenager, you play high school football. You play for the school you go to for grades 9-12. If you are good, college coaches will recruit you and try to convince you to come to their school. You then sign with your college. A high school graduate is usually 18 years old.

You go to college/university (the terms basically mean the same thing in the US) for 3 to 5 years. The maximum you can play is four years. Some players train for a year with their team but don't appear in any games (known as redshirting....if you redshirt a year, you can still play for 4 years). Really good players won't redshirt and they may leave college after 3 years. Most stay for 4 or 5 years. Players leave college when they are 22 or 23. If they want to keep playing, they apply for the NFL draft.

The NFL holds a draft in the spring. Anyone who is 3 years past their high school graduation can apply. Teams then pick players for seven rounds. The team that picks first is the worst team from the previous season. So, the best players from college go to the worst teams in the NFL to try to improve them. The team that drafts you is the only one that can sign you to a contract. The player has no say in what team he plays for. After a few seasons and your contract expires you can sign with another team as a free agent. If a player is never drafted, he can be signed as a free agent too.

Other notes:
All of the US 4 main sports use the draft concept. It helps to prevent dynasties. It helps smaller market teams get good players. So, it helps prevent situations like Manchester United getting the best young players. Since free agency exists, teams that have more money can spend for older, better players when their contract is finished with their older team as a way to improve their team. So, US teams can be like Man U and spend alot of money to get good players. If you pay attention to US sports, you will notice that there is alot more turnover at the top and who our champions are. Its not like the Premier League being dominated by Man U and with only 4 others getting a chance to win the title.

NCAA is the main league for college sports. It has 4 levels for football. In order from best to worst: Division I - FBS, Division I - FCS, Divsion II, and Division III. Division I - FBS is the one that gets 95% of the media coverage (games on tv, sports recap shows, talk on sports radio). The teams at a certain level join a conference so you have common opponents every year. You also get to pick a choose some out of conference opponents. Division I - FBS has all of the popular universities (like Notre Dame, Alabama, USC, Michigan). They spend the most on football (but you can't pay the players), have the biggest stadiums and get the best high school players by offering them a scholarship to their school (the scholarship gives them a free education). The maximum scholarship players on the team is 85. Division I-FCS is the next step below. They spend less, don't have as good players, and only get 65 scholarships. Division II offers less. Divsion III offers none. Most Division I - FBS schools play 1 Division I - FCS school each year. Those games have scores around 70 -7 (which would by like 10-1 in soccer).

If you were wondering: Division I - FBS stands for football bowl subdivision and Division I - FCS stands for football championship subdivision. FBS schools play in bowls at the end of the regular season. The Rose bowl, sugar bowl, Orange bowl, and Fiesta bowls are the biggest. The bowls invite champions or runner-ups of conferences to play just 1 postseason game. Fans didn't like this because #1 and #2 weren't playing each other in the postseason, so about ten years ago the BCS championship game was invented to be a national championship game. FCS schools play a knockout tournament at the end of the season to determine the champion.

Schools are allowed to change levels. To "move up" from Division I - FCS to Divsion I - FBS, you need to have a certain amount of fans at home games, a certain size stadium, a certain number of ther sports at your university that you offer scholarships for (basketball, soccer, track and field, lacrosse, swimming, etc), and of course money. It is sort of like being promoted, but its not based on onfield performance. There is no promotion or regulation on the US professional sports.

How NCAA conferences work:
Take Michigan University for example. They are in the Big 10, which has, ironically, 12 teams. The Big 10 just expanded and added 2 new schools to get to 14. (Over the past 4 years, a lot of schools have changed conferences). Those teams play against each other. If Michigan wins the Big 10, they advance to the Rose Bowl to play the winner of the Pac-12. If they are ranked #1 or 2, they go to the BCS championship game. In a few years this will change and become a 4 team play-off. In other sports, like basketball (March madness, the NCAA tournament for Division I (no FBS or FCS subdivsions in baskeball)), a knockout tournament is played at the end of the season to determine the national champion.

hope that helps some (and if you were wondering, yes I'm American, yes I like soccer...and if anyone wondered if the World Cup in the US in 94 led to American fans, I'm one of them.) Watched every World Cup since then, the last two Euros, been to 2 Gold Cup matchs in the US, and watch the occasional EPL game when I can catch them on ESPN (the main EPL contract is with Fox Soccer channel, which I don't get).