I've not followed college football closely,  mainly basketball during march madness, being from Australia so nor much coverage.  It always seems very political and money based.

You know, it's something that I never really thought about before. How big of a thing is college/university athletics outside of the US? Is it even a thing at all? 

The only college sport I've ever been interested in was American Football but only the Bowls and when I used to listen to NFL every Sunday and Monday night on Armed Forces radio from West Germany.

That and, more recently, Augustana Volleyball.

It's a real shame because these upheavals in conference alignment are driven primarily by the finances of football programs (and basketball, to a lesser degree), but there are loads of other college sports--like tennis, track and field, soccer, and women's volleyball--for which these changes make no sense whatsoever, economic or otherwise. Other sports, like men's volleyball and ice hockey, will see no change because their conferences don't align with the traditional conferences in other sports. 

Now that you metion it Jason, it is weird they can't just separate football and basketball conferences from the "Olympic" sports. If some sports already do it like your examples of ice hockey and men's volleyball, why not all of them? 

I'm sure they'd say it's administratively difficult to run different conference set-ups for different sports, and that the ice hockey and men's volleyball situations are unique and based on the limited number of universities that offer those sports at the varsity level. I don't buy it, but I'm sure that's what the argument would be. 

I went to college (well undergrad) at Illinois.  They were always in the Big Ten (when it was really 10 teams (like 1900 or something), not 12 or 14 or 16 or 18).  I don't really love the "let's add a bunch of more teams".

But I totally get that John is extremely frustrated by it.  I would be if my college moved to the "Big East" or (sorry Roy) SEC.  Conferences in collegiate sports have a ton of history.

I appreciate the Augustana comments.  I WILL be telling you when Max is playing (he'll be a senior) in Jan - April.

I also am happy when people like John says "fortunately I have TMVL to put a smile on my face - when OLMEC allows of course."  - That makes me feel good.

Jason has some great comments as well on conferences and Men's Volleyball.  Basically not all (and it sounds weird I guess) big colleges have Men's Volleyball.  It is a niche (small volume) sport at the top division (D-1) level.

Of course the irony in all this is that I would feel bad if we upended any conferences in the fictional TMVL to change things around.  We sort of did in Season 5, but apparently real life has even more chaos and changes!  

Rob - US college/athletics is not really a mainstream thing in the UK and even US pro sports are still quite niche. American football threatens to break through occasionally, and I think the Wembley matches always sell out.  I have vague memories of a world league back in the 80s that looked like it might become a thing but then fizzled out. I think the UK franchise was the London Monarchs.

The Wembley matches sell out pretty easily - I've gone to a few.

For those not in the know, the reason most schools don't have men's volleyball is due to Title IX - schools must have an equal (or equivalent? not sure the actual rule) number of men's and women's athletic scholarships. Problem is American football has 53 players and no equivalent women's sport, so basically every major school has women's soccer but only a few schools have men's soccer as women's soccer helps make up the numbers for scholarships. Same with volleyball, but even more pronounced. Most schools will have club men's volleyball if they don't sponsor scholarships, though, which plays in a different league.

Also had a good discussion with a friend about how badly in debt most of these college schools are - California has the most at over $300m which is insane!! So needing to move conferences to get a better TV deal to help with the annual debt payments is necessary in a post COVID environment. Still is really difficult to process.

John, it's even worse than that. The Football Bowl Subdivision (or "FBS," the highest level of college football in the U.S.) permits each school to give out 85 scholarships. These are "headcount" scholarships, meaning every player who gets a scholarship gets a full scholarship. Total roster sizes range from 105 to around 125. Meanwhile, Division 1 men's soccer programs can give out 9.9 scholarships, and women's soccer programs can give out 14 scholarships. Both sports have rosters in the range of 30 players. And, in the case of both men's soccer and women's soccer (and most other non-football sports, IIRC), these are "equivalency" scholarships, meaning the coaches can divide up the scholarships among the roster by choosing to give out full or partial scholarships. For example, a men's coach could give out half scholarships to two-thirds of his roster, or make the roster top-heavy by giving out only full scholarships to the first team, or spread it out further throughout the roster. My point here in boring you with NCAA athletic regulations is twofold: (1) As John suggested, it takes a lot of scholarships to even out the women's sports with football. (2) The money, and therefore power, imbalance between football and other college sports is obscene and invariably results in football dictating athletic decisions at every major university in the country. To be fair, many schools use money from "revenue" sports like football and basketball to fund their other athletic programs. Nevertheless, it's insane to send your tennis team 2,500 miles across the country for a match on a Wednesday, and whatever money the tennis team gets from football doesn't justify it.

Roger, you have a good memory. The London Monarchs played in the World League of American Football, which then became NFL Europe, which became NFL Europa. It started out in 1991 as a trans-Atlantic league with three teams in Europe (including the Monarchs) and eight or nine in North America. Then it became exclusively a European league, and by the time it ended in 2007, it was composed almost entirely of teams in Germany.

So now I'll ask the flip side... do college sports in your own countries get anywhere near the amount of attention/money/recognition/idolization that they do in the US? I, personally, have never been a fan of watching college sports (there's just way too many schools, sports, too much money going into "academic institutions for athletic purposes" and I'm assuming this is a phenomenom that doesn't exist outside the US. 

Thanks for confirming my recollections Jason and for clarifying the dates. I grew up in Wembley in the 80s and couldn't work out why I wouldn't have gone to the matches, but I was living in Nottingham in the early 90s so that makes sense.

Rob - you are correct, college sports aren't a big event in the UK. Perhaps the only exception (that I can think of) is the annual University Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge, which is a national event that garners massive media attention.  The individual rowers don't tend to get adulation or recognition though.

In Germany e.g. there is no serious level colllege sports.

My alma mater offered recreational sports - like dancing or board games, both attended - but the only "serious " team was our floorball squad.

In the Netherlands we don't have college sports, our colleges don't have sport teams to play at a high level. We do have some college clubs for different sports and only students could get a membership (mostly for free or some little money). It's more recreational.

A little group of people follow the original American sports in this order I think:
1) football
2) basketball
3) baseball/ hockey
And I think especially football is growing in interest over here. Some people of this little group are also following college sports (football and basketball), but for me it's to much to follow. To many colleges, to many different conferences, levels, rules etc. 

Floorball Eduard?

Floorball looks excellent as per Dr Google.

This is a very intesting thread.  Is the difference that the entry point to professional sport (basketball, football, baseball)  in the US is through college and then the draft?  Thus college sport acts as the lower leagues might (or did) for soccer?  In Europe, certainly the UK, there is no equivalent with soccer talent being hoovered up early by clubs in their acadamies* or being spotted playing at lower levels of the game before being transferred.   Cricket and rugby all follow similar systems and a player works his way through the age groups before making professional debuts or getting transferred to bigger and better sides.  

For tennis and golf then some European players have entered the US college system to get sports scholarships but there is no college equivalent.

Do Ice hockey and soccer follow the usual US pattern of college draft?  The only US college sports I have ever watched (other than a bit of Max's volleyball) was a Lacrosse final a couple of months ago which appeared late night on a sports channel.

I follow Baseball and NFL as best as possible. Basketball I can never get into, but ice hockey I could do.

*watching Watford at the weekend at half time the crowd were encouraged to welcome the newly signed players... for the Under 9's team.  How many will ever make the first team, probably not a single one.  

College sports acts as the developmental league for the NFL (football) and NBA (basketball). NBA importance has started to wane a bit though with more European and international players and with more pathways to make the NBA that aren't college related.

Baseball either drafts from high school or college but many college players don't play "major" college baseball and still get drafted. Baseball players often take longer to "make it."

Hockey has its own developmental system though some players do play college and get drafted that way. It's less common.

Soccer has a college draft but that too has gotten a lot less important.

Piggybacking on John's comment, about 30% of players drafted into the NHL come from college hockey (including Boston University, where I went for undergrad). About half of NHL players are drafted out of Canadian Major Junior hockey, which is the top level of amateur hockey in Canada for players aged 16-20. There are loads of youth clubs in the U.S. and Canada below college and Major Juniors that resemble European academies, but unlike European academies, youth hockey clubs are not affiliated with NHL teams, so there's no ability to sign for a pro club directly from a youth club. You have to go through the draft.

Soccer here has been undergoing a major transition over the 15 years. Major League Soccer clubs have long had academies, but for about half of the league's existence, those academies didn't provide a route directly to the first team. They were basically just private youth clubs that used an MLS club's name and logo. A player would go through the academy and then enter the MLS draft either directly from a youth club (with no guarantee their "parent" club would select them) or after attending college or from the U.S. national team academy. Finally, in the late 2000's, MLS instituted a "homegrown" player mechanism that allowed clubs to sign players directly from their academies. As a result, college soccer has become much less important as a developmental system. Relatively few elite players go through college now, although because the U.S. is such a huge country and because some players are late bloomers, you can find some diamonds in the rough.

Floorball Eduard?

Of course, Floorball.
Quite bizarrely, in Switzerland this is a major TV sport (almost as big as their local wrestling "Schwingen").

It is basically ice hockey without the often visits at the dentist.
And its "popularity" was certainly boosted by playing in mixed teams.

College Volleyball is starting back up in the USA now for the women.  The men start in January.

If you are trying to learn more about the game, I'd recommend watching some women's matches.  Most women's matches are played inside 5-10,000 seat arenas at the top level.

Nebraska (always a great team) decided to do this...tomorrow night:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/volleyball/2023/08/29/nebraska-volleyball-world-attendance-record-football-stadium/70641609007/

Lets Go Noles!

The Nebraska volleyball game will air on the Big Ten Network and on FoxSports.com, although I'm not sure if those will be available overseas.

I miss the old Big 8. Where everyone played each other in football, and twice in basketball. You always knew who the champion was at the end of the season, and what bowl game they were going to.

Big attendance at the volleyball game 

They broke the attendance record but the scoreline suggests it wasn't a great game.

I watched, and it was a bloodbath. The Nebraska women are ranked fourth in the country, and they very much looked the part. They had multiple good hitters and blockers, along with some inventive setting. Omaha, on the other hand, seemed to be flailing. Maybe against a lesser opponent, they would have done fine, but they were no match for Nebraska.

The Nebraska game got a long write up in UK newspaper The Guardian, with the history.

How (and why) Nebraska drew 92,003 to watch women’s college volleyball | College sports | The Guardian

It is very interesting all the different topics that popped up on this thread.  

I agree w/Phil.  I liked the old, original conferences.   Even my high school conference, the Western Big Six now has 8 teams and they incorporate the 8 in the logo.  It is weird.

I agree with Steve and Jason.  Essentially Nebraska played a lesser opponent and it was not a close match.  Very interesting to see it made a UK paper as well.  

UN-Omaha played Nebraska (UN-Lincoln) in that venue for the payout. The program made more money with their cut of that gate than the rest of their season combined will.  The in-state draw also helped to push up the attendance.  The swell in support for volleyball in Nebraska has been weird to watch.  I lived there three different times for a total of nine years while growing up.  In the 80's & 90's, the football coach, Tom Osborne, could have run for any office in the state and easily won. He was a revered legend. Since he left, the football team has only gone downhill and the fervent fans have moved on to supporting other sports more heavily. Volleyball, wrestling, baseball, figure skating, and hockey are all huge draws now. There are no major league sports teams in Nebraska, so the college teams and minor league teams get all the fan support. I watched a lot of AAA baseball (Omaha Royals, now Storm Chasers) and the College World Series every year at the old Rosenblatt Stadium.

I think volleyball has received a lot more exposure in recent years as well.