Why college football doesn’t rule in Boston
By: Jess Lander, YawkeyTalkies Editor.
If there is one sport in Boston that is lacking championship trophies, it is college football. For a city with more than a hundred colleges and universities, college football is an unusually small deal.
Today, it was announced that Northeastern is cutting its 74-year old football program after a 3-8 losing season, making it the 6th losing season in a row for the Huskies. These six unsatisfactory seasons come after the Huskies first Atlantic-10 title in 2002. However, this year, the 3 million dollar program was deemed too expensive considering its lack of success. Northeastern home games averaged 1600 fans a game. To put this in perspective, Women’s Professional Soccer team the Boston Breakers, drew more fans in their inaugural 2009 season.
That’s right. Women’s soccer.
Northeastern follows Boston University, who cut their losing football program in 1997.
The only successful college football team in Boston is the Boston College Eagles, now the only remaining Division 1 football team in the area. This season, they are 7-4 with one game remaining. They still aren’t even ranked in the top 25.
But why is one of the best sport’s towns in America one of the worst for college football?
One obvious reason is that college sports in Boston are simply overshadowed by the professional teams, who bring home trophy after trophy, especially this decade. College football in Boston simply can’t live up to the excitement of winning a Super Bowl, even if they were to win a National title.
If you look at all the top college football teams, they come from big state universities, i.e. University of Florida, Louisiana State University, University of Alabama, Ohio State University. The University of Massachusetts (there are three) doesn’t even have D1 programs.
Good college football teams don’t tend to come from large cities like Boston. Can you name a good college football team from New York? Los Angeles? No. But look at their professional teams’ success. See NY Yankees and Giants, and Los Angeles Lakers and Angels.
Now look at the professional team atmosphere where the good college football programs are. Name me a good pro team in Alabama or Louisiana. No? None? The correlation is too convenient. If you lived in Alabama, what else would you get excited about besides College Football?
It is also worth mentioning that Boston is good at one college sport: hockey. I don’t think there is any coincidence that Boston University is the National Champions when the Boston Bruins haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1972, making them the only Professional Team in Boston to not have recent success.
But, are we really going to miss Northeastern Football? Are we really all that upset that we don’t have a good college football team? How can we complain when our city breeds champions on the highest level?
No, we aren’t and we can’t.
With seven World Series Championships, three Super Bowl titles, Seventeen NBA Championships and Five Stanley Cups, that’s a lot of rings. Count em!
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Very well put together Jess. The correlation between college and professional ranks was a very good angle. Speaking for New York City, they really don’t have any DI schools in any sport. The only big university I can think of in the entire state is actually Syracuse, far from NYC.
Personally I don’t like seeing any sports program cut. But this is the reality we live in.
Overal, good read.
Good read Jess, but don’t put Los angeles in that group with NY and Boston. Did you forget about USC and UCLA. Both are big time D1 football programs, and USC has dominated college football in recent years. I lived out there and USC puts 80 thousand fans in the old LA Colliseum, while the Raiders could barely get 50 thousand, even when they were good. I live in NY now and New Yorkers have no interest in college football. There is no tradition here, unlike in LA. The only thing here is Syracuse and Army, and neither can compare to USC, or UCLA for that matter. No tradition, and no interest, that’s my opinion. Maybe Rutgers will change that for NYC, but they are a NJ school. College basketball is bigger here in NY than college football, sad to say, but true!!
Just found your site through yahoo. Glad I found it I’ve learned a lot.