<p>I don't think it is worth it to be honest. As far as US sports are concerned, it is a distant 6th after Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey and Soccer. Outside of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, the game is a complete non-entity and the game is so boring that it is not likely to get any recognition. Oh well, Duke, UNC and UVa all have varsity programs, so we aren't the only ones to adopt it. I suppose winning a NC in Lacrosse would be no worse than winning a NC in Gymnastics, Field Hockey, Softball or Swimming. Go Blue!</p>
<p>I played lacrosse in high school and I think it is still a growing sport. It’s a small sample size but I noticed each year that more and more freshmen were making the varsity team, showing that it is trickling down to the younger kids as well. Check back in 10 years and it might be more popular.</p>
<p>mclax, I do not doubt that it will be more popular in 10 years, but so will the five sports that are already ahead of it. And I have watched Lacrosse played in the past. I went to boarding school in the DC area and I saw several high school and college games. I just do not see how Lacrosse will overtake the other sports. Professional athletes in those sports earn far more money than professional Lacrosse players. As such, the majority of the best athletes will always be drawn to those sports.</p>
<p>SOCCER more popular than lacrosse? HAHAHA. Maybe if we lived in Germany or Brazil. It is a distant 6th most popular sport after Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey and Lacrosse. Lax is big up and down the East Coast here and there are about 10-15 schools where it is extremely popular including Syracuse, Princeton, JHU, Maryland the Ivies, Duke, UVA, etc. etc.</p>
<p>I think college lacrosse is more popular than college hockey and there’s plenty of data out there to prove it. The NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship has the highest attendance of any NCAA Championship and is higher than the Final Four of men’s basketball. Alex, there are 61 sanctioned College D1 Lacrosse teams and 59 Hockey D1 Lacrosse teams so I don’t know why you are propagating this false notion than Hockey has a more ubiquitous presence at the collegiate level.</p>
<p>As far as the geographical niches of the two sports go, Hockey is big in the Midwest and the area north of Boston while Lax is bigger in the Mid-Atlantic, the South and the West. Let’s face it: only Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota are very rabid about hockey. The rest of the country could care less.</p>
<p>Now off to watch the ACC Lacrosse Championship and watch Maryland get thumped hopefully…</p>
The key word here being professional athletes in those sports earn far more money than pro Lacrosse players. Most Lacrosse players will become investment bankers or go into other lucrative professions after graduation because they come from wealthy families, go to elite schools and are extremely well-connected/social.</p>
<p>Sure, the best hockey player on the University of Minnesota-Duluth team might become pro, but what about the rest of the team? They will be mopping the floors of and cooking in the kitchens of the mansions of former Duke and Princeton lacrosse players, all of whom work on Wall Street, if they are lucky. I mean, what are you going to with a Duluth degree?</p>
<p>I agree that Alexandre and most Michigan students have an inflated view of hockey’s prevalence. This is one thing that really bugged me over my 4 years here, that people from this state fail to understand the fact that people from most area of the country could care less about college hockey or the RED WINGSS ZOMGGG. </p>
<p>However, LDB, regarding your first post:
You have an inflated view of LAX, probably more so than Alexandre’s inflated view of hockey. And this is coming from a person who is familiar with an environment where LAX is huge.</p>
<p>regarding your second post:
that was uncalled for.</p>
<p>Kdog, what’s the significance of that data?
Are you about to make the claim that basketball is the 6th most important college sports? If not, the data you listed are not saying much. It just speaks to the difference in numbers of players needed per team.</p>
<p>@bearcats, I didn’t mention anything about popularity but your argument does not hold water when comparing lacrosse to soccer. Don’t they have about the same amount of players on a team? From a student perspective, especially in the Midwest, I doubt lacrosse is more popular than soccer and the number of athletes backs that up.</p>
I’d love to see this data – we can all make errant claims and say we have plenty of data to prove it, but until you provide said data, I’ll consider this ********.
You got your information from Wikipedia. Maybe you should check the source next time. As per the NY Times article…
</p>
<p>
I agree with this – college hockey is not an ubiquitously popular sport – but the amount of teams at the D1 level has absolutely no relevance to how popular the sport is. According to the amount of teams in college, I think baseball/track and field are 1-2.</p>
<p>
Wrong. Nobody gives a flying **** about Lax in the West.
Kinda like how nobody gives a **** about LAX outside of the upper-middle class elite in the mid-atlantic? Cool bro.
I would LOVE to see this data.
I can’t speak for the University of Minnesota-Duluth, but at Michigan, 13 out of the 22 on the current roster from last year are already drafted by NHL teams. Obviously some schools will have more players drafted than others, but I’d imagine UMD does fairly well here. You are so ****ing arrogant it’s unbelievable.</p>
<p>And for your last question, the answer is nothing. lol</p>
<p>I agree that people have an over-inflated view of hockey, but it pales in comparison to your view of LAX. You’re delusional.</p>
<p>LDB, you have no clue what you are talking about, as always. It is a fact that the 5 biggest sports (by far) in the US are Football, Basketball, Basebal, Hockey and Soccer…in that exact order. Lacrosse does not come close to Soccer, let alone Hockey. Tell me, how many games did do the Lacrosse powerhouses play last year? 10-15? And how fans attended each game on average? 1,500-4,500? Hockey’s major programs (and there are over 20 of them) play 35-45 games and average over 3,000-10,000 spectators per game. How can you suggest that Lacrosse even comes close to Hockey? It is not even close.</p>
<p>Bearcats, I do not have an inflated view of the importance of college hockey. I said several times that Football and Basketball are the top two sports by a margin. I have often admitted that beyond those two sports, interest in college athletics is spotty and regional. Baseball is #3 and Hockey is #4. I do not see how that is inflated.</p>
<p>I like lax from growing up in NJ and would love to see it grow as a B10 sport. I’d love to see UW add D-1 lax for men and women. Makes more sense in our climate than baseball. I also think Lax is a much better game to watch than baseball or soccer–snoooooze.</p>
<p>Again, what are the hockey players from Michigan and Minnesota who don’t become pro doing after graduation? For their sakes, hopefully they performed well in school with a marketable degree since they don’t have the connections or pedigree to get an elite job but its doubtful since most of them are dumb as rocks.</p>
<p>
Listing off a bunch of attendance statistics doesn’t really help your point since there are many factors involved that determine how many people attend a game like the weather (lax is indoor while hockey is outdoors), stadium size (hockey has huge facilities) and timing of the games (most lax games are scheduled during morning//early afternoon hours when there are less people who are likely to show up as supposed to nighttime hockey games during weekends).</p>
<p>As someone who goes to school where both the soccer and lacrosse teams have been traditionally strong, I can tell you that the lax team is more closely followed by the student body and alumni. The same is true for all ACC schools from my experience, which is the strongest soccer and lacrosse conference by far. If people don’t follow soccer fervently in the ACC, I guarantee they don’t in the Big 10.</p>
<p>Michigan had an uncharacteristically fantastic year in soccer and most of my dozens of friends at UofM could care less. Even in its first season of Division 1 Lacrosse, Michigan’s lax team will receive a lot more support from students than the soccer team especially since so many kids at UofM are from the Long Island/Jersey/DC area. I guarantee it.</p>
<p>I can’t believe you would compare Lacrosse to Softball Alex. That’s absolutely ridiculous.</p>
<p>You can sell tickets to the contests. They get pretty decent attendance. And the athletes you let in to play tend to be able to write tuition checks. And mostly they don’t need to be in a special section of the school. </p>
<p>Put the right coach into Michigan or Ohio State and the days of Princeton, Syracuse, UVa and Hopkins are numbered as NCAA champs.</p>
<p>What do B10 hockey players do after college or NHL–seems like they become good men. Some are D-1 hockey coaches, many businessmen, and nearly all very loyal to their team.</p>
Thanks for spouting off some of your ignorance. Really shows what kind of an elitist prick you are.
According to the article barrons posted,
I must’ve missed the part of the article where it said they were all former janitors for Duke and Princeton lacrosse allstars before they caught a lucky break to get their current job.</p>
<p>Maybe they’re not making 7 figure salaries 10 years after graduation. Maybe they don’t have trophy wives and mansions. But they sure as hell have a lot more character and desirable traits than your stupid ass nepotistic LAX bros who probably offer nothing to the community, and are surely just as money hungry materialistic ******rs as you’ll be in a few years. Makes me glad I don’t have to go to school with people who are that self-absorbed, since I’d much rather be surrounded with people who make positive impacts on the people around them.</p>