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> Major league sports should create and manage their own feeder leagues to develop players, no reason to cram that into a university. Collegiate athletics emer

> Major league sports should create and manage their own feeder leagues to develop players, no reason to cram that into a university. Collegiate athletics emerged as lucrative entertainment, over decades. It's not as if they established sports teams originally in order to make money or to become training ground for pro teams. And good luck getting them to forfeit this willingly. A minor league could show up to compete, but would it offer athletes an opportunity for a rite of passage too? And could it offer a hedge for the athletes who don't graduate to higher pro leagues? IMO baseball is probably a good place to look for answers because it has both a minor pro league and NCAA "student-athletes". Ice hockey, too, IIRC.

quartesixte 5y ago
And if anything, the colleges were the original sports leagues. The Ivy League was a sports league. Football was a sport done by daring-do young men at Yale and Harvard. The professionalization of sports is a short history. And college sports becoming the huge media sensation it is today also a recent phenomenon. Also, Baseball being the outlier to Football/Basketball when it comes to collegiate leagues probably comes from its very early professionalization relative to the latter two.
- Kon-Peki 5y ago
  The minor league farm system in baseball was pioneered by Branch Rickey when he was with the Cardinals, and further expanded when he moved to the Dodgers. Everyone else hated it, and MLB tried to stop him multiple times. But eventually the Yankees adopted it too and then there was no stopping it. Could a single team in other sports go against all the rest in modern times? I highly doubt it. PS - Rickey was passionate about collegiate sports and the role they played on campuses.
parineum 5y ago
> Ice hockey, too, IIRC. This is partially true. Most Americans still go the NCAA route the typical Canadian route being the CHL, for 16-20 year olds. Europeans follow a model similar to European soccer leagues. The CHL offers a year of college scholarship for each year played in the league. I think it's only for the national schools, I'm not exactly sure.

quartesixte 5y ago

And if anything, the colleges were the original sports leagues. The Ivy League was a sports league. Football was a sport done by daring-do young men at Yale and Harvard. The professionalization of sports is a short history. And college sports becoming the huge media sensation it is today also a recent phenomenon. Also, Baseball being the outlier to Football/Basketball when it comes to collegiate leagues probably comes from its very early professionalization relative to the latter two.

Kon-Peki 5y ago
The minor league farm system in baseball was pioneered by Branch Rickey when he was with the Cardinals, and further expanded when he moved to the Dodgers. Everyone else hated it, and MLB tried to stop him multiple times. But eventually the Yankees adopted it too and then there was no stopping it. Could a single team in other sports go against all the rest in modern times? I highly doubt it. PS - Rickey was passionate about collegiate sports and the role they played on campuses.

parineum 5y ago

> Ice hockey, too, IIRC. This is partially true. Most Americans still go the NCAA route the typical Canadian route being the CHL, for 16-20 year olds. Europeans follow a model similar to European soccer leagues. The CHL offers a year of college scholarship for each year played in the league. I think it's only for the national schools, I'm not exactly sure.