One of my best friends, Nicolas Restrepo, is the Trevelyan College Men’s Basketball team captain. Our basketball team is not at the top of the league, but it is still filled with players who work hard week in and week out and get better every game they play.

Before I took this role as Sports Editor, I once asked him how many spectators attend an average game. He laughed and said that nobody ever came, except for maybe a few girlfriends of the players. In the US, the University of Nebraska just won the College Basketball Crown. Almost 3,500 people came to see this game. This championship did not even exist until this year, and it was created to help small schools combat larger ones. It’s not the highest level of basketball played either, but still drew thousands in its infancy. Looking at football, the most popular sport over here, we see a similar phenomenon. My friends on the Trevelyan teams say that a dozen spectators are a rare sight. Yet, at the University of Arizona, my friends on the intramural team (which isn’t even really a regulated league) say they get a couple hundred at events. Both these comparisons beg the question of why college sports are so small in Durham.

“[The Basketball Team] is still filled with players who work hard week in and week out and get better every game they play.”

This is not a Trevs thing; even University-level sports are just not that popular over here. Of course, athletes tend to be liked and respected, or at least seem to be popular. So, why do people not go to see their games?

I think the key is the perception of the routes to start a areer in professional sports. In America, college sports eed directly into the pro levels, but in the UK, pros usually come from youth academies and never end up getting degrees. So, people in the US see college sports as the natural predecessors to the professionals, thinking that the quality of play is near-identical.

But the reality is that an incredibly slim minority of college athletes make it into the pro leagues in either country. While Americans may attend games because they think they are seeing the pre-pros, they may see less than five across an entire season. But they continue to watch because the sport itself is good—and that is something we have in the UK as well. Just because university or college sport is not going to produce the next Lionel Messi or Gareth Edwards, the actual play itself is engaging, exciting, and fun. When you watch, you’re rooting for your friends. Perhaps because almost nobody is pro level, the games are more unpredictable and we see a lot of last minute victories and defeats.

Whether it’s Trevelyan College Basketball or DU rowing, we should all pay more attention to the sports that our comrades are playing. Trevs has a surprisingly rich sporting world, with some fantastic teams (especially badminton!).

“Trevs has a surprisingly rich sporting world”

Our college is a strong and welcoming community, and we should all have pride in our teams and virulent opposition to our opponents. So next season, come watch badminton continue to dominate the ranks, the Football Bs face off in their new division, or the Boat Club racing down the river to secure another victory.

Image: Erik Drost via Wikimedia Commons