Why Football Gets More
I sometimes hear people in the news complaining about why different sports don’t get either the attention or the funding that football does. As for the limited personal experience I have in our area, this is what I know. Each coach at Commerce that I have heard talk about the subject of funding for their sports has said this, and I am paraphrasing, “Coach Savage makes sure we get whatever we need”.
Lesser sports get less funding and attention. It is very much like the free market. Products and services that please the most people make those companies lots of money. It is a free exchange of money for products. If 100,000 people show up to each Tennessee Vols home football game and only 1500 for to each Lacrosse game, who do you think deserves more attention or funding? The answer is obvious. I don’t care about the word “fair” either. No such thing in this world as “fair”. You get what you get. If you want more go work harder in the area in which you think you deserve more. So if the Vols Lacrosse team wants more money devoted to their program they need to sell more tickets or raise money solely for their sport.
Football is king in this country. If not for football many colleges and high schools could not afford to have much of an athletic program or maybe a program at all. For the nine years I have operated the Commerce Tigers.com website I have asked people to send in any information from sports other than football so I can post it. I have gotten almost no response from fans or readers of this website. I would love to post information on other sports but I am not a reporter so it is up to the fans to promote their sports. The coaches I have contacted have been very helpful in submitting information or even doing interviews.
Football is the fountain from which other sports drink from in most athletic programs. I hope people realize this before condemning the attention and funding that America’s True Favorite Pastime gets.
Multi Sports
Commerce is clearly a football school. Other schools lean toward basketball and some toward baseball. Why these trends start or how is probably just timing or luck. It likely is hard for a small school to thrive in more than one sport if the athletes are pushed to stay away from anything except the main sport in the school. When the pool of athletes is a small one then other sports suffer. That is just the way it is. One example is Jefferson’s QB who apparenly is a great basketball player. He was allowed the opportunity to show his talents on the football field while helping the Dragons to one of their best season in decades. A team benefits from cross over athletes. The athlete sometimes gains nothing except extra work and the possiblity of injury. So hats off to those unselfish enough to help their school in more than one way.
