Across the pond

Author: Adam Clayton

After three years and a sizeable effort to amend my ways, I still find myself struggling to appreciate what many Americans consider integral to their sporting calendar. First among these is baseball, which is to the English what Americans must think of cricket, only much more uncouth. Second, however, would be college sports, something that has no place in European history and little recognition among even the most ardent sports fans. While I'm told that the appeal of baseball is a combination of an obsession with statistics, obstinacy and binge-fuelled delusion, it still surprises me that many people consider college basketball more passionate and entertaining than the NBA. For any other country in the world, college sports seldom make any headline or arouse passion among even those who attend the college.

So what are we to make of this anomaly in the sporting world? The NCAA championships make just under one billion dollars a year, and analysts devote their intellect discussing the prospects of those considered "student-athletes," the spoken emphasis being on the former. The NBA, MLB and NFL all have rules that encourage the matriculation of potential stars into college, ostensibly because this reduces pressure and allows them to gain life experience. Colleges themselves provide scholarships and the promise of top training facilities and coaching to attract top talent. Players in turn are provided financial assistance and valuable guidance. College basketball is technically worse and pales to the athleticism of the NBA, but I have not once seen people more interested in the NBA Finals than March Madness. Maybe that's because I'm at college too, but I see this transcending all generations.

This is decidedly amateur compared to English football's grooming system. By fourth grade in most other countries, players would be signing youth contracts with professional clubs and enrolling in special academies where education is merely an afterthought or a conduit to a profession in sports. Scouts traverse rural enclaves from the Amazon to Cameroon in the hope of finding the next Maradona, while top clubs will entice an entire family or village with promises of health care and employment in the First World if their child will sign a contract - even if he is not yet literate. Messi at Barcelona and Eto'o, previously of Real Madrid, are but two examples of this. But what about the 99 percent who don't make it? There is no college system to provide an alternative and no way to use one's talent to pay for a decent education. When Eto'o disembarked in Madrid as a teenager, the club had forgotten to pick him up. Who's to say how many less talented individuals they've forgotten to provide for?

Exaggerated promises by unscrupulous agents and hyper-competitive clubs might work for one in a thousand, but countless others end up spending the rest of their lives thinking "what if," instead of incorporating it into a beneficial "student athletics" combination.

Overall, the American system provides a much more responsible and equitable way of preparing the next generation for the challenges of professional athletics, a hard task considering what's at stake for countless poor families and young prodigies. Still, moral superiority is not enough to convince me that American college ball and March Madness is worth watching, and so I wait for the infinitely more talented and single-minded UEFA Champions League to recommence in two weeks.