The unquestioned holy trinity of the American sports universe is football, basketball, & baseball. I cannot remember a time in my 43-year old life when that was not true.
But can you name the three major pro sports of the first half of the 20th century? I will give you a hint: only one of those three current majors made the list. That, of course would be America’s pastime, baseball.
What would be the other two???
One was horseracing. Seabiscuit. War Admiral. Secretariat. The Kentucky Derby.
Now can you name any horse in the last few years other than maybe the one that was going for the triple crown this year? (If you don’t know, that would be California Chrome). This so-called ‘sport of kings’ has definitely fallen greatly off its once lofty perch.
The other major sport would be the sweet science: boxing. Boxing long ago lost its ‘major’ status to those team sports. But it always had a pretty bright spotlight held to it. Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Mike Tyson, George Foreman, and Evander Hollifield are some of the biggest names from my lifetime. But the flames of those careers have long been extinguished. How many current boxers can you name? That answer, or, to be more precise, lack of answers, shows how much boxing has slid this century, with a big punch to the gut from MMA.
The fall of those two sports shows how the popularity of a sport, like anything, is not written in stone.
I graduated high school 25 years ago in 1989 (man, I am getting old!). Here would be my unscientific ranking of the most popular sports back in my high school days of the late 1980s:
1. Football. TV & the Super Bowl gave the pigskin the yearbook popularity crown by the 1970s, and it was still the ‘belle of the ball’ as Joe Montana and the 49ers ruled the gridiron.
2. Baseball. Here is a stat for you: in a 1985 Harris Poll, 24% chose the NFL as their top sport, while 23% chose Major League Baseball. I wonder what the 2014 poll showed?
3. Basketball. Bird and Magic were passing the torch to Jordan, which firmly entrenched hoops into the #3 spot after being on shaky ground to start the decade. Magic Johnson’s famous game 6 performance in the 1980 NBA finals when Kareem was out with a bad ankle was actually on tape delay! (kids, ask your parents for an explanation).
4. Boxing: remember that Mike Tyson was indestructible machine back then. And that’s not factoring in the ‘Punchout’ Nintendo game he was in! I chipped in some money to buy pay-per-view at my buddy’s house in 1988 to watch Tyson destroy Michael Spinks in 91 seconds. And the famous Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard fight was the year before.
5. Tennis. Tennis was starting to slide after a huge rush in the 1970s and 80s with Bjorn Borg/John McEnroe/Jimmy Connors rivalry, not to mention Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratolova. Big names in the late 80s included Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, and Steffi Graf.
6. Hockey? It’s always been the 4th team sport. The question is, where did/does it fit with the other sports? Wayne Gretzky was big, but the Miracle on Ice glow of 1980 was long gone by now. Not having a team in Ohio definitely tainted my interests, but it didn’t seem to be too big of a deal in our nation.
7. Golf. Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson were about done, and golf was lacking a big draw. Greg Norman was knocking on that door, though. Well, except for Larry Mize and Bob Tway and their miracle chip ins to steal back-to-back majors from the ‘Great White Shark’.
8. Indy Car Racing: remember that the Indy 500 used to be a BIG deal in May.
9. NASCAR Racing. It was definitely still more of a Southern sport then.
10. Horse Racing? Ice Skating? Bowling? Australian Rules Football? I loved the WWF, but sorry, there was a rumor going around that is was fake.
I know one thing. Soccer would not be on the list. At least the outdoor version. Indoor soccer, though, made its mark in Northeast Ohio in the 80s. The Cleveland Force had their moment in the sun. I seem to remember being pretty emotionally involved watching a play-off series on TV (vs. their rivals, the Baltimore Blast??) And the Canton Invaders packed in the Civic Center for a few years.
But Outdoor soccer? Other than the name, Pele, soccer was not even on the American Sports Radar 25 years ago. I was a huge sports junkie then, and I don’t even remember knowing if the World Cup existed.
How times have changed. Stay tuned for part 2 where we discuss the current popularity list and Soccer’s rise up the charts.