In Defense of LAX

I was watching college lacrosse this weekend, and the more I watched, the more I found myself wondering why this sport isn’t more popular.

There are plenty of sports out there that could be popular, but ultimately, they all have their fatal flaws. In fact, an earlier entry on this blog generously offered that hockey had elements of baseball, football, basketball and soccer, so why wasn’t it more popular?

Well…there are plenty of reasons. For one thing, the puck is damn near impossible to see. And a bad TV sport is always going to have a hard time winning fans. Also, it’s the only sport (aside from curling, I guess) that’s played on ice. Sure it makes the game faster and (theoretically) more violent, but that potential for speed is never really exploited because the field (er…rink?) is relatively small – compared to a football or soccer field – and also, it’s kinda hard to get a speed burst on a pair of skates. And while there are plenty of violent hits (and fights!), you can’t tell me it’s more violent than football. Because it isn’t. Those guys reach full speed before they ram into each other.

However. If you said to someone who wasn’t a hockey fan, “what if we took hockey and combined it with college football. Hear me out. There would be more scoring than your average hockey game, and in this scenario, you’d get the atmosphere of a college football game played outside. And as an added bonus, the season ends with a ‘March Madness’ style tournament, and who doesn’t love that?! Is that something you might be interested in?” Who would say no to this?!

Passion

College football and basketball players are always admired for “playing for the love of the game.” There aren’t any bloated contracts, they live off whatever the university can give them without violating NCAA rules, they live in dorms… but that’s only half-true, because after they serve their time playing “for the love of the game,” they can sign bloated contracts and buy sixteen Escalades and wear cashmere underwear.

Lacrosse is unique in that there is no next level. If you want to find a group of athletes who truly play for the love of the game, take a look at lacrosse. And don’t try to tell me Major League Lacrosse counts. When I worked for NBC, my girlfriend (at the time) traveled to the Major League Lacrosse All-Star Game as a production assistant. Turns out even the MVP of the league has a full-time job. Let me clarify, he has a full-time job that isn’t lacrosse. I guess my point is that, even at the professional level, they’re playing for the love of the game.

Hell, even the women’s version of the sport – field hockey – has Olympic competition. Same thing with swimming, rowing, track and all the other niche sports. Those guys have the potential to earn huge endorsement contracts by winning a gold medal or two.

Lacrosse has been an Olympic sport before…in 1904 and 1908. That’s it.

Roadblocks

So what’s the problem? Well, let’s get down to basics. For a sport to become a significant part of someone’s life, they have to have been groomed early on. And how do you groom fans early on? You enable them to play the sport as kids. I liked baseball when I was a kid because we would grab a tennis ball and a bat and play in the street til the streetlights came on. Even playing a bastardized version of a sport (side note: MLB should definitely allow “ghost runners”) creates a fan for life, because it allows a kid to fantasize about hitting the game winning homerun in game seven of the World Series, or nailing a game-winning three at the buzzer or throwing a Super Bowl-winning Hail Mary with time running out.

But accessibility is crucial too. If a sport requires too much equipment, that’s going to discourage neighborhood kids from getting a game together. Every street has a basketball hoop. All you need for a game of football is a ball and some trees to serve as endzones. Every kid has a baseball glove because every kid plays Little League. (side note: this is where soccer has shot itself in the foot. How can a sport that is played by every single child in America be so unpopular here? What’s the problem? Is it because soccer is the first organized sport we play as kids and our lasting memories are ones of confusion and terror and boredom? Is it because we’re made to play a sport we’d never heard of and our parents didn’t even like?) Anyway, no kid I know has a lacrosse stick. Which leads to my next point…

Lacrosse is certainly not without its faults. For one thing – and this is a big one – it’s only played in one part of the country. This is exclusively an east coast sport. And if you really want to split hairs, a northeastern sport.

Another problem with the sport – and this is just what I’ve observed casually watching over the years – is that there are really only four teams with a legitimate chance to win the NCAA championship every year: Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, Virginia and Princeton. I’m sure there are other teams each year that make things interesting, and for all I know, they could be major lacrosse powers and I just haven’t noticed: Duke, Maryland, Cornell and North Carolina, among others. But you get the point. The field is limited.

Opportunity

But the whole point of this rant, is that I think lacrosse has a real opportunity to expand. For one thing, people love team sports. And even more than that, they love college team sports. There’s just something inherently exciting about watching Florida play Oklahoma, no matter what sport it is. The sport has some amazing, natural rivalries that they could promote – Duke vs. North Carolina (hello!), Johns Hopkins vs. Maryland, Princeton vs. Cornell. And like I said, the game itself has promise. The team aspect alone automatically makes it more interesting than, say, swimming.

What are your thoughts on this? Is lacrosse viable? Can it make a dent?

The game I was watching when I started to type this ended with Syracuse cruising into the semifinals, beating Maryland 11 to 6. This means, of course, that Syracuse is in the Final Four! If only they bothered calling it the Final Four.

Guest Column (Blog Post) by Robert Knox

Thanks Robert