Cote: College to pros, we are in a sports revolution that has only just begun. Here’s how | Opinion
What we are seeing now is in and all around the games we watch, both too big to miss yet too amorphous to get an easy grip on. It is hard to know exactly when the phenomenon began, but it is recent and we are in the middle of it and it is on a rampage.
The evolution and revolution in sports.
What if I told you, even a couple of years ago, that the tailgate staple, the oddly named sport of cornhole, would be one of the fastest-growing pro leagues in America?
Or that a startup women’s basketball league based in Miami would be paying its stars several times more than they earn in the WNBA?
Or that the NBA and NHL would be pausing their regular seasons to play in-season tournament?
Or that the NFL would be planning a major national branch-out into affiliated men’s and women’s professional flag football leagues?
The revolution we are in the midst of has redefined college sports, too, especially major-school football, from an enterprise clinging to amateurism to one all-in, seemingly overnight, on making the “student-athlete” a professional, and an increasingly rich one.
The metamorphosis has seen some of our biggest pro leagues move to change and add and become more than themselves, from the NHL creating the 4 Nations Face-Off now underway with its regular season on hold, to the NHL Stadium Series that will see a March 1 Columbus-Detroit game played at the mammoth home of the Ohio State Buckeyes. The NHL also will be integral in the World Cup of Hockey returning in 2028.
The NBA has introduced its seemingly pointless yet strategically conceived In-Season Tournament. And MLB, once every three years (next in ‘26) shares its spring training and many of its biggest stars with the World Baseball Classic.
Included in all of this is the increased globalization of American sports, with the NFL, for example, planning between six and eight regular-season games on foreign soil in 2025, a record. Even a future Super Bowl outside of the United States has not been ruled out. The NFL turned its Pro Bowl game into a flag football game in a strategic effort to spearhead the growth in that sport as it develops a plan for national flag football leagues with teams in every NFL city.
“Regular” seasons increasingly don’t seem like enough for some leagues. Bells and whistles are required to keep fans’ attention spans during the wait for the playoffs. MLS teams like Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami certainly play more than just league matches. The club opens its MLS season Feb. 22, but right before that right after the club plays two matches in the Concacaf Champions Cup tournament. And Miami will play in the FIFA Club World Cup starting in July.
More events, more games, more content, more money for everybody.
The evolution has seen deep-pocket investors and private equity creating leagues where there were none, such as women’s basketball’s new Unrivaled league underway with its inaugural season in Miami, and $5 billion in seed money exploring a Formula One-inspired international basketball league to rival the NBA.
Unrivaled is particularly revolutionary and packing a political punch aimed at jarring and pressuring the WNBA to enter this century in terms of players salaries while also providing what amounts to an offseason job for star players who no longer need to go overseas.
Unrivaled also is revolutionary as all but a made-for-TV league barely bothering with fans in the stands at all. Fans are a token, with seating for only 850 per game beside a court in a specially designed studio in the Miami suburb of Medley. In effect, Unrivaled is bypassing the middle man — a live audience of fans — but directly satisfying the demand for more and more (and more) sports content.
All of this is happening at least partly because an explosion of streaming services redefines what “televised sports” even means, and hungers for more and more content to fill the demand.
Professional spring football owes its very existence to the appetite for content in the streaming age. The need also has opened doors for athletes, including current ones, to become major players in the podcast industry.
What we are in the midst of is good and exciting but a far cry from the simple ‘ol days, and a lot to absorb.
Being a sports fan certainly requires more bandwidth than it once did, more attention, more effort and commitment just to keep up. And whether all of this is exhausting or exhilarating is eye of the beholder stuff.
Examples are everywhere you turn.
The PGA Tour was a monopoly at the top of golf for decades. But then came LIV Golf, controversial at first because of the Saudi riches backing it, but now closer to mainstream and to real competition as it helps feed the content beast.
Pickleball, once, like cornhole, was just a made-up sport with a funny name — Tennis Jr. on a smaller court — but has fast grown to phenomenon status and spawned a growing pro league. The Miami Open, the annual major spring tennis tournament including both the WTA and ATP tours, now includes a separate competition for pickleballers.
What we are seeing now is in and all around the games we watch, both too big to miss yet too amorphous to get an easy grip on. It is hard to know exactly when the phenomenon began but it is recent and we are in the middle of it and it is on a rampage.
What’s next to hit big and see itself on TV? Footgolf? Don’t discount that (or anything else) too quickly.
All it takes is somebody willing to televise it.
More events, more games, more content, more money for everybody.
The sportsbooks win, the networks and streaming services win, the leagues and the athletes win.
In theory the sports fans win, too, at least those of us who can never get enough -— defined now as anybody who would tune in and watch people they’ve never heard of play cornhole.
