Rugby vs. American Football: How Youth Development Could Transform the U.S. Sports Landscape
Ever since I’ve been a fan of rugby, I’ve been dreaming of the day that the country I belong to fully embraces the sport that has a stranglehold on my heart. I’ve also spent far too many hours contemplating just how this dream of mine would come about. I would be there playing out different scenarios in my brain all while pretending to work. Is this dream of mine realistic? Absolutely not. If you were to say I am hopelessly blinded by my undying belief that rugby truly is the best sport in the world you would be absolutely correct. Nevertheless, I do honestly believe that there is a small chance that rugby can overthrow the king of sports in this country, American football. Just not in the way I thought it would.
For years I was convinced that all we would have to do is just get people to sit down and watch a match or two and they’d be hooked. Phrases such as, “Oh my gosh this sport is much more entertaining than the NFL!”, and “I’m totally going to watch rugby over football” would just tumble out of their mouths. Yes, I honestly thought that would happen. All we needed was more matches on tv, or (better yet) get more people to attend matches. To my surprise, though, when more matches were being televised or brought stateside there seemed to be little to no effect. I mean, it’s hard to have an effect when even rugby people didn’t know there was a test match being played in the city they lived in.
After I determined kidnapping and chaining as many people as I could to chairs in front of a tv showing nothing, but rugby was not the correct solution, I started pondering what was the correct solution. Marketing? Yes! If only there was more marketing so that people knew these matches were being shown on tv or played live in their city we would easily grow the fan-ship of this great sport. Right?
Along came Major League Rugby (MLR), yes, I’m skipping over PRO Rugby, who brought all the things I’ve was looking for. They put more regular matches on tv, they greatly improved marketing within the area of each franchise and above all else there was now a professional league in the US. Let’s face it, American sports fans tend to not take a sport seriously until 1) they can watch it on tv and 2) there’s a domestic professional league. The stage was set. The hordes of new fans were about to come piling in… Right?
To be fair, all of those factors along with the community outreach that each franchise does has done a lot to bring in new fans. People are discovering rugby for the first time just because they randomly found it on tv, but it wasn’t converting sports fans into diehard rugby fans the way I thought it would. But why? Even when I would show my friends or coworkers my beloved sport, they would usually show little interest. I really couldn’t understand how people still preferred watching football, or almost any other sport for that matter, over rugby. The complete lack of willingness to give a new sport a try really caught me off guard as well. Oh, and I wish my friends would stop constantly trying to get me to watch baseball or basketball with them… ooooohhhhhhh…
I slowly began to come to the realization that in order for people to truly fall in love with the sport, like I have, they needed to be part of the community. After all, the community is by far the best part of the sport. Alright, cool all we need to do is get more people playing or at least out to matches. Easy enough! I had better luck bathing cats than I did recruiting men or women to come play rugby. It didn’t help that I’m rather socially awkward, nor did it help that most of the people I associated with rely on their bodies to make a living. Getting hurt and not being able to work was not a risk they were willing to take.
Well damn. It’s almost like we needed to focus on people with less responsibilities. People with more free time on their hands. People more willing to try new things just because they sound fun. Now, who does that sound like? Sounds kinda like, YOUTH! That’s the group we should focus more on. Geez what a novel idea… oh, wait…
People within the rugby community have been screaming for more focus to be put on growing the youth grassroots for decades, and that is the only chance rugby would have at even coming close to competing for American football’s throne. If you had 100 kids play both sports, there is no way that the VAST majority of them don’t come away saying rugby is more fun and would rather choose to play rugby. There is no reason (other than complete lack of funding and overall support of any kind) that we can’t have as many youth rugby programs as Pop Warner (youth American football) programs across the country. That should be the number one goal leading up to and following the World Cups in 2031 and 2033. As I mentioned in my previous blog, World Rugby, USA Rugby and MLR are actively working on growing the number of youth programs around the country, but I think their goal is too small. If this more ambitious goal can be accomplished, I truly believe we would see a huge shift in the sporting landscape dynamics in this country.
Obviously, there are more factors that play into this than just growing more youth programs. There are the huge factors such as the majority of colleges and universities offering full scholarships, the unbelievable salaries being offered in the NFL, and the fact that if the NFL could easily funnel ridiculous amounts of money into anti-rugby campaigns if they felt the need to. Plus, all the parents that see the lack of padding as an instant no. With that being said, there are scholarships for rugby and there is a domestic professional competition that children can aspire to be a part of.
Look, can one say this is all an unrealistic pipe dream from a delusional fanboy? Yep. It wouldn’t be very hard to make that claim either, but wasn’t this country founded on unrealistic pipe dreams? Are you going to tell me that beating the most powerful army in the world to gain our independence wasn’t a pipe dream? Anyone willing to say “conquering the west” wasn’t also seen as a pipe dream? Were the Women’s Suffrage and the Civil Rights Movements seen as realistic? If you ask me, we need less “realists” and more dreamers.
Written by Pierce Lobban
Dreamer
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