Also, there is a drive [at American universities] to be successful in sports, something that perhaps has a huge focus in the US (though anyone who has experienced the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race can attest it is felt elsewhere in the world as well).
Perhaps.
Quite.
November 26th, 2011 at 11:31AM
Well, yes, it’s the same urge. There’s not that much difference between Boat Race Night in London and the culmination of March Madness in College Park, MD: both feature drunken revelry and mild vandalism. The annual Oxford-Cambridge cricket match used to be held at Lords and attendance was greater than for any non-Test match.
The difference is in how these urges were channeled.
The Oxford-Cambridge match is a one-off. Neither Oxford not Cambridge plays any other University. No doubt the takings at its high point were gratifying, but they were the takings from just one match. Harvard and Yale play The Game against each other, but each of them also plays Penn, Princeton, Columbia and the rest of the league, plus a couple of non-league games. Back in the ‘twenties the takings across the season added up.
Cambridge wasn’t going to admit someone just because he was a strong oar, no matter what Leslie Stephen might have advocated. One race wasn’t motive enough. But a whole season of football is something else.
Football in America (and later basketball) was big enough to distort the university. Cricket and rowing in England weren’t.