Why Don’t They Make College Sports Manga? Is College Sports Not as Big as Highschool Sports in Japan?
I read a lot of sports manga, and I’ve noticed that most focuses on Highschool Sports (Baseball, Voleyball, Basketball, etc.). If it’s not highschool, it’s in a professional setting (e.g. Hajime no Ippo).
From reading baseball manga, I know there’s at least a college league for baseball, but why isn’t tackled more?
Don’t Japanese baseball players get drafted out of high school? College sports is more of an American thing. In soccer you get recruited by teams at a young age and play at their academy.
Yeah, I’ve wondered about that. College sports seem a bigger deal in the US than in other countries. Overseas you got kids already being trained by pro clubs and high school age kids playing in the pros in places like Europe as opposed to having to wait until they meet an arbitrary age limit or year of college before they are allowed to go pro.
If that’s the case then college sports overseas doesn’t sound like it’d be filled with potential star candidates, so even less of a big deal than high school if it means those athletes in college have hit their peak so are unlikely to go pro or be part of the national team. Same excitement wouldn’t be there, since in the US players as good as Messi would be forced to play in college before being able to move on which is also what makes college sports exciting despite being amateurs.
US soccer players as good as Messi would be recruited by an European team before they even finish junior high.
Not so much for basketball and American football though which are the main college sports that are the main focus of most programs. Guess should have said LeBron, since afterwards the rules changed.
But, that is my point. That as you said guys of Messi’s caliber already go pro early. Like how Luka Dončić went pro at 16 compared to players like LeBron who had to wait until he graduated college and then guys like Durant had to do one year of college after the rule change. So it was speaking of the differences in college competitiveness in the states compared to overseas.
Highest paid NCAA football coach makes nearly 11 million dollars because of all the revenue and attention around college sports. It just seems like a completely different level of interest compared to what other countries have in their college sports. It’s a giant industry. With of course student athletes not being paid.