Quote:Mick,
Volleyball is great, but second in popularity? Huh?
You may not have noticed but at the Olympics it is athletics (as in Track & Field) that runs the show and pays for the bills. It is athletics that is held in the biggest venue. It is athletics that dominates the news stories not just in the USA, but across the world. It is athletics that has participants from 6 continents. Without athletics the IOC would likely fall apart. (Not that this would be a bad thing). And goes without saying that those that participate in athletics are good athletes.
Perhaps your popularity was restricted to team sports, but then you need to take off your USA centric glasses. The number 2 team sport in the world is....Cricket! Amazing? Unbelievable? Not really, you see it is all about India and Pakistan.
Volleyball has about a billion "fans", but there are 1.1 billion people in India alone and it is their passion. Cricket sports a cool 2-3 billion fans. The total number of cricket "fans" is actually rather close to that of futbol. And since the populations of India & Pakistan are growing faster than EU populations it is not out of the question that cricket will be the world\'s most popular sport in 10-20 years.
But I would tend to agree that volleyball is a nice sport. No shame in being good at volleyball or enjoying the sport. And I would agree that volleyball players are usually better athletes than your average baseball or cricket player.
Easy, there. I\'m a fan of T&F, particularly given that I was a hurdler and high jumper in high school, then transitioned to volleyball in college. I don\'t really understand how T&F is synonymous with "athletics," but okay, whatever. I always took athletics to refer to all sports. And insofar as the Olympics are concerned, well, that is how they were founded...to showcase individual track and field events in a manner similar to the original Olympics, which, if memory serves was a single race about 220 meters. So yeah, I guess that I understand the impact that track and field has on the Olympics.
To your main point, we\'re actually talking about two different things, spectator sports versus participant sports. Volleyball is usually in the #5 to #7 range in terms of spectator sports, but per the International Association of Sports Federations global survey, volleyball is actually the #1 participant sport in the world. Here are the numbers of a slightly dated IASF survey, taken by interviewing sports federations in all countries:
Volleyball, 998 Million
Basketball, 400 Million
Table Tennis, 300 Million
Soccer, 242 Million
Incidentally, I agree with you with respect to the IOC. Â They can shrivel up and fall in the ocean for all I care.
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