Apt and accurate. Euros are never as gracious as they seem to think. But leaving that aside…
Most nations throughout the world have a very limited university education avilability. Even in Germany or japan, spots in Universities are extremely limited and hard to get into. In Germany, ferinstance, you pretty much get sorted into the college, tradeschool, and nontrade groups in gradeschool. In fact, one reason America has so many foreign collegiates is that we can absorb other countries’ overflow.
But it does mean that college-level sports doesn’t mean much in most places. There aren’t many universities, and those are not the kind of omni-educative facilities we tend to think of here in the states. Developing states particularly tend to have very focused schools, which foten have little or no athletics and only offer a few specific programs.
The number of people attending university is not going to be a significant factor when comparing across developed countries. While Germany is somewhat low, at 23% of the population graduating college, the US is 39% which compares with many other developed countries. The UK is 35%, so that difference is not going to be relevant to why the UK college sport scene is very different. France is 38%, and Canada, Japan and Russia are higher than the US. All statistics from here.
The difference is cultural. In the UK and, by the sound of it, most/all other developed countries, colleges are for academic and practical training; sport is a pastime for the students and not any inherent part of the education system.
The US is able to have a college system for its most popular sport. The rest of the world cannot do that for soccer. The top soccer players almost never go to college - they are snapped up by the clubs long before being able to go to college. How big would US college sport be without football? I suspect “not very”.
You’re obviously referring to football here, but until fairly recently the most popular sport in America was baseball - and while the best players typically skip college and go straight to the minor leagues, there is college baseball in America. As you surmised, college baseball is far less popular than MLB, and also far less popular than college football or basketball. But it does exist, it does have a pretty loyal following, and it is (at long last) definitely getting more popular lately.
If Europe had followed the American model of college athletics, I think there would be a real place for college soccer. All the best players would still get snapped up young, but that still leaves a large pool of late-bloomers who play at a pretty high level. In fact, there are always a number of Europeans playing for the best soccer programs in America anyway. There might never be an Oxford soccer player starting for Man U or Chelsea, but Accrington Stanley and Notts County need players too, you know.
I think the college sports that are popular in the US are popular because they are the ones that don’t have a professional minor league system (i.e. football and basketball). The sports that are popular in other countries tend to have minor league systems for young players (e.g hockey in Canada, soccer everywhere else) so that’s where the cream of the talent is located rather than in colleges.
If the US had workable, professional minor/junior league systems for football and basketball, I think their popularity at the college level would drop off precipitously. Nobody cares about college baseball, after all, even though it’s the nominal National sport.
College baseball has a decent following in some areas such as the PAC 10 and SEC. It’s nowhere near college FB and hoops. Also a lot more guys in the majors now go through college to get there rather than going from high school straight to the minors.
There is no reason for the NFL and NBA to set up a good minor league system when they have a free one now. The NBA has their “D” league but that’s not important to the NBA, top players never play in that league.
