We had lacrosse kit at my school, in England, though my class at least never played it. The local university has a team as well.
I’d place lacrosse as a sport that most people have heard of, but probably haven’t played and may well have never actually seen a match. Niche, but extant.
Tossing the Caber doesn’t really fit; yes it’s a sport only really played in Scotland (or in a Scottish themed event), but it’s not really as described in the OP; there’s no leagues or media coverage of the winners. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a small part of a larger traditional event and all the events are run independently. Its reported more like a competition for best cow in the local show than a sporting league.
A friend of my daughter’s plays for a very small (division III) college and only got a $5000 scholarship (but it helped her get in, despite indifferent academic performance). She also plays for the Ireland National team. Several others on the team are Irish American girls with Irish grandparents.
I suspect the Irish National women’s team would be beatable by some prep (high) schools in the Northeast and MidAtlantic US or at least run close.
I guess there is pro lacrosse in the US. How it survives, I don’t know. The only lacrosse I’ve seen on TV has been on third tier networks (the ACC Network, Jefferson Pilot Sports, etc) and is college lacrosse. Supposedly some games of professional lacrosse (Premier Lacrosse) are broadcast on ESPN and ABC, but I’ve never seen it, even accidentally.
The CFL is doing okay. Not well, not poorly, just okay. It’s putting butts in seats in stadiums, which has always been its goal, and it is working with sports broadcasters to televise the game.
You’re correct; it was a much bigger deal in the past. As a child, I actually remember that the CFL had its own bubblegum cards that we kids collected. But those were the days of rabbit ears on the TV, and most Canadians only got two channels tops: CBC and CTV. If you were watching football on TV, it was always going to be CFL football. Consequently, there were a lot of Canadian CFL fans, and the game probably did rank right behind hockey then.
You’re also correct when you say that it got superseded by other sports and entertainment options. With the arrival of cable TV in the late 1960s, which meant more channels, Canadians could watch a lot more than what CBC decided to show them. It was still there, but it was now just another broadcast among many.
The CFL had difficulty adapting to the new broadcast landscape, where it actually had to compete to get viewers. In a way, I think it would be safe to say that the CFL ignored it, and continued on as if it was the only game (well, other than hockey) in town. TV blackout rules meant that if you lived in a CFL city, you never got to see your team play home games on TV. That went a long way towards turning people, especially kids who might have grown up to be CFL fans, off the game; and especially turning them on to the NFL, which was freely available on the new channels that cable delivered.
There are other reasons for the CFL’s declining popularity, but again, you are correct when you say that it got superseded by other options. The CFL could have kept up, but it chose not to, and consequently, interest in the league declined over time to the point where it is now: likely behind curling when it comes to TV sports.
One interesting thing with the current CFL: they are instituting a series of rules changes, which, IMO, are making the game less unique.
For this current season, they’ve instituted a bunch of new rules, though the biggest one concerns the “single,” or “rouge.” No longer can the kicking team earn a single (one point) if a missed field goal, a punt, or a kickoff goes out of bounds in the end zone; singles are only awarded if such a kick is fielded by a returner, but not successfully returned out of the end zone.
For 2027, major changes are being made to the CFL field:
The field shrinks from its current 110 yards to 100 yards, though it remains wider than an American football field
End zones shrink from 20 yards deep to 15 yards (though some CFL fields already do not have 20-yard end zones, due to stadium sizes)
Goal posts will be moved from the goal line to the back of the end zone
As I understand it, many fans are not happy with this, and there is a lot of speculation that it’s being done with an eye to some form of merger or affiliation with the NFL or UFL.
Duck pin bowling was an occasional diversion through college. It’s US northeast oriented. Small ball, no holes, 3 attempts to clear the rack per frame. Candle pin bowling is even rarer.
(AI search result that matches my experience) Congress-certified duckpin alleys have dwindled down to fewer than 60 dedicated centers nationwide—heavily concentrated along the East Coast in states like Maryland and Connecticut—
Growing up in MA, candlepin (one word) was the only kind of bowling I was aware of. We had multiple local alleys, and it was on TV every week.
The World Eskimo Indian Olympics has a bunch of unique events practiced in mainly Alaska by native peoples. There are similar organizations for the First People in Canada, and competitions that cover all of North America.
The OP specifically said that they weren’t interested in sports that were played only in one place if they were niche even there. 60 duckpin alleys in the entire world is definitely niche.
Not at all in Canada, where the bat-and-ball sport of choice is baseball.
You see people playing cricket occasionally, but it’s invariably people who immigrated here from India or Pakistan, and the evidence suggests their kids tend to migrate to baseball.
Since Canada came up, lacrosse, invented by the first nations of North America, is a pretty popular sport in Canada and the USA but is very niche elsewhere. They’re trying very hard to spread it around, though, and will be playing it at the 2028 Olympics. Still, everyone knows who’s gonna be contesting the gold medal game.
Hm, I knew that it was invented by Native Americans, but I somehow never made the connection that it would therefore be uncommon elsewhere. I had sort of assumed that it already was in the Olympics. This might be partly because in the US, it’s kind of an upper-class sport (more likely to be played at private schools than public, for instance).
Further, lacrosse in the US is largely confined to the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic states. Unsure about New England, but perhaps? I could also see lacrosse being played at upper-crust private schools in, say, California.
The sport has no profile at all in Texas or the Southeast, not that I’m aware of, anyway. North Carolina and Virginia might be transitional areas for lacrosse, though I know the the University of North Carolina once had – and still may have – an elite collegiate lacrosse program.
And, I’d say, more the latter than the former. I’ve lived effectively my entire life in the Great Lakes area, and lacrosse is super-nichey here, in my experience. It looks like it might be a bit bigger in Michigan and Ohio, I’ll grant.
I was thinking about both, but while fistball really is a German thing, it’s also a niche sport even here, without a pro league and many spectators, it’s also almost never shown on TV. Handball OTOH really isn’t restricted to the Germansphere, but really to the whole of Europe, it’s probably the most Euro-centric sport of all, there never has been a non-European world or Olympic champion. And yet it has been Olympic for a very long time.
Confession: My impression of the popularity of Great Lakes lacrosse comes from the film American Pie – fans may remember that Oz and Stifler both starred on the high school lacrosse team. I know the film was set in suburban Michigan somewhere, and the high school was portrayed as a typical suburban high school (a toney suburb, though – I don’t think any of the teenage characters were portrayed as anything less than upper middle class).
EDIT: Did a quick bit of research and learned that the high schools in the Grand Rapids, MI area have lacrosse teams and comprise a competitive, top-level high-school conference. Michigan state lacrosse championship teams commonly come from this area. Unsure if the sport is contested as much, say, in suburban Detroit.
EDIT2: The American Pie screenwriter based many of the elements of the fictional high school in the movie on his own alma mater, East Grand Rapids HS. I did see that the high school (and presumably others in the area?) only added the sport in 1987, so at the time the film was released, the lacrosse “history” wasn’t all that long yet.
And, my quick bit of research indicates that Adam Herz, who wrote the scripts for the first two American Pie films, went to high school in the Grand Rapids area. So, there you go.
Does Calcio Storico qualify? It’s basically rugby with legalized (encouraged) fighting. Recruiting is not allowed; only athletes from a particular town can play for that town, and only a few towns participate. Match videos are on youtube and are pretty insane.
Every fatcat suburb or private high school in friggin’ lowbow Missouri had a team 15 years ago. Same here in Miami.
If it’s a part of town where the Soccer Moms are driving new Mercedes SUVs or especially G-wagons, they’re actually Lacrosse or Field Hockey Moms depending on the kid(s) gender(s).
As best I can tell, this is true in many (most) states now.
I live in an affluent New England town (and I’ve lived in less affluent towns). Hockey is generally the biggest sport in less affluent towns (and I mean the bottom 80%, not bottom 20%) but lacrosse is THE high school sport in the Land Rover towns.
From living in Virginia and Maryland in the past, lacrosse there is more of a private school thing.
There’s a very similar sport in Argentina called “Pato” (Duck, because it used to be played with a poor duck, now replaced with a ball with handles).
There’s obviously something about bored people with horses that makes them want to fight over a poor animal as a sport.
Though I suspect the Afghan version is more popular, I have never in my life even seen the sport played, not even on tv.