During the Gilded Age spectator sports like baseball started to become extremely popular. With a growing middle class, higher wages, and more free time people had more opportunity to enjoy leisure activities like watching baseball. In the article “A Typical Base-Ball Crowd” (1884) it describes a typical crowd at the Polo Grounds, an Upper Manhattan stadium that is now demolished. According to the author, the crowds at these baseball games were very large. Today, the same thing is true. Major league baseball is one of the sports with the most attendance in the United States. At the Polo Grounds, average attendance was about 7,000-8,000 people per game. Those numbers have gone way up with the average game attendance in the MLB in 2016 being 30,163 …show more content…
Very honorable colleges like Harvard and Princeton were some of the schools with popular football teams. In the article “Corruption in College Football: The Athletic Craze” (1893) the author discusses some of the problems he saw in college football. In the beginning of the article it talked about how Harvard was trying to reform the game of football to make it safer. Similarly, in football today there is constantly new rules and regulations being made to make sure the sport is as safe as it can be for the players. The author believed that it was very discreditable to have athletes be students at these very honorable colleges when they do not academically qualify to get into these schools. Colleges still do the same thing today by making academic exceptions to talented athletes that do not have the grades to be accepted into the school. The author thought that athletics were just a “craze” and will not be as popular in years to come. This theory was not true at all, because over the years athletics became more and more popular. Since the author believed that athletics were just a “craze” he believed that colleges were spending way too much money on them. Today, colleges still spend huge amounts of money on athletics. Colleges have to pay for things like the fields/facilities, scholarships, coaches, equipment, etc. The author said that athletics in 1893 were discouraging the ordinary person for attending a college, but today it is the total opposite. Many college students are huge sports fans and will pick a college with a good athletic program, because they believe it brings the campus closer together. Many people today still believe that there is corruption in college football, but overall it is a sport that has brought many Americans