What's a four letter word for American Sports God?  

ESPN.

ESPN is already having a big impact on college lacrosse, and it is going to get much, much bigger. 

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As lacrosse has more and more games broadcast on ESPN and the ESPN Networks each year, and as the sport gets more coverage via other national media sources, the game will change. More coverage--there were 57 college games broadcast on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU in 2010--means increased revenue. That revenue will impact college athletic departments who will have more to spend on their lacrosse programs. That means more money for scholarships for players and more money for salaries for coaches and staff. The sport and its growth will follow the money.

The growth we saw in the last ten to twenty years in lacrosse was big, but it is nothing compared to what we will see in the future. What is to be expected? Bet that the programs at the big schools with big time athletic departments like Syracuse, Ohio State, and Penn State will be the dynasties of the future.  With more coverage, these teams will benefit the most and will use the support and revenue of large athletic departments to land the best coaches and players.   

Think the move Jeff Tambroni made in going from head coach of 'contender' Cornell to head coach at 'much larger but not ranked in the top 20' Penn State this past week was a bit of a fluke? Well, it wasn't.  The Tambroni move ties into the growth of the game and foreshadows where the sport is heading. Penn State is going to improve in the immediate future with Tambroni at the helm. Penn State will be a force in lacrosse in the years to follow as the right coach with the right support from a big time athletic department will rise to the top. There will be more moves like this--big time coaches moving to bigger schools that have more money to spend on their lacrosse programs.  

How about Bill Tierney moving from Princeton to Denver a couple years ago?  To a lesser degree, it is tied into the growth of the game as well.  In Tierney's case he is a key to the game moving westward more than it is about Denver being a big program, but the concepts that tie in to growth are there as well.  Denver will be a power in the years to come. This will also build up other teams in the West.   It will likely lead to the creation of new lacrosse programs out there. The sport is going to be huge nationally in the future.  It has been coming for years, but the pieces are really starting to fall into place.  Denver is a part of that. 

When will the Final Four be held at a location West of the Mississippi River?  It could be in the next decade.  When will the Final Four involve a college team from West of the Mississippi?  It will happen.  Not in the next ten years, but it is coming down the road. In the short term, keep your eye on the TV coverage and how it grows and expect Penn State and Denver to improve significantly.

Look at the history of college football for some ideas of how the growth in lacrosse might go in the next 10, 20, and 30 years.  Like lacrosse, football has its roots in the Ivy League.  Going all the way back to the late 1800s and early 1900s, all the National Champions in football came from the Ivy League.  Obviously, things have changed a lot in the 150 plus years since then. The Ivy League is far from dominating the sport of football now and that is how it looks like lacrosse will go in the future as well. 

The last Football National Championship by an Ivy League team was almost a hundred years ago--Cornell in 1922.  The breakthrough came from Michigan in 1901--the first non-Ivy League team to win a Championship.  It took another 20 years for non-Ivy League schools to win championships on a regular basis.  Once they did, however, it was all non-Ivy teams winning the Championships with no turning back.  By the end of World War Two, college football was an enormous sport. Big student bodies, media coverage and revenue generated for scholarships for top players at the big schools were all part of the forces that made it happen.       

In many ways the sport of football owes a debt to the Ivy League in that the Ivy helped incubate the sport before it came to prominence.  Lacrosse, with a much slower rate of growth for the last hundred years, is picking up the pace and will someday look back at its roots in the Ivy League as well.  A hundred and twenty-five years ago, Harvard had the best lacrosse teams in the country, and the Ivy league has remained close to the top of Division 1 right through today. Princeton won a National Championship as recently as 2001 and Cornell made the Championship game in 2009 (and almost won) and also reached the Final Fours in 2008 and 2010. Factors like the sport being played at prep schools is big part of how it is possible in a league that does not allow for scholarships, but that is all going to change in the future.  Without scholarships for lacrosse players at Ivy League schools and with student bodies that are half the size (or less) than those at schools like Ohio State, the Ivy league schools will not be as attractive to ESPN for TV coverage and will not be able to compete when the sport explodes in popularity. The change has been gradual so far, but hold onto your hat--the pace is going to pick up.   

The growth is also bad news for the lacrosse programs at traditional powers like Hopkins, Loyola, Navy, and Army.  Years from now I expect that kids playing the game will not know "how it was" that Hopkins used to crush Ohio State every spring.  As bigger and bigger time TV coverage comes, Ohio State and Hopkins will switch places and Ohio State will be the powerhouse, not Hopkins. 

Somewhere along the line, rivals of the big schools that are already playing the sport of lacrosse will start programs as well.  Ohio State could pull Michigan (which does not currently have a varsity program) into lacrosse.  Miami could get a team and then pull Florida State in.  UCLA vs. USC?  Texas?  It is coming.  There are already big time high school programs in Houston that produce Division 1 players and more high school lacrosse teams in California than in any other state. 

Don't take those ads that say 'in 2025 lacrosse players will have huge houses and fast cars' lightly.  Those days are coming.  Once college lacrosse grows, the professional leagues known as the MLL and NLL will grow too, and there will be more and more pay for professional players. They may not be cashing huge checks as soon as 2025, but those big paychecks will be here in the next 30 to 40 years for sure.

I have some mixed feelings about the inevitable changes that are coming along with the growth.  In some ways the growth is great for the game. In other ways, not so great. When I started playing in the 80s it felt like I had found a sport that was a well kept secret. It felt like more of a brotherhood.  A great game that a lot of people didn't yet know much about made every player treat each other better.  As the sport grows there is less of that going on. It feels like the word is out, and when it got out the sport crawled out of its infancy.  In fact, right now lacrosse is fully into childhood, and all indications are that it is going to be big.

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If you have questions or comments, write James Land at laxnews22@hotmail.com