AMERICAN FOOTBALL THE COLLEGES PHENOMENON: EWAN MACKENNAcharts the rise and rise of American college football and how it has come a long way since 50 players chased a spherical ball across a New Brunswick mire

IT BEGAN as a free-for-all. Fifty players chasing a spherical ball across a New Brunswick mire with few markings and no posts. The rules were a convoluted cocktail of soccer and rugby at best, with Rutgers wearing scarlet scarves in the form of turbans to differentiate themselves from their Princeton opponents. It was 1869 when the first game of college football is believed to have taken place with most of the animosity based around a revolutionary cannon that made its way between the universities, usually in the dark of night, until Princeton sank it in concrete. Humble beginnings, but not any more.

That day there were 100 estimated at College Field but this weekend the 2012 Division One season kicks off with 142 programmes across 12 conferences and 41 states, stretching from Hawaii to Massachusetts. Last year the average attendance was 46,074 with a total figure reaching close to 40 million by the season’s end. Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Alabama and Texas all averaged more than 100,000 per game while going into this season, 59 colleges have stadiums bigger than Lansdowne Road and 19 bigger than Croke Park. In fact 11 of the 20 biggest stadiums on the planet belong to college football teams.

For an amateur sport, it’s bordering on the limits of comprehension yet the statistics go on. Texas Longhorns made $70m profit last year, and Forbes believe they are worth $129m. Thirty-three football programmes made their university more than $10m last season while the top 19 teams are all valued at over $60m. But it’s little wonder given the demand. In 2008, CBS and the heavyweight Southeastern Conference agreed a deal worth approximately $825m over 15 years. In March of 2011, Fox and the Big 12 Conference revealed a 13-year deal worth $1.17bn. By last May, the Pac-12 agreed a contract that is worth a record $225m a year for 12 years.

The Sigerson Cup it isn’t but there is a crucial cornerstone behind the numbers that we in Ireland can understand better than most. It’s pride of place that makes college football so valuable, while remaining amateur beyond the 63 scholarships allowed per college. Professional franchises can come and go but these institutions are endemic to a region and vital to the locality both economically and spiritually. They are deep-knit in communities and it’s that which creates rivalries we can identify with on a smaller, but no less important, scale in Gaelic games. The best will end up drafted to the NFL but in much of America, they’ll be remembered for what they do in university.

There’s another familiar thread running through college football though. Just as it has grown up with society, it has helped society grow up too, to the point that they are intrinsically tangled. The programme from the storied Army-Navy game in 1941 featured an article on the USS Arizona, just nine days before it was sunk in Pearl Harbour. During the early days of the Civil Rights movement, the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast conferences refused black players but when Maryland travelled to Clemson in 1963 with Darrell Hill in their ranks, he received death threats and considered the possibility of a sniper. During that game, 50,000 fans chanted “Kill the nigger”.

By 1970, Alabama was nationally renowned for little other than football and saw it as a statement of racial pride. But when USC running back Sam Cunningham and quarterback Jimmy Jones took them apart, all that changed, just so they could compete. The following season the Crimson Tide altered their policy and last year were champions with a predominantly black team. Even during the Cold War, college football was seen as a way of magnifying American core values in the face of Soviet gains.

Of course there’s the more cheesy aspect to it all. There are the famed entrances such as Virginia Tech coming out to Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’, Nebraska’s Tunnel Walk, and a 1,300lb buffalo running around a Colorado field. There are the rituals from Hawaii’s Haka to the Ohio script where Bob Hope and Jack Nicklaus are amongst those who have dotted the ‘i’. And there are tailgating parties and homecomings, all foreign to us, but all quintessentially college football and, by extension, American.

Granted it’s not a sport without its problems. It’s become so bloated that Congress was heavily involved in the move to a four-team play-off while the Joe Paterno case showed the over-importance of football at Penn State. But they are the rare unsavoury moments in a game that has captured the heart of a nation and that’s come a long way since 50 men wrestled in some New Brunswick mud.

As part of the events surrounding the Emerald Isle classic at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday, Notre Dame tennis team will play a Fitzwilliam selection at the club’s courts at Appian Way tomorrow.

Bigger is best: colleges football numbers

Last season Michigan topped the attendance charts for the 14th year in a row with a new record of 112,179 fans per home game. Including away games, a total 1,218,043 fans attended a Wolverines game.

The first night game in Michigan Stadium last year, where they played Notre Dame, attracted 114,804 fans, the largest crowd in history to attend a football game, collegiate or professional.

Thirteen Division One colleges played in front of more than one million fans each during the course of last season, including home, away and neutral games.

In 2011, Texas AM set a record for football season ticket sales at 42,151.

Oklahoma continued its string of sellouts, which now stands at 80 games and 6,537,545 spectators since it began in 1999.

Nebraska Cornhuskers have sold old out every time since 1962, a run of 312 straight games.

More than 213 million television viewers watched a regular-season game last year.

College football games were the highest-rated primetime programme on Saturday nights in 11 of 14 weeks last autumn.

The Pac-12 championship game had 4.5 million viewers, the Big Ten Championship had 7.8 million viewers, while the Oklahoma v Florida State regular-season clash averaged 9.3 million viewers.

The National Championship game attracted the second highest number of households (16,072,268) of any programme in the history on cable television, with an average of 24,214,000 viewers, also second best in cable history. The only cable programme with a larger audience was the previous season's championship finale.