Alva Review-Courier -

For decades, major league baseball (MLB) used numerous minor leagues to develop athletes into major league players. To some extent, it still does.

But college baseball has become much more popular today than it was when I was a boy collecting baseball cards. I think cable and satellite television have had lots to do with this phenomenon.

With numerous sports channels available to the average American, college baseball has been one of the sports to benefit from the expanded air time modern-era television provides.

Today, fewer minor league teams exist than used to be the case. If universities can develop young players, the need for minor league teams diminishes. Consequently, approximately 60 percent of current MLB athletes played in college.

So, baseball is following to some extent the model that the National Football League (NFL) has almost always followed – draft players after they have played at the college level.

Likewise, however, expanded television opportunities for sports programming has benefitted professional minor league football. This spring, two minor league football circuits have been displayed prominently on television.

Those are the XFL (some people say the “X” stands for “eX-tra”) and the United States Football League (USFL). In addition, the Canadian Football League and numerous “indoor” or “arena” football leagues exist below (in many cases, far below) the NFL level.

The proliferation of these minor league football programs creates many jobs for talented college veterans who were not signed by NFL programs.

Many of these players hope to use minor league experience to get the attention of NFL executives; others just want to keep playing the sport they love and get paid for it.

All of these minor league football organizations have – like college baseball – benefitted from exposure on sports television channels.

The USFL, for example, often plays games in stadiums that have only a miniscule number of fans in the seats. The revenue necessary to keep the league solvent comes from television contracts.

We will look further at these minor league football programs next week in part 3 of this article.