Which is better regarded in their respective sports: AAA baseball vs. FBS college football?

31 comments

1. I dont know what either of those things are lol.

2. Fbs without a question.

3. Generally FBS college football is considered a bigger deal, but AAA baseball is still fairly popular.

4. FBS football is. Goal is to win championships.

   In AAA and really all minor league baseball, winning is nice but getting players ready for the majors is the primary goal.

5. I would say college football is the bigger deal. College football has a higher profile since its more widely broadcast and discussed on national tv than minor league baseball is. Also by the time most players get to AAA baseball, they’ve been slogging away in the minor leagues for years so casual outside interest in them has faded a bit.

6. college football and it isn’t close

7. FBS is way bigger

8. FBS college football is the 2nd biggest sport in the US, after the NFL. It is biggest sport in the South, as well as large parts of the West and Midwest. It isn’t as big a deal in the Northeast, but it’s still a bigger deal than AAA baseball. Famous college football players who never did anything in the pros are some of the most famous athletes in America. The Heisman trophy, which is the trophy for the best player in college football, is probably the most prestigious individual award in sports.

   People live and die with their local college football team. Minor league sports are often popular events as a day out, but 99% of the fans at the game don’t care about the outcome. AAA or the lowest A team doesn’t change that it’s still the minor leagues. AAA teams just tend to be in bigger metro areas, so draw more fans than lower level teams for that reason. It’s not because people care about AAA more than A.

   There’s also the issue that the people who care most about the top AAA prospects are the fans of the major league team, not the local fans where the AAA team is located. Sometimes the major league team and the AAA team are located close together and share a local fanbase, but often this is not true.

9. There’s a not insignificant number of college football teams that outsell MLB teams.

10. FBS by a mile

11. College football, by a large margin. People really turn out for college football, in numbers, with a fervor they just don’t have for minor-league baseball. (Minor league ball is usually regarded as a hang-around/afternoon’s entertainment sort of thing, college football is part of some people’s *self-identity*.)

    (And for the record, given the choice between watching baseball and football, I’d take baseball. And what I said is *still* true.)

12. Tough to directly compare, because they’re such different size. FBS has 131 schools while AAA has only 30 clubs. If I were to compare a joke FBS school like UMass to a relatively well performing AAA club like the WooSox, the comparison would be in favor of AAA. But if you only compare the best 30 FBS schools they would blow AAA out of the water. Nationally televised games, attendance figures over 100,000, truckloads of money.

13. FBS football is much more important. There are large swaths of the country where it’s the most popular sport. AAA is a higher level of play, but it is not a sport that has a huge following. In the immediate local area of the team, people will follow them and games have decent attendance, but it’s explicitly a minor league in a way that FBS is not. Winning AAA league is not a big deal.

14. I would say the Louisville Bats have a good following for a AAA team, but in the state of Kentucky nothing tops college sports.

15. Two or three thousand will go to AAA baseball games. College football games will draw a hundred thousand easily.

16. The largest AAA baseball stadium seats 16,600.

    The largest FBS football stadium seats 107,600. 8 of the 10 largest stadiums in the world are fbs football stadiums.

    I think that should answer your question. College football is extremely popular with passionate fans and not really comparable to any kind of minor league.

    Though I will clarify that, while college football has the country’s biggest stadiums by far, the nfl is still significantly more popular overall and has higher tv viewership (the stadiums don’t seat as many because they’re built to have more comfortable seating).

    And some college teams are way more popular than others, there’s a huge variance in the resources/popularity/number of fans across the FBS teams.

17. College football is many times more popular than the pros where i’m from and my city (Nashville) has a home NFL team. I dont think anybody I know could name a single player on our AAA baseball team and all my friends are sports fanatics

18. AAA baseball is a much higher caliber of play, but FBS football has a larger following.

19. Yeah, it’s an unintentionally, but charmingly, naive question.

    It’s like apples and oranges.

    One is a full on sport with a nationwide fan base and lots of famous players known by name. The other is a farm system for a much higher league whose best players aren’t generally known by name to most of the country.

    Although NCAA football does act as a stepping stone to the NFL, it isn’t really a farm system since the NFL doesn’t control it. Many of its fans don’t care about the NFL at all and to them college football is an end in itself. It can’t be assumed that someone who watches NCAA football even watches NFL football.

20. College football.

21. TV companies pay tens of millions of dollars to broadcast college football over the course of 13 or so Saturdays in the autumn. If you are lucky some independent local channel might show the occasional AAA game.

    Eight of the ten largest capacity stadiums in the world are ONLY used for college football. Like 19 stadiums used for college football, including one for my school with less than 12,000 students, seat more people than Atatürk Olympic Stadium.

    The average attendance of the top level of college football which is made up of 131 teams/schools is about 2000 more fans than the Premiership in England. AAA baseball teams average maybe a tenth of that.

    What I’m trying to say is that it is college football by a lot.

22. College football is much much bigger than MLB let alone AAA baseball. Some of our largest stadiums are college football stadiums and seat over 100k. I’d say the average attendance at a AAA baseball game is around a few hundred.

23. FBS college football and it’s not close.

24. Fbs easily. I can name a solid 5 aaa teams

25. AAA baseball means more a cheaper ticket at the park, I can’t imagine someone basing their whole fandom on a team even our Rainiers.

26. This is actually an interesting question. How’d you get into this much of a deep dive into American sports?

27. AAA baseball might be more closely popular to FCS college football.

28. College football. AAA baseball would not be in the same conversation. Watch ESPN SportsCenter. Whose highlights do the show? AAA. Baseball might make a show if a cute cat sneaks on the field and steals a ball. Otherwise, very few people pay attention to it.

    Meanwhile there are shows dedicated to college football. Saturday mornings there are three hours of College Gameday before the first game is shown. I’m not sure where I can actually see a AAA game on. Tv.

29. Football sucks…..and yes I’m in the minority with this opinion.

30. Minor league baseball, even up to AAA, doesn’t really have a following. The teams and stadiums are more of a convenience than anything. On the other hand, there are plenty of college teams with fan bases that are easily more devoted and fanatical than many NFL teams have. The two are not even remotely close in comparison.

31. I’m in an area where college football is not nearly as popular as other parts of the country. And that said it’s easily a much bigger draw than any minor league baseball team.