Sports In a British North America

An interesting scenario has always been the Americans losing their revolution. However, what sports would evolve in a North America under British Dominion (say, encompassing the United States and Canada, save perhaps minus Alaska and some of the Southwest to Mexico), and how would they evolve? Would Rugby and Cricket be a norm, or would Baseball and Football find a way?
 

Blackwood

Banned
Difficult to say. Closer commercial ties and a continuance of British-style educational institutions would probably have lead North American sports in much the same direction as those in Britain OTL. To this end, then, there will probably be a similar split in schools which prefer rugby, cricket, "football," or the more established elite sports, such as rowing.

Of course, the impact of a true British North America on sports is not to be underestimated. However, the extent to which that is true really depends on how quickly the Americans are accepted as "equals" by the British sporting culture. This would probably happen much more quickly in a British North America than it did OTL in places like India, where the British exerted a strong sporting dominance for decades. Their impact on the formation of an alternate FA and other such things is, I think, impossible to predict.
 
North American Rules Football, Hockey, baseball, rugby, Lacrosse, and (for the sake of saying something off the wall) horseshoe pitching.
 
North American Rules Football, Hockey, baseball, rugby, Lacrosse, and (for the sake of saying something off the wall) horseshoe pitching.

I like it. I bet soccer has a stronger role though. I would not be surprised if football and especially baseball are very different from OTL versions.
 

Deleted member 5719

North American Rules Football, Hockey, baseball, rugby, Lacrosse, and (for the sake of saying something off the wall) horseshoe pitching.

American rules football would almost certainly never evolve, it would be unlikely to be sufficiently differentiated from rugby by the time easier transatlantic travel made international rugby the most attractive wrestling/ball game hybrid in the Americas.

Real football would be popular, probably one of the top three sports (it has the advantage of being the easiest game to play anywhere, and by far the most fluid and interesting to watch).

Cricket would remain big in the universities, New England and Pennsylvania.

Basketball would never evolve due to more competition from games that do not require players to have genetic abnormalities, and which don't have goals scored every 35 seconds :eek:.

Ice Hockey and Lacrosse would still be big, but I'm not sure if baseball would evolve from the kids game rounders if it had competition from the more skilled and varied imperial game of cricket.
 
Ice hockey would be big in the north, for one. It was largely invented by the Iriquois(I think) and adopted by colonists, so it's not butterflied away though there may be some big changes to the rules.

As for others, baseball was actually invented in Britain, so it's still possible it comes to NA. However, the main driving force in its popularity was its play by soldiers during the Civil War, so it may remain a minor sport here.

I actually think that American Football would still come into existance, though. It might be a little faster paced and more rugby-like, but I still think that someone will invent something along its lines(I have no reasoning for this beyond my love of the sport. The Packers will always exist!:p)

And, of course, soccer will be far more popular. I can't think of a way to fight that in this scenario. Also, because one of us Americans has to argue about it: Soccer is not the most interesting sport to watch. I personally fell asleep trying to watch the world cup. You may now form an angry mob.
 
Ice hockey would be big in the north, for one. It was largely invented by the Iriquois(I think) and adopted by colonists, so it's not butterflied away though there may be some big changes to the rules.
Say what!??


http://www.athleticscholarships.net/history-of-ice-hockey.htm said:
ICE HOCKEY AND HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED - ORIGINS AND ROOTS

Until the mid-1980s it was usually accepted that ice hockey was derived from English field hockey and Indian lacrosse and was spread throughout Canada by British soldiers in the mid-1800s. Research then turned up a mention of a hockey very similar to hockey, played in the early 1800s in Nova Scotia by the Micmac Indians, it appeared to have been mainly influenced by the Irish game of hurling; it included the use of a "hurley" (stick) and a square wooden block instead of a ball.

It was most likely that this game then spread throughout Canada via Scottish and Irish immigrants and the British army. The players adopted elements of field hockey, such as the "bully" (later the face-off) and "shinning" (hitting your opponent on the shins with the stick or playing with the stick on one "shin" or side); this later evolved into an informal ice game later known as shinny or shinty. The name hockey--as the organized game came to be known--has been attributed to the French word hoquet (shepherd's stick).
HISTORICAL FACTS ABOUT ICE HOCKEY
The term rink, referring to the playing area, was originally used in the game of curling in 18th-century Scotland. Early hockey games allowed as many as thirty players a side on the ice at any one time, and the goals were two stones, each frozen into one end of the ice. The first use of a puck instead of a ball was recorded at Kingston Harbour, Ont., in 1860

Rules were set by students at McGill University in Montréal, Canada, in 1879, and several amateur clubs and leagues were established in Canada by the late 1880´s. The game is believed to have been 1st played in the United States in 1893. By the beginning of the twentieth century the sport had spread to the UK and other parts of Europe. The modern game developed in Canada, and is now very popular in the USA and Eastern Europe.

Ah, either you're confusing hockey with Lacrosse (which is of Iroquoian origin) or you heard that Lacrosse is the ancestor of hockey.
 
Say what!??




Ah, either you're confusing hockey with Lacrosse (which is of Iroquoian origin) or you heard that Lacrosse is the ancestor of hockey.
Bah. It was one of them, and I couldn't remember which. I can't really be bothered with the origins of hockey. All I care about is the Red Wings in the playoffs.
 
An interesting scenario has always been the Americans losing their revolution. However, what sports would evolve in a North America under British Dominion (say, encompassing the United States and Canada, save perhaps minus Alaska and some of the Southwest to Mexico), and how would they evolve? Would Rugby and Cricket be a norm, or would Baseball and Football find a way?

Just take at look at Canada and expand its example.
 
It's very difficult to suggest the impact that a British North America will have on the codification of sport in the early-mid 1800s. The spread of "British" sports - particularly cricket and rugby union - was largely down to military and civil service presence in colonial areas in the mid-late 1800s.

A British military presence across north America will undoubtedly lead to the a stronger presence of such sports.

A stronger soccer presence is not a given - look at Australia, where rugby league and Australian Rules dominate as the football codes - and even in the UK itself, soccer did not become the dominant code until the early 1900s.

If rugby rules becomes popular in such a TL, I can see increased commercial/professional pressures on the game around the turn of the 19th/20th century, and the US going down a rugby league route, like Australia and new Zealand did in 1907/8.
 
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