Over the last few days, thousands of Americans have flooded through Trinity, proudly wearing the respective colours of Georgia Tech and Boston College. The fanfare that greeted families, friends and fans of these teams have been hard to avoid for the regular tourist or passerby, who have been treated to wild displays of the enthusiasm and dedication that only Americans seem able to muster when it comes to college sport.
Their brief presence on campus has been met with confusion by most Trinity students, but there is something impressive about the way college-level football, played by students around the same age as a Trinity undergraduate, can attract thousands of fans who are willing to travel thousands of miles to watch them play. While no more than a few hundred would travel to see Trinity’s rugby team play and most students have never made it out to Santry to watch a Trinity team play, these two American teams have generated enthusiasm across the city unmatched by most Irish college, or even regional, sporting events.
While there are numerous reasons for this disparity, with funding a major factor, Trinity is counting on their new sports scholarship programme, worth up to €9,500, to create a culture that might go some way to replicating that found in US universities. And while the new sports scholarship programme, worth up to €9,500, is tiny compared to the sums expended on US athletes, Trinity is right to value the impact sports teams and personalities can have in generating international recognition, and how much support an individual athlete needs to excel.
Maybe students don’t want to see pep rallies regularly take over campus, or resent the money poured into university sport in the US. These are valid concerns, and Trinity cannot compete with the funds involved in US sport, and many argue that it shouldn’t. But neither should students be cynical about Trinity using sport to promote itself as a university.
This isn’t simply because bigger is better, or because the example of US universities should always be followed. But a sporting culture is important – who doesn’t want to see future Trinity Olympians? And if the scholarship programme encourages even a tenth of the “campus spirit” seen over this weekend, sports teams and the university can only benefit.
