What hasn't been mentioned is that young people just don't watch television--at all. Both my children (in their 20s) watch e-sports online and neither watches professional or college sports--or any television. In fact, they don't own TVs and have no desire to have one. Nor do any of their friends.
E-sports is a foreign world to me. While e-sports are not YET ready to supplant TV revenues for "real" sports, Dota2 has already given out $225 million in prize money, and it is merely the first among a couple of dozen online games that have professional players--many of them college age or younger. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that there are at least a couple of Stanford students making big bucks on e-sports.
So 1) there is the issue of a generation of people devoted to online gaming and disinterested in athletics, and 2) even if they were not--they don't watch TV, which will eventually undermine the main revenue stream that college sports currently relies upon.
To connect this to the original post, I think my children's generation has not put away childish things--it just prefers very different childish things to our generation.
E-sports is a foreign world to me. While e-sports are not YET ready to supplant TV revenues for "real" sports, Dota2 has already given out $225 million in prize money, and it is merely the first among a couple of dozen online games that have professional players--many of them college age or younger. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that there are at least a couple of Stanford students making big bucks on e-sports.
So 1) there is the issue of a generation of people devoted to online gaming and disinterested in athletics, and 2) even if they were not--they don't watch TV, which will eventually undermine the main revenue stream that college sports currently relies upon.
To connect this to the original post, I think my children's generation has not put away childish things--it just prefers very different childish things to our generation.