ABSTRACT
Professional sport leagues, such as the National Football League in the United States of America, dominate weekly media and social interests within the cities in which they are popular, with fans attracted to plots and sub-plots each week in the form of winners and losers, injuries and scandals, sackings, transfers and crisis events (financial, human or organizational). In the late nineteenth century American college football games were played on an ad hoc basis, largely special events that captured the attention of some football followers and some media outlets. College football only became a part of the national psyche and identity when games were organized around seasons, when media outlets and fans alike could plan their sport production and consumption around a weekly routine. The constancy and consistency of professional sport leagues has been the foundation upon which their popularity has been built. In many cities around the world, professional sport leagues have become an ingrained part of what it means to belong to a cultural or social group. In other words, professional sport leagues and their clubs have become, for many fans, an essential way of understanding and defining who they are.
