Why do American colleges and universities have sports teams?

Here is one side effect of a university having a famous sports team as mentioned by Federico Poloni in a comment: people know your name. This helps recruit new students, it helps alumni impress potential employers with a degree from somewhere they have heard of! I only know that Boise State University is actually a real university (and as it turns out a pretty good one) because their football field has blue turf.

One feature of American colleges and universities that is easy to forget is that they are often in the middle of nowhere. Pennsylvania State University is in a town named State College. You can guess which came first. So imagine you have thousands of young men and women in a place that is barely a town. What do they do on Saturday afternoon? Some will start organizing teams to play sports and then start going to nearby schools to play their teams. This grew greatly since the old days but the idea that a residential university is partly responsible for providing non-academic activities for their students take part in still exists as a real force. At smaller schools which do not have sports scholarships the sports teams are more about playing because the students enjoy it and it is just part of campus life.

Also at many schools the mission statements include character formation such as "building leadership skills." If this is the case you can actually argue that having some level of athletic competition on campus actually is part of the core mission. Maybe not an absolute vital part but one that contributes to the mission.

I am of course ignoring in large part the money and corruption that is part of the NCAA Division I level of college athletics. Of which there is an extraordinary amount of both.

Most schools, except for d3 schools, break even with their athletic programs. Americans want to be proud of something, that something for colleges is athletics. Most people wouldn't want to go to Harvard if they didn't have a good football team. I helps to bring diversity (age, interests, grades, and money) into colleges.

The University of Chicago's president (can't remember which one) chose to not have sports teams many decades ago.

I think the practice of having college and university sports teams arose from one of the older functions of "colleges" and "universities", namely, as finishing schools for children of the wealthy, especially young men. (As opposed to theology seminaries, or medical or law schools, or teachers' colleges.) Just one more entertainment for them, but/and obviously the degree of quasi-professionalism was much less.

In any case, it seems that alumni generally are more entertained by sports than by science or literature, say. I think it is believed that maintaining general alumni enthusiasm via sports may spill over into donations for other things. Certainly the box office revenue and alumni donations make sports programs close to self-supporting, sometimes running at a profit, depending on how one does the accounting.

There are good answers already for why does there continue to be a huge emphasis on sports in American academia but none really answer the question.

The fact is that sports in America were introduced at universities out of necessity. Where in most parts of the world there has been long traditions of clubs or the local handling of games/sports, America had nothing. One small town might play another small town in a "sport" but that didn't satisfy everyone. You had elitist or exceptional athletes that wanted to compete against their equals, not Gary the blacksmith.

So this is mid 19th century and America is boiling. A nation divided on many subjects. So instead of a local rowing club or in today's terms playing for your company team, the easiest thing to gravitate to is a local university. They had the money, organization, place to play the game, and so on.

And back then universities had opinions and power concerning government and policy. So the elite universities (most were in this group at the time) wanted to take their debating and add physicality to it. Races, rowing, simple games. It invoked pride and if Harvard won the rowing competition then they must be right about slavery.

I didn't even ask who has time for games in mid 19th century? Well you are probably a male, somewhere between 20-35, you have lots of money, and no job - you go to school. This is the epitome of sports culture. Where are all of these people stacked at... Universities. So it was just the perfect storm.

Now once it started the early collegiate sports scene really was much like we see today - except it was admittedly like that in the late 19th century and early 20th century. What do I mean? Well players were old. You might not have many players on your football team under 20 and a few in their 30s. Some players student-status was highly questioned. There weren't really any rules at first and when they started the rules in the late 19th century there were ways around them.

Players were paid, sometimes "pros" went back to college, there were boosters... the schools were driven by pride, power, and money. Maybe the only things different were (lack of) media and that they were not preying on teenagers.

And the evolution of sports in the 20th century has gone from we have money and power so we will form the best teams, to we will get money and power from having the best teams. The big D1 schools are the worst. They hide huge huge earnings by allocating costs to sports teams so they can make millions/billions on tuition and licensing - yes everyone buys Texas Longhorns shirts for their Economics department.

Some universities "claim" to be losing money. There have been economic impact studies done showing that almost none that made the claims were even near losing money on sports. When they factored in advertising, enrollment, exterior sales, and so on. Really the only thing that makes sports somewhat costly for universities now is Title IX. Very few women's sports make money and most women wouldn't go to a university because their softball team is good.

So now we have the NCAA, colleges, tied-in businesses getting profits and tax breaks for players that are playing for free. This may change now that there has been talk of unionizing but could be years and years down the road.

Even if this happened and the landscape changed were the big sports went to a club system there would still be sports in American universities. They would function because students expect this now. Things would probably work like they do for club sports at current universities or how things work at most DIII schools. You play local teams, you drive to the game, pay for your equipment, maybe offset a little by entrance fees or a nice booster.

So why are there sports in American colleges? Pride, money, free-time of students, and the fact that there weren't other organizations to handle these things in the new America. Why will sports be played in American colleges in 100 years? Same reason they are played at clubs in France. Tradition.