Baltimore sure likes to name things after the Oriole bird eh lolNo question. You could even do something similar to OTL St. Louis and call both the Baseball Team *and* the Hockey Team the Orioles. (Both have existed). Other possibilities from OTL include the Skipjacks and the Clippers.
BTW, there have been at *least* six Baltimore Oriole sports teams, three Major League Baseball, two Minor League Baseball and a hockey team.
And I guarantee you they can hate the Flyers as much as everyone else does.
What if Jim Brown never cursed Cleveland, though...?
So I realized, later on, that Rose Long was born in Indiana, and I'm already stretching things having her marry Huey as IOTL, so her being a CS President is probably out of the question in the end
There are no lengths Bettman will not go to
Agreed. We'll have it in rugby (three-tiered closed rugby pyramid) and football (who knows how many levels there, lol) and maybe volleyball, undecided there as of yet (though the idea of the volleyball league being the biggest of them and covering much of North America and still having pro-rel has a certain appeal to me). Hockey and Baseball will be closed leagues but with massive farm/minors/junior leagues systems similar to OTL. In baseball, these secondary but fully professional leagues are largely what is spread across the other North American countries, and in cases like the CSA, Mexico or Cuba/Puerto Rico would likely have their own robust domestic leagues that land somewhere between AAA affiliates and Nippon Pro Baseball. For junior hockey, meanwhile, the WHL and OHL provide a good blueprint, ITTL with their strength declining remarkably the further south you get (it's a neat idea, but I have a hard time seeing hockey capture Mexican attention in the way that futbol (always numero uno), baseball and even to a lesser extent rugby and volleyball could. Just speaking from personal experience, WHL pulls serious fans, and a very different crowd than the NHL - the T-Birds and Silvertips here in Seattle still sell out their arenas all season long even with the Kraken in place, because people who want to pay $15 a ticket to get shithoused and watch Canadian high schoolers beat the shit out of each other aren't paying the usurious prices to go hang out in the Krakhouse where $15 gets you one beer.
That's sort of been my thought all along; basketball is a niche sport in the US, sort of like a working-class lacrosse, and is replaced in the public consciousness by volleyball.
My thought process on the stack ranking of how popular various pro sports in the US are flows from the very different sporting culture the US would have ITTL, and that it doesn't have much of a Sun Belt outside of California/Arizona/Nevada/maybe Baja California depending on what I decide. Remember - the US is very loosely based on Canada OTL, at least in terms of political culture and where it winds up on its social services scale. So hockey needs to be way bigger below the 49th, which honestly isn't that big of a stretch since the entire Hockey Belt is inside the ITTL US anyways, without all this silly Southern Strategy of expansion.
If I had to guess, 2023 US sports hierarchy looks something like this:
1. Pro Rugby Association = Similar to OTL NFL in popularity, maybe a notch or two below. Pro-Rel applies
2A. Hockey League = The unequivocal indoor winter sport, perhaps a notch below OTL/TTL Canadian levels of obsession but enjoys a much stronger US position probably similar to the NBA. The gap between the PRA and the 2A/2B sports here is much narrower than the gap between the NFL and everybody else OTL
2B. American Football League = The big change here; sort of a hybrid between the NBA and MLB, with the popularity/cultural position of the former but the spring-through-fall popularity of the latter. This means that "soccer" (I've tried to be diligent calling it football exclusively in-universe) is a huge sport in the US, way bigger than OTL, but just not ahead of rugby. Pro-Rel applies
3. Major League Baseball = Similar to MLB in the 90s before the '94 Strike, but definitely has fallen behind AFL as the summer sport of choice and is no longer the "Pastime" of the country in the way it was in previous decades
4. National Volleyball Association/League - Not quite sure what I want to do with this yet, but just know it rounds out the Big Five North American sports. Volleyball is sort of second fiddle to Hockey League clubs in their indoor arenas but is a popular game in urban areas along with association football with kids due to its simplicity/low point of entry to play and is rapidly gaining on the other four after decades of being "the other winter sport" and being dismissed by some men as "that sport women play." Compare to position of MLS IOTL - it's big, and it's growing, but its definitely a step below.
5. Other sports that are maybe more "niche." Lacrosse, basketball (for Quebecois immigrants), cricket (for Indian and Jamaican immigrants), Jai Alai (for Whitey Bulger to launder money), etc.
In terms of college:
1. College Rugby uber alles, as it has always been on campus for the ultimate "rich man's game". I'll have an update on this soon.
2. College Football - I have a neat idea for something March Madness/World Cup like on this front. The best players of course wind up at club academies.
3. College Hockey. The best players of course wind up in junior leagues
4. College Volleyball
5. College Baseball. Much like IOTL, the real talent goes to minors straight out of high school, but there's still a big following on campus and for the CWS
