re: What are the top 3 college sports?

I think this thread proves that there is not a big three in college sports, only a big 2 and then everything else.

I think it could go like this:

Tier 1
Football

Tier 2
Mens Bball

Tier 3
Womens Bball

Tier 3.5
Men's Baseball

Tier 4
Wrestling
Hockey

Tier 5
Lacrosse

Tier 6
Who cares

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So is baseball. Although baseball is more widespread than hockey or lacrosse.

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No, baseball is not isolated, hockey and lacrosse are. I'm not saying baseball is popular everywhere, but there are over 300 D-1 conferences playing D-1 baseball. There are D-I teams in Washington, Maine, Florida, California, Iowa, North Dakota, Virginia, and Arkansas. You can't say the same for every any other sport than basketball. . I'm not saying it's popular everywhere, those are different issues. Football is not the No. 1 sport in certain areas, but it’s hard to say it’s not the “top” sport.

Wrestling in Iowa and Oklahoma and a few other places are really popular-no question, but there are about 80 D-1 teams and outside of a handful of places (Iowa, etc.) no one cares. I’ve been to D-I wrestling matches at Wyoming, Northern Colorado, Air Force, and Virginia Tech. There were maybe 50 people at any of those places, mostly girlfriends and family.

Look, what does "top" mean? It's an opinion question. I say baseball for the reasons listed. If someone takes the time to look up some kind of figures to define "top" we can discuss it more than just conjecture.

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No, baseball is not isolated

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If you're talking about people actually caring, and not just schools having teams, yes it is.

Baseball isn't even as popular in the SEC as many people here like to claim, much less the nation.

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So what should we use as a tiebreaker? The fact that most schools around the country at least have a baseball team as opposed to the other sports seems like a decent way to break the tie

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Agreed.

Here are attendence figures for Hockey:

LINK

Here for baseball:
LINK

As you can see, average attendance is a little higher for the top schools in hockey, but if you graphed it out, you see there are 10-15 schools that appear to be big supporters and it drops off after that for both. Again, there are 300 baseball teams, 60 for hockey.

Attendance is not the only factor and it's not an apples to apples comparison, I know. Baseball also plays about 28-40 home games, hockey is about 15-23.

Just throwing it out there.

Lacrosse is actually pretty poorly attended though the season. Last year's final had 35K.

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Women's bball does very good and slightly better than baseball imo.

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I feel like it's only because they shove that crap down our throats.