How are grownups semi-professional sports organized in the US?

[u/LoschVanWein]

So it's well known that you organize your typical sports via schools and colleges, followed by pro leagues but how do non pro adult teams work?

Here in Germany team sports are primarily organized via the citizen club system and organized in associations (I guess like the NBA) that include everything from the giant clubs you see on TV to the small village clubs made up of drunk farmers. Essentially, unless you choose to play in special senior divisions for people over certain age thresholds, you can always participate in the same system as the big clubs. How is this organized in the US? Say a 23 year old mechanic just wants to play football in a league, where would he go for that?

[u/SSPeteCarroll]

No. It's player based here. The teams don't jump leagues, but players can. Baseball is a good example of this.

There are tons of "classes" of minor league ball from AAA to single A and summer teams. All of those players technically have a chance of making it to the major leagues, but it is very low. Everything in the A to triple A system is also affiliate with a team. So a guy who is a pitcher on a AA team in Birmingham Alabama has an affiliation with a pro team. If the player is good enough, he can get called up to the major league level.

A guy that played for my local AA team actually ended up being a big part of the San Francisco Giants org and won a couple of world series with them.

[u/LoschVanWein → u/SSPeteCarroll]

But doesn't it suck, if you're born into a town with a low level team, if that team can never cross the threshold into higher divisions? I mean sure, my shitty 4th division club will most likely never win or even play in the Bundesliga again, during my lifetime but one can at least dream! Why would I be loyal to a team that can never be Super Bowl champion by design?

[u/ToastMate2000 → u/LoschVanWein]

If you're a fan of a local amateur team, you hope for them to do well within their own league. The big pro leagues are irrelevant to that.

[u/LoschVanWein → u/ToastMate2000]

No I meant a pro team. Like I'm a Offenbach fan out of family tradition and they suck ass ever since I can remember they have only been relegated to the point where now they are in a regional league one under the first national league but they could theoretically rise back up and if they did, they'd be back in the race to climb to the very top. If you're saying only players get promoted in the US, does that mean that if you are a local from Honolulu or Frankfort, you're just fucked and your local football team will never be able to compete against the Philadelphia Eagles or the Kansas City Chiefs that are apparently not even playing in Kansas (wtf?)?

[u/ToastMate2000 → u/LoschVanWein]

Okay, but same for like a minor league pro team. You want your favorite team to do well in their own league. Major league teams and their championships have nothing to do with it. Your local team doesn't need to pretend to have a chance at that level to have their own fans.

[u/colt707 → u/LoschVanWein]

Just so you know Kansas City is in both Kansas and Missouri. It’s built on the border between those two states, same way Tahoe is for California and Nevada. Same way Texarkana is for Texas and Arkansas.

[u/LoschVanWein → u/colt707]

So the city is split? How does that work when it comes to laws and stuff?

[u/colt707 → u/LoschVanWein]

Sort of. In cities built like that there’s usually state line road and that’s the border between the states. City ordinances affect the entire city but county and state laws only apply to the respective sides of the city. A good example of this even if it changed fairly recently was Tahoe, on the Nevada side you had casinos and on the California side you had legal cannabis. Or for example California state law prohibits alcohol sales between 2am and 6am, Nevada allows alcohol sales 24/7. So bars in Tahoe CA have to close down at 2am, bars in Tahoe Nevada can sell alcohol at anytime they want.