Best US Universities for Sports Lovers

With more than 2,500 students playing for a university sports team, Ohio State is a university full of sporting activity. At the figurehead is the university’s football team, which has an enviable record in recent years and attracts crowds of over 100,000, nearly 30,000 of which are student season ticket holders. With 738,500 square feet of indoor recreation space, and fantastic school spirit, there are few places better for both athletes and fans.

Football and men’s basketball are the two most successful sports teams at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an institution that manages a perfect blend of campus culture and sporting prowess. Student athletes here have an impressive graduation rate of 70%, suggesting you’ll leave here with a good education as well as a sporting title or two.

Few universities manage to be competitive in such a vast array of sports as Notre Dame, with the soccer, basketball, lacrosse, hockey and fencing teams all either winning titles or reaching semi-finals since the year 2000. Intramural sport is also in rude health here, with student teams existing for practically everything, from full-contact football to co-ed broomball. If being a spectator is more your thing, the Notre Dame stadium – home to four statues of former coaches – provides a matchday experience like few others.

Duke’s 9,314-seat basketball stadium is one of the most well-known college sport venues in the country, with students often camping outside for weeks at a time in order to gain a seat for the big game. Varsity athletics is also in extremely healthy shape here, but it’s the two basketball championships since 2010 which get most of the attention. The football team has also performed well of late, although tailgating has been banned since 2010, taking some of the fun of being a fan away from the sport.

Student athletes at UCLA get to enjoy some of the finest facilities in the US, in an environment which breeds success. With over 100 NCAA team championships to their name, UCLA has an illustrious sporting history and it’s only getting better each year. Sport fans are also spoilt for choice with countless professional teams on their doorstep, from the Lakers, Rams and Clippers to the Kings and the Dodgers.

If you like football, you’ll love the matchday experience at UT, where the stadium is filled with an enormous swaying mass of orange shirts, cowboy boots and foam fingers. It’s not just about the games under Friday night lights though; UT also has an enviable women’s athletics program and a proven track record of producing Olympic athletes (23 in the past four US Olympic teams).

Florida State University for its school spirit, the University of Oklahoma for its matchday atmosphere, Auburn University for its reward program, the University of Maryland, College Park for its basketball teams, the University of Georgia and its privet hedges, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill for dominating women’s soccer.

Image credits: Michigan (One Raised Eyebrow; Flickr), Florida (Jared; Flickr), Connecticut (Matthew D Britt; Flickr), Ohio State (Prayitno Photography; Flickr), Wisconsin and Notre Dame (both Phil Roeder; Flickr), Duke (Mobilus in Mobili; Flickr), UCLA (Simon Shek; Flickr), Texas (Texas Crew; Flickr)