text: 1.  College and high school football are huge.\n2.  College and high school basketball are big.\n3.  High school and minor league baseball are popular.\n4.  College and minor league hockey are not huge.  Most high schools do not have hockey programs.\n\nKids do not grow up playing hockey at an amateur level in the US.   \n\nIt makes all the difference.\n\nHockey needs to be happy to be at the level of popularity it has.  It can continue to be very big in Canada and northeastern cities, and selected other cities where there has been movement of people from colder climates (example: Dallas, which has lots of cold climate transplants who know hockey).