RECORD CROWDS SEE SPORT IN AMERICA

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 281, 17 February 1928, Page 10

RECORD CROWDS SEE SPORT IN AMERICA

REVIEW OF LAST SEASON The year just closed saw the greatest patronage of sport fans in the history of athletics, says a New York writer. Football, boxing and baseball had the biggest single crowds in the nation’s history. When Notre Bame played University of Southern California, 114,000 football enthusiasts piled into Soldiers’ Field, at Chicago, where also 120,000 saw Tunney beat Dempsey. .The baseball record crowd was 74,000 at the New York Stadium. The record football crowd on the Pacific Coast was 90,000 at San Francisco, when Stanford played Southern California. It is estimated that 30,000,000 attended football matches. Deaths of players totalled 77. The most outstanding event of the year was the loss of the Davis Cup to France, after America held it for seven years. The prospect of its recovery is regarded as anything but bright; it is believed that the four “recqueteers” of France—Lacoste, Cochet, Borotra and Brugnon—still revelling in their early youth, will hold it, unless Australia’s star once more shines as merrily as it did, with two exceptions, in the 12 years prior to America capturing it in 1919.