Football, Soccer, and More: A Primer on the Most Important Sites in Sports History

Much of North America is glued to the football games that take place and air on TV each weekend during the fall season. American football is one of the most popular sports domestically, and its Canadian variant is also popular with our friends to the north. There are many sites related to American and Canadian football that are interesting, captivating, educational, and just plain cool. Let’s start out with the halls of fame: Football historians will love the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio; the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, Georgia; and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in Hamilton, Ontario, less than an hour from Niagara Falls. Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the Packers play, is noteworthy in that it is a mid-century traditional stadium in a world of multi-billion dollar arenas. The Rose Bowl (pictured) in Pasadena, California, near Los Angeles, is world-renowned for its parade, its college bowl game (the most popular in college football), and of course as a five-time Super Bowl venue. Out of all the hallowed grounds in collegiate athletics, I definitely recommend visiting the behemoth Notre Dame Stadium near South Bend, Indiana (during football season of course!) Fun fact: Did you know that TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville, Florida has the largest video scoreboard in all of the NFL?

With billions of devotees, soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) is easily the world’s most popular sport. As you can imagine, compared to other sports, there are no shortage of museums worldwide that are devoted to soccer. As you can imagine, the world’s most popular football clubs have museums dedicated to the achievements of their teams: the most fascinating, in no particular order, are the Real Madrid Museum in Madrid, Spain; the River Plate Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Barcelona FC’s Camp Nou Museum (stadium pictured); the Football Museum in Montevideo, Uruguay; the Football Hall of Fame in Pachuca de Soto, two hours northeast of Mexico City, Mexico; the National Football Museum in Manchester, England; the National Soccer Hall of Fame in Frisco, Texas (near Dallas); and last but definitely not least, the FIFA World Football Museum in Zürich, Switzerland. There’s nothing like watching a match in person, and it is truly an unforgettable experience to be on the grounds of FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa; the Borg El Arab Stadium in Alexandria, Egypt; Bukit Jalil National Stadium in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Lusail Iconic Stadium in Lusail, Qatar, north of Doha. These four stadiums are among the ten largest in the world.

Baseball is one of America’s most cherished pastimes, and the country has been crazy for the sport for over 150 years. You might know the National League, one of the two leagues in Major League Baseball, was founded in 1876, but did you know that it’s the oldest professional sports league of any kind anywhere in the world? Two of the league’s original eight teams are still around today: the Chicago Cubs, which started out as the Chicago White Stockings; and the Atlanta Braves, which began as the Boston Red Stockings, not to be confused with the modern-day Boston Red Sox (Fenway Park entrance pictured). The most popular museums devoted to baseball worldwide are including, but not limited to, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York (pictured below); the Salón de la Fama del Béisbol Mexicano in Monterrey, Mexico; the Casa Museo del Pelotero Profesional Dominicano in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in St. Marys, Ontario; and The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum inside the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan. Out of all the regions of the world, baseball enjoys its peak popularity in the United States, Canada, Central and South America, and East Asia.

Basketball was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts by a Canadian, James Naismith. After creating the sport in 1891 (Did you know basketball was invented so people could participate in the sport indoors during the winter?), he became the athletic director and head basketball coach at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, west of Kansas City. Not only is he considered to be the founder of the game, his rules for basketball are the Holy Grail on which current basketball regulations are based. They are housed in a museum exhibit at the Debruce Center on the campus in Lawrence. The National Basketball League was founded in the 1940s in New York City (pictured: The wardrobe for the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden), and has since become the officially sanctioned governing body for professional basketball in the U.S. and Canada. The Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers have won the highest number of NBA championships with 17 apiece. You can learn more about the history of the sport by visiting the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, or you can go directly to the source and visit Naismith’s old stomping grounds. The R. Tait McKenzie Memorial Museum, which has many Naismith artifacts, is located in Mississippi Mills, Ontario, near Ottawa.

The most important places that pertain to hockey are going to be, for the most part, naturally located in cold climates, especially as the most popular form of hockey in North America is ice hockey (invented by Canadians). The NHL/IIHF Hockey Hall of Fame is located in Toronto, Ontario (art installation outside the Hall of Fame pictured), and is the world’s largest ice hockey museum. The smaller U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame is located in the small town of Eveleth, Minnesota, possible as a day trip traveling from either Hibbing or Duluth. The world’s oldest continuously-operating hockey museum is the aptly-named Original Hockey Hall of Fame, located in Kingston, Ontario. The Hockey Museum is another must-see attraction for any true hockey fan; billing itself as the only museum in the world educating visitors on the history of hockey, it’s situated on High Street in Woking, England, close to both London and Reading. (Remember that before Canadians first played hockey on the ice, it was a British invention and played on a field!) There are also museums dedicated to ice hockey in Moscow, Russia, and Windsor, Nova Scotia near Halifax, which claims to be the birthplace of ice hockey. We always recommend seeing a game in person, and you can do that and learn about the Montréal Canadiens at their own museum located inside the Bell Centre, the world’s largest ice hockey arena.