by Eric Bailey

Created on: April 17, 2009   Last Updated: April 19, 2009

The gamut of sports is broad, significant, and powerful. Some in particular have created a culture of grandiose spectacle, with billions of dollars in revenue earning a firm stake in the business world and millions of amateur participants ensuring a marked impact on society.

Gone are the days when "sport" was a proud endeavor only practiced by athletic males in specialized settings. Nowadays, many different sporting events are enjoyed on a worldwide level by countless fans; whether in playing, viewing, or other forms of participations, including virtual and journalistic means.

Some choices in competition, though, are undeniably more popular than others. While American football has achieved an unprecedented measure of success as an enterprise on a massive scale, others drown in obscurity or never quite take a foothold in fan's collective consciousness.

One of these sports is ice hockey. While still very popular in Canada, elsewhere it labors to attain any sort of prominence, especially in the United States where it is easily outclassed in popularity and fiscal impact by football as mentioned before, in addition to basketball, baseball, and arguably others. There are, however, a few notable reasons for this inferiority.

Shoes

This factor may seem insignificant, but it is actually essential to this topic: Most sports can be played in tennis shoes, or any reasonably flexible, sturdy footwear. If you are walking down the street and see a group playing basketball or football, you can join in immediately. Even though there are certainly models designed for specific sporting skill sets, you do not need special shoes to play basketball, baseball, football, soccer, dodgeball, golf, or many, many other games.

But ice hockey requires skates, and that is an immediate, notable obstacle to garnering widespread play. The classic idea of a neighborhood "pick-up" game becomes a difficult mess for hockey, where people would have to be traveling with skates at all times in order to be available for matches. The single, subtle issue of shoes proves to be a compelling component for sporting availability.

Intrinsic Environment

The origins of hockey were carved on the ice of frozen ponds and lakes in Canada, Russia, and other notoriously cold-weather countries. But in urban, heavily populated, warmer locales, this built-in surface is lost. Ergo, the only serviceable site would be an ice rink where the ice is artificially maintained, but these are more expensive to have on-hand than, say,

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