Why do you think there's a lack of sports cartoons?

Japan "gets" that a sports story can basically stand in for your typical coming of age, good vs evil journey. Think about it. A young but talented hero goes through a journey across a treacherous land filled with enemies (opponents) that he or she must get past to get to the next plot point. During the process he grows, matures, maybe gets a romance along the way. In the end he meets the super powerful enemy (best player in the world, etc,.) and must defeat him.

A sports story is as predictable (or unpredictable, if you will) as a superhero story or a fantasy epic (that is, pretty darned predictable!). They follow the same template. If you can watch one genre, the same structure easily applied to sports stories.

But as many posters here said, people follow it for the journey. After all, why do you guys read or watch superhero stories when pretty much the same things happen over and over and over? Obviously, it's the journey.
 
I've been reading a fair bit of sports manga lately (Eyeshield 21, Slam Dunk, Whistle!, etc) and I think that if there were to be an American sports cartoon done like the Japanese ones, it would be required to break a number of the self-imposed rules that animation folks seem to give themselves. It would have to be heavily serialized. There would probably have to be some sort of planned ending in mind. Also, it would probably have to be aimed at a slightly older demographic. Like, boys 9-14. Not because of "edgy material" or anything, but it would just be easier to market a show that's essentially a sports drama to more of a middle school audience.

That's not to say these things don't happen, but they just happen so rarely. If it were to happen, I could see the resulting show becoming a project that some channel like Disney XD would want to air.
 
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