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Well the first game of football was actually played by two college teams: Rutgers and Princeton I think.
It is on TV, including ESPN which has it on Thursday Nights, as well as almost all day Saturday. They even have show dedicated only to College Football which is the only reason I get up before 1100 on Saturdays in the fall. It's also on CBS, ABC, and NBC has an exclusive contract to only broadcast the games of Notre Dame.
I'm not sure exactly how it got big in the early days, but I think that the US has always been a sports loving nation. I think it provided a lot of diversion and something to do back in the early days. I'm sure here in Nebraska that might have had a lot to do with it. I do know that in the early days, teams were simply club teams formed by various organizations. Some of the first games played by the University of Nebraska were against the Omaha YMCA team. Gradually though I imagine that the biggest competition began to come from other colleges, and the fierce rivals and emotion came from beating other collegians.
From these diversions I guess people just began to take great interest. There has been a lot of money spent by a lot of people over the years. In Nebraska I've seen pamphlets asking for help in building a football stadium and such. I think what led to the growth was the formation of High school teams so that players wanted to continue playing when they got to college.
As for the scholarship aspect. It depends on the level of competition how scholarships are given out. If you are in Division IA of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) then the team has a maximum of 85 scholarships that it can give out. It is somewhat like an investment, however all schools have and will give those 85 scholarships out in a year. The goal is to get the best players possible, so that you can win games, and get people to come to them. Major College football can be a huge source of revenue. For example in Nebraska, our stadium holds about 74000 people (though it always has a higher announced attendance - usually about 77500 people). Most of those people are paying about 42-50 dollars a game, and we'll have about 6-8 home games a season. Even subtracting half of that ticket value for about 8000 students, you can do the math and realize how much money that is. Throw in the fact that our stadium also has luxery boxes for people willing to spend the money (1.5 million dollars - or 750000 for less desireable boxes - for rights to the box for 15 years, after the 15 years the boxes are given to the highest bidder) and you have a lucrative money maker. Combine that with concessions, souveniers and the like and the total probably reaches close to 4 million dollars in gross revenue for a game. The community also benefits from all the people who come and use hotels, spend money at tourist attractions, and eat out. The economic impact for a single home game in Lincoln is between 1.7 and 3 million $$$ depending on when the game is played during the day (night games cause more hotel stays).
I'll add more to this reply when I have more time, but I need to do some studying!
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