Sports

Columbus hosts two major league professional sports teams: the Columbus Blue Jackets of the National Hockey League (NHL) which play at Nationwide Arena and Columbus Crew SC of Major League Soccer (MLS) which play at Mapfre Stadium, the first soccer-specific stadium built in the United States for a Major League Soccer team. The Crew were one of the original members of MLS and won their first MLS Cup in 2008, with a second title in 2020. The Columbus Crew is scheduled to move into a new downtown stadium in the summer of 2021, which will also feature a mixed-use development site named Confluence Village.

The Ohio State Buckeyes are a member of the NCAA's Big Ten Conference, and their football team plays home games at Ohio Stadium. The Ohio State-Michigan football game (known colloquially as "The Game") is the final game of the regular season and is played in November each year, alternating between Columbus and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 2000, ESPN ranked the Ohio State-Michigan game as the greatest rivalry in North American sports. Moreover, "Buckeye fever" permeates Columbus culture year-round and forms a major part of Columbus's cultural identity. Former New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, an Ohio native who studied at Ohio State at one point and who coached in Columbus, was an Ohio State football fan and major donor to the university who contributed to the construction of the band facility at the renovated Ohio Stadium, which bears his family's name. During the winter months, the Buckeyes basketball and hockey teams are also major sporting attractions.