With the 2010 Winter Olympics in full swing from Vancouver, Canada, the next two weeks of television are going to be jam-packed with sports. Love them or hate them (and judging by the Super Bowl becoming the highest watched show in U.S. history, most people love them), sports have become a big part of our television lives. From Sunday afternoon football, to Saturday night hockey, to the Olympics, there’s something about getting together with your friends to watch the big game.

So what was the first ever sporting event to be televised in the United States?

Sports didn’t become big on television until 1947, when they began being tied to the major networks. Granted, there weren’t a lot of televisions back then, but when NBC aired the World Series, heavyweight boxing fights and Army-Navy football games, the sales of televisions skyrocketed.

By 1948 there were 190,000 TV’s in use, and with CBS jumping on the sports bandwagon, that number soared to 10.5 million by 1950. While sporting events cannot be considered the only reason for the sales of television sets between 1947 and 1950, there’s no denying the impact they had on American culture, as the networks banked on them to bring in big advertising dollars.

Eight years before NBC aired the World Series in 1947 though, they showed the first televised sporting event in U.S. history which was a college baseball game between Columbia and Princeton. The year was 1939 and the date was Wednesday, May 17th. It was a double-header, but only the second game was shown on TV, and Princeton took it 2-1 in the 10th inning.

So as you’re watching the Olympics this week on your television set at home, give some thanks to NBC who pretty much started the sports revolution and brought the games into our homes.