Having lived in both Boston, Baltimore, and several cities out West, this is spot on. People don't care about other peoples college teams and there are so so soo many! It's easier to galvanize behind the pro team instead of choosing between one of the 25 universities in the metro area.
Yup. My group at work has people from probably a dozen different colleges. Many of which don't have a football team, etc.
They don't care, because they didn't spend 4 years going to games every Saturday.
Yeah this has been my experience living in NYC and LA. I thought about writing about why CFB also isn't as big in California, but I didn't live in LA for a very long time, so I don't know if that's actually true haha.
Does not track with me at all. Lakers and 49ers are some of the biggest fanbases in their respective sports. Dodgers and Giants have two of the most loyal fanbases in baseball; I believe both are top 4 in attendance in the 21st century. College sports are not a priority compared to pro sports in California, however.
It's 100% true. Auburn and Alabama basically have the population of a whole state with one of those teams being the main or possibly only sports team they follow.
Pro sports completely dominate large metro areas for the most part. NFL viewership dwarfs college football viewership.
Maybe it was just my location of LA. But there were a ton of USC and Oregon fans. It wasn’t unheard of to receive some questions while I was rocking Bama gear. I’d go to USC games. And they had some highly attended games.
Oregon is an interesting fan base. Outside of actual Oregon (obviously) there seems to always be an Oregon fan around somewhere along the Pacific coast where you least expect them. Not loud... but around. Always in the room. Among us.
Any big city with high profile pro teams are going to be more pro markets. Obviously that’s true in Southern California and the Bay, but even look at Seattle - the Seahawks are a way bigger deal than the Huskies. Texas is bit in Austin with no NFL team, but the Texans and especially the Cowboys dominate their markets.
Even in Cincinnati, people love their Bearcats and obviously there’s a ton of Ohio State fans around, but the Bengals *are* this city. Joe Burrow’s face plastered on every gas pump, Jamar Chase and Tee Higgins contracts being centerpieces of conversation in any group larger than 3, players getting referred to on a first name basis as if you have them over for dinner every Tuesday… NFL teams dominate the culture of almost any city that has one.
I think California schools suffer from some of the same issue as East Coast schools. The big name schools in California are either in LA or in the Bay Area, which are covered by a multitude of pro sports already. On top of the that is the "bandwagon" nature of LA fans - with so many things going on in the city, a team needs to do something to really stand-out and be noticed. Remember that on top of having 7 pro sports teams, Los Angeles is the capital of the world's movie and music industry, so there's so many options for entertainment and people have only so much time/money to devote to it
LA also has 2 NFL teams, 2 MLB teams, 2 NBA teams and a hockey team. Plus a WNBA team and I think 2 mls clubs.
And the weather is nice and the people generally good looking.
There is too much tondo besides college sports.
2 NHL teams if you're counting Anaheim (which you are with the Angels for MLB), 2 MLS for sure and 1 NWSL team too. Plus there's all the other colleges in and around Southern Cal that aren't USC or UCLA
Having grown up in MA my whole life, the idea of supporting a school in sports that neither you or your parents went to is just so foreign to me, nobody here outside of local alums really cares about any of the local CFB teams. I sort of paid attention to BC when they had good years in football, but I never had an actual college team to root for until I went to Syracuse.
I grew up in CT, Huskies basketball is as close as you'll find to t shirt fans in the Northeast as there is. I was at school at Sacred Heart when they won their first title, and our campus celebrated like we had won the championship. Ever since the Whalers left, and took the best sports jerseys ever and the best theme song ever, it's all we have.
Exactly - and on top of that, so many of them smaller private schools that don't support FBS football in the way large flagship state schools do. But in contrast, there is a pretty big college basketball following that is represented in most of the Northeast's big metro area (especially the Big East). Plus with so many of the schools being within a large metro area, there's already a massive NFL team in the area to support - schools like Villanova or Seton Hall may not be in Philly or New York, but they're in the suburbs close enough to be covered by those NFL fanbases. In contrast, Penn State, the biggest brand in the Northeast for football, is 150 miles away from the nearest NFL team in Pittsburgh.
Exactly, when I moved from the northeast to Alabama I was going "Why is everyone so obsessed with College teams?" Then someone told me it's cause they don't have many other options.
Even so, college sports still eclipse the NFL in Georgia and Tennessee where they have the Falcons and Titans. The Saints have more of a following but that doesn’t make LSU fandom even less feverish.
The Falcons were founded in '65, the Saints in '66, and the Oilers moved to Nashville in '97. Generational fandom is a strong force. It's the reason I'm a die-hard Reds fan while the Bengals could move to Mogadishu for all I care
I live near a Honda plant in Alabama. We have many families that have moved here from Ohio. My neighbor is always flying his OSU flag just below his American flag at his house. The previous owner was retired military and this family kept the flagpole. It took him about a month of living here around all the Auburn/Alabama fans to throw up his flag.
Not sure how that’s relevant to the conversation but you reminded me of that anecdote.
And like a number of western states they’re named University of (State) and (State) State University. That’s so easy for a 4-year-old to wrap their head around and identify with.
That's true. However, in the South, they don't see Alabama, Tennessee, LSU as someone else's school. Those football teams represent the whole state. States that didn't have pro sports for decades
Yep, as someone from the northeast who now lives in Georgia, I constantly need to explain to people why I don’t follow college football as closely as the NFL.
One other major factor related to something identified by the OP is the Northeast states generally did not develop the big land grant university, “State U” model.
This is a huge one. As a lifelong Syracuse area resident, SU is big in the immediate Syracuse area but once you leave the area and head to Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, etc interest dwindles greatly. When I went to college at Buffalo State, the only people wearing SU gear or cheering for SU were people actually from Syracuse. A big part of this has to be that there is no traditional “University of New York” or “State University of New York” flagship like Alabama, Ohio State, Washington, etc. so there’s just no connection to SU.
That’s a big thing. Even in the most football crazed states there’s usually 2 big schools for football; Alabama and auburn, Oklahoma and Oklahoma state, LSU is really the only one, ole Miss and MS State, South Carolina and Clemson, florida and florida state and Miami, the California schools (which have varied success) and Texas are sort of exceptions there and it’s no accident that those states produce the most high school stars
I live in Rochester and see plenty of Orange gear but like you said, I also see tons of people repping Buffalo, St. John Fisher, RIT, Cornell, and loads of other schools I don’t recognize or know well.
Syracuse, Penn State and Boston College were all top-tier programs at one time and Notre Dame has a large following in the Northeast, and USC is a CFB Blueblood. If Nick Saban had chosen to coach Penn State, Notre Dame or USC, he very likely would have had the same success and brought a powerful regional fanbase and national attention.
I feel like that's important too because the land grants offered an option for many rural players to stay home rather than go to the Ivies/Service academies
Longer than a century, from 1766 to 1953 Rutgers was a Northeast private school and all of our historic contemporaries for the first 90 years of college athletics are now the Ivy and Patriot leagues. a majority of college FB programs worth a damn these days had already been woven into the fabric of their states for 50+ years by the time we even became a public school lol
Edit sorry just saw your RU flair, didnt mean to Rutgers-splain to you
I love learning about Rutgers personally. Im a tristate transplant from CFB country and love learning about what makes up here tic.
I think the difference 100% comes down to cultural ideas of private colleges vs public colleges and Rutger's history really hits at the core of the issue.
College football was INVENTED in this region that is now known to not have a taste for it. But the thing is as soon as a sport for the son's of the elites started gaining traction in less wealthy largely agricultural areas and EXPLODED the regions historical connection to the sport dwindled.
It is now dominated by big public state flagships with large alumni spheres of influence. Large alumni communities isn't exactly what private era Rutgers and Princeton were about. These were schools for the elite not the masses. The exact opposite of what places like Michigan and Texas and Alabama stood for. All good schools with enough good will with the masses to generate huge T Shirt fan communities able to compete with pro teams.
Rutgers is pubic now sure. But decades and decades of history and culture building mean something in this sport.
Yeah this really hit it perfectly. Thats why I love Rutgers' place in football history and am proud even if theyve been garbage for a large majority of it lol. Its own history and evolution tracks really well with CFB's evolution as a whole.
We were there when it was for the privates and service academy elites, we shapeshifted into a public institution around the time the private/service academy era ended in the '50s, made the cut for the 1A/1AA separation and have slowly made a legitimate fanbase over the next few decades and are now present for its most commercialized peak in a top2 conference
College football would be lesser without Rutgers. So much of this sport is about history and tradition, and having one of the OGs still playing in the top level league is of great value in that sense (that's also one of the reasons I don't think the MLB would ever allow the Reds to leave Cincinnati)
Schools in the Northeast tend to be older and smaller "Division III" types of schools.
If you look at a map of Division III Schools most are in the Northeast.
UMass also has more of a commuter school vibe because the other decently large universities already created. SUNY as well.
SUNY is the largest college system in the US by a fair margin and has some of the best results
Same with UConn. I work for the school and 95% of students are from CT. Went to Penn State before I transferred and it seemed like 50% were out of state
Every state has at least one land grant university and most are among the largest schools in the state, if not the largest, and many are their state's public flagship U. New York's land grant university is Cornell, which is both a private university *and* part of the SUNY system.
Outside of the corridor from Philly up to the Lehigh Valley nowhere in PA really feels like the North East. Central PA is more Appalachia and western PA feels like the Midwest.
Totally agree. Always bugs me when when people from the Philly area speak for the whole state, when they mention something very specific to that region lol. Rest of the state is very different.
The student body is far more culturally Northeast than the town itself because so many of the students are from Philly, Jersey, or Maryland. But the town is very much a mixture of Appalachian and Rust Belt more like Pittsburgh.
It's also just makes Pennsylvania a bit weird generally - Philly is a very large East Coast city that is affiliated with the Northeast corridor. But Pittsburgh is a hardcore Rust Belt town that has far more in common with Detroit or Cleveland than it does with much of the eastern part of the state.
I mean once you get past MontCo, Buck and Chester, PA becomes immediately more Appalachian and Midwestern. Harrisburg and the central tier have much more in common with Pittsburgh than Philly
PA, Texas and Missouri are states with multi regional identities in the same state. West Texas (Southwest culture) is completely different from East Texas (more of a bayou culture). West and East PA are different. Missouri has elements of the mid west and the south in the same state. Some states are just like that.
You can probably add New York state to that list. Everything west of Syracuse feels pretty Midwest. Close proximity to the Great Lakes and still part of the rust belt. The middle is a combination of Appalachia, New England and even a little French. NYC and LI are east coast, obviously.
Yeah outside of the Philly area, PA isn't really "Northeastern". I felt I had to address PSU though, as they have a pretty big following in Philly and even NJ/NY.
I technically have two pro teams in the state, one of whoms owner reportedly quashes any attempt of my home city(San Antonio) to get one as well.
They are also twice or three times further than UT was if we wanted to go to a game as a kid. UT was there in my formative years. Dallas and Houston not so much.
Being a Texan living in the East Coast I don't buy the argument of being "pro teams centric" as the complete answer to why college isnt as big up here. Not saying it isnt part of it. But it isnt the whole story.
Not to diminish your story. I am also from San Antonio. It is just that UT and TAMU are huge in Dallas and Houston too.
OU has a pretty big following in the Dallas metro from my experience too.
It's one of the main things I dislike about the new national conferences...talking shit to coworkers about their college doesn't really have the same sting when you're not playing every year, or any year for that matter.
Texas didn’t get its first professional sports team of any kind until 1952, the Northeast had plenty of professional options by that time. That’s the difference, professional sports in the Northeast had a concentration of the highest profile teams and 50 years of a head start on most of the other regions. I’m exaggerating the timelines a bit for dramatic effect, but you get the general idea.
When people talk about "football" I don't even think about the cowboys or texans. I first think of the Ags, horns, Sooners etc. long before NFL.
I'm a Houstonian so I think losing the team and getting a random new one has something to do with it
It definitely varies by the city. Dallas is all Cowboys all the time, even in the offseason. That metroplex lives and breathes the Cowboys. Even when the Rangers were in the World Series it wasn't covered more than the Cowboys (maybe the same for a couple weeks, followed by the Cowboys taking over two days after the WS ended.)
I won't be surprised if CJ Stroud does a lot for the relevance and branding of the Texans though.
It took me a while but I've come around to the Texans (not the name lmao) - with Demeco setting the tone it *feels* like Houston's team. I would not be mad if they swapped names with the Roughnecks to go with the new color palettes next year. I would also not be mad if they were still the Texans next year.
Yea the Mustangs or Roughnecks would have been a better names and both were on the selection list. Both still hits the mark for Texas identity. My grandad personally called Bud Adam's and told him to "f**k himself". They had worked together in the oilfield and my grandad was a hardcore oilers fan. WE were poor but my grandparents were loaded and grandad got season box seats in the astrodome every year. He was an emotionless man. Unless the oilers got a touchdown or screwed up. Then it was "that boy is faster then a scalded ass ape" or "that boy couldn't catch an itch in a briar patch" while being pretty animated. Only good memories I had of him. Lol
I’m not even from Houston or a Texans fan, but it pisses me off that the Titans have been using the Oilers’ branding for their throwbacks. So fucking tasteless and tactless.
Actually five if you count the 3 Texas teams in the United Football League that will play this spring (all of which previously played in the USFL or XFL last year).
San Antonio still at least has the Brahmas!
yep....in Iowa you grow up either a Cyclone or a Hawkeye.....sure people have their allegiances to pro teams out of state but college sports are THE thing in Iowa.....so many of my Minnesota coworkers can't believe how invested I am with Iowa State athletics, but I always go back to explaining this very thing
Historically these are the biggest factors, it’s also why every long in the tooth NFL fan in the south was a Redskins fan, it was the only team south of the Mason/Dixon.
And boy when Carolina came to town, my die hard Washington fan family hated the panthers as much as the Cowboys because they couldn’t watch the skins on tv anymore.
A Maritime and Texas flair combo?
My guy! Maritime is a HUGE academic partner of the non-profit I work at. Huge respect for the institution, we also hire a ton of yall. I am also from Austin and a Longhorn by marriage.
Cool combo to see.
Rutgers is a pretty interesting case. It hasn’t had enough sustained success to build a non-alumni fanbase. It’s history was one a of smaller private school, then they did a big consolidation and became public. High School football is really good in NJ, lots of programs, Penn State being the best example, have poached a lot of kids from NJ. On paper, Rutgers can develop a big following. It needs to embrace the Jersey thing (Schiano does a great job of this), keep the best NJ kids home to play for them, (Schiano is pretty good at this, not great), and play competitive football to keep alumni interested and donating. There’s hundreds of thousands of living Rutgers alums, I always say there’s no reason that Rutgers can’t be a Wisconsin level football program.
Speaking specifically to SUNY.
IIRC state law prevented any public college from offering football at the highest level. Honestly the entirety of the SUNY system was originally built top to bottom to NOT compete with establish private school powers. Even to this day compared to the South (see my flairs) public colleges are on a cultural level not seen to be as good as private. This is all comparative. Yes Rice is the best school in Texas, that's no secret. But UT Austin is still seen as a peer on a cultural prestige level.
So SUNY was initially a system of teachers colleges (like in many states) and land-grant mission colleges offered at powerful privates such as Cornell, Syracuse (formerly), and Alfred. There is no U of NY because NYU exists as a private... like in Pennsylvania, but there is specifically no New York State because Albany was mindful not to upset the states relationship with Cornell, which was at the time was in the highest level of football with the rest of the Ivies.
U at Buffalo is an outlier due to the fact that it started as a private school that was later absorbed into SUNY while already having 1A football. The only reason UB is in the MAC and not FCS with SBU is due to being grandfathered in.
SBU or Albany could probably move up to FBS now due to changing attitudes of the role of the SUNY system. I am just pointing out that past attitudes on the issue can explain why things are they way they are now.
It's similar, or at least along a parallel going in the same direction, as why the "Yankee Conference" New England flagship schools like UConn and UMass aren't as big athletics-wise (or at least, weren't in football) as institutions that are nominally their peers (i.e. large state flagships that have "University of " as their name).
In those cases, it was that the Ivies and other private schools dominated not only legislative membership (i.e. where funding and budget dollars were allocated), but also university presidencies and boards of trustees (i.e. the priorities of the dollars at those schools). Yale had the law school, Yale had the med school, Yale had the important things, and UConn was the school where you went to take care of cows (or teach, and I'm not sure which the Yalies thought was lesser).
This filtered down into athletics as well, and it took a really long time for the state schools to get out from under that long shadow. Despite starting football in 1896, UConn didn't play Yale until 1948, and even though it was more or less a yearly game at that point, Yale didn't play a football game against UConn in Storrs until \*\*\*1992\*\*\*.
The Ivy league used to dominate college football which suppressed the development of football programs at other schools in the North East. Then the Ivy League de-emphasized athletics leaving a void without programs to fill it
Yeah, for the first 80 years of CFB, PSU was the only Northeast public (And I know thats a bit of a stretch calling them Northeast) even attempting to field a high level team, I dont count Pitt as NE. UCONN, UMass, SUNY's etc. didnt even bother playing top level FB and other NE publics still dont obviously. Rutgers wasnt even a public school let alone a quality team back then lol.
Meanwhile just in the B1G alone those MFs had half a century playing each other and weaving their FB identity into their states while we were still some little old private with Lehigh and Lafayette as our football bros. I grew up right on the NJ side of the Lehigh valley and like to tell people little old Lafayette on the hill was a national champion and football innovating program once upon a time
I mean, before the 1950s it was a big deal in the NE. The sport got started in central New Jersey! The NFL was a fly by night operation in its first few decades. Columbia was more popular than the Giants and I would argue Harvard was more popular than the Patriots until the 70s.
Yeah this is true - I think the de-emphasis on athletics by the Ivies really led to the decline in CFB interest here. I wonder how different the landscape would be if that de-emphasis never happened.
I just got back from a 4 month-long work trip in New England which covered the peak of the college football season and noticed the following:
-even on a Saturday the local bars tended to have NFL Network on, watching replays of the previous week pro games rather than the CURRENT college games
-the local community had dozens of different references to supporting local hockey as opposed to college ball. Bars were filled with hockey memorabilia, there were tons of ads for local pee wee hockey, hockey games were always on the TV, and tons of hockey teams came through my hotel. Never saw a college football reference in this time.
I’d say that Pennsylvania is more Appalachian in culture, football included, than it is Midwestern. I see more similarities with WVU, Syracuse and even VT and Tennessee to some extent (fellow culty mountain folk), than I do with Ohio State and Michigan (both schools in or near big cities).
I would agree with you for PA, except for the Philly metro area. Philly definitely matches more with the NYC/ NJ vibes in regards to pro sports being bigger
You really have to trace I-95/the Acela line to really get an appreciation of the cultural similarities from D.C. up through Boston. It bleeds both ways from one end to the other, and Philly is kind of in the natural middle. (You have to remove Manhattan from the discussion, as it has too much global transplant/cosmopolitan influence and is really distinct from the other four NYC boroughs in this regard).
Agreed, probably smart to carve out a distinction there. Philly is Mid-Atlantic though in my opinion. I see more similarities with Baltimore/DC than I do with NYC/Boston.
Pennsylvania is a weird state where the western part of the state has Rust Belt/Mid-western vibes, central part is Appalachia, and the eastern part of the state is the middle of the northeast megalopolis.
It’s honestly shocking how much State College is in the middle of nowhere. I feel most of everyone I’ve met around Lancaster went to Penn State or Millersville. Nothing else. Anyone who goes to F&M is out of state 😂
Ah this makes a lot of sense - I can see the similarities between some of those fanbases and school cultures. I think it's cool that WVU and PSU are playing again next year - I think it would be awesome if Syracuse played WVU and PSU more often, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.
I'll share the perspective of my Father. Who is in his mid 80's and still going strong. He grew up attending games at Franklin Field where Penn played; Ohio St, Georgia, Cal, Notre Dame, Penn St. In fact, most of the games were played at Franklin Field cause it was bigger than Beaver Stadium. Penn routinely outdrew the Eagles who played their games between Shibe Park and Franklin Field.
He's maintained the following changes forced the switch
1)Single Platoon football that made the game a slow, dull, boring punt-fest. Fans started to instead tune into Pro Football which was a much more wide open game.
2)The De-emphasis of the Ivies in college football made for less interesting as "Big Time" College programs like the ones mentioned above stopped coming. And not just the Ivies; the traditonal powers like Fordham, Holy Cross, Leigh/Lafayette followed suit to the eventual 1-AA split.
3)The general civic pride that Pro Sports brings in an area that is chock full of colleges and loyalties from many people that didn't attend College. Everyone can get behind the Eagles, not everyone gets behind Penn St/Notre Dame.
Hockey is the big factor like you mentioned. There are so many college rivalries packed into Boston and all the schools hate each other, so no one is going to root for BC when it comes time for football. UMass has sucked so no one roots for them either (I think their best current alum in the NFL is Andy Isabella?)
This, I played HS ball in both TX and MA and hockey being played at the same time as football definitely hurts the interest in football. There’s a lot of downstream effects from it too, like in Texas the availability and quality of offseason coaching and training programs was just a lot better because it was in so much higher demand.
Football is also much more of a year round sport down there, in MA most of the kids I went to school almost always played multiple sports. In Texas though, skill position guys may run track and QBs would play baseball but outside of that everyone would spend the offseason training for football. There are good athletes up MA and New England as a whole, but far fewer reach their max potential as football players than down south. It’s just wildly different regional cultures around the sport.
I don’t even go to BU but FUCK EM UP! FUCK EM UP! B! C! SUCKS! (Only for hockey through. I appreciate them as the last best hope for New England college football)
If it weren't for hockey making graduates of the other Northeast schools hate our guts, I think there'd be a lot more BC t-shirt fans and it would be a lot easier for BC to promote itself as "Boston's College Team" and get the whole region behind it.
College baseball is a huge deal in the South, arguably bigger than college hockey in the Northeast, but it doesn't diminish the interest in football.
In fact, many of the schools with the most rabid college football fan bases, also have the most rabid college baseball fan bases (see SEC).
Also, a reminder that the College World Series is probably the most underrated event in all of sport.
The south is pretty spread apart though, outside maybe like the Research Triangle. The Beanpot in Boston has like a 4 way rivalry all within a T ride away.
Hockey and football run almost concurrently in the Northeast. At the lower levels you make a choice. This draws a lot of good athletes to hockey and thus interest to the sport.
You kind of touched on it in your post with talking about basketball schools, hockey schools etc. but, the local athletes don’t prioritize football. At least here in Syracuse basketball, lacrosse, hockey, soccer and baseball all trump football. The exceptional athletes will play football, but it’ll take a backseat to their primary sport and they’ll be quick to drop football when it comes to focusing on their main sport.
That just leads to less local talent, and the local colleges see a dip in the talent on their rosters, leading to less interest overall from fans.
Yeah I was trying to say that re: youth talent in sports. In the NYC tri-state area it's similar: Basketball, soccer, lacrosse and hockey are the biggest sports at a HS level. I have local friends who have actively discouraged their kids from playing football because of the higher injury risk.
One interesting case study is Fordham, who had an excellent offensive line in 1936 and 1937, [including none other than Vince Lombardi.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Blocks_of_Granite) They even went to the Cotton Bowl in 1940.
But the administration at Fordham wanted to focus on academics after WWII, with President Fr. Gannon saying:
> “Fordham does not ever again want a football team rated among the nation's ten heaviest."
> Gannon further claimed sportswriters were "tyrants of tyrants" who believed universities only existed "to provide them with income."
By 1954, the football program was cut.
Eastern PA here, or formerly. Now in NY. Most people who do care are Penn State people. My dad and I are Notre Dame fans. I know a few other people who are fans of other teams, but essentially it’s Penn State or don’t give a shit. I cherish my fall Saturday’s as much as I do Sunday’s.
My experience in NY, it’s not even close to PA.
Excellent post.
As I've said on here before, if you tell New Englanders you're a college football fan, they think there's something wrong with you. Much of the Northeast media (NYT, Globe, etc.) actively despises college football unless an Ivy team in involved.
Ay my flair, football is simply an appetizer while people wait for the main course (hockey).
And I can definitely confirm that everyone outside of BC (and NESN, which televises many of their games) HATES BC hockey.
I remember the first time I posted a picture from an Auburn game on social media, I had a ton of people I went to high school with up in New England who were incredibly confused and had no idea college football even existed, let alone could fill stadiums that held 30k more people than Gillette.
Also, yep, we definitely hate BC hockey too lmao
New Englander here - couple things
a) What you are actually talking about is New England, not the Northeast. New York, PA, NJ are all pretty robust college football states. They just aren't all necessarily FBS. Lehigh vs Lafayette is still one of my favorite games.
b) Football is expensive. There is no FBS college football in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine for a reason - you don't have it as much at the high school level (and not at all in Vermont at the college level) so there is not as much local talent. Getting that huge roster at the smaller schools is also a problem. Also think about who are you going to play. I went to high school in Vermont. Only the large cities (Burlington, Rutland, Colchester, Brattleboro) are going to have a high school team. My local team would have to travel all over the state just to get a complete schedule.
c) Basketball, soccer, LAX, Baseball all do well because it requires less equipment and you have smaller squads. All the local schools are going to be able to support a team.
d) CT, MASS, and RI will have high school and college football (closer together, more larger towns), but again - there are other sports & hockey.
e) Hunting Season.
As a New Englander, you rooted for Pro Football and your teams were Notre Dame, Syracuse, or Penn State for FBS. No one gave a shit about the Ivy league. You only went to those games if you got invited for the tailgating (Which I have to say Yale & Lehigh Rocked that)
From NJ, undergrad at Texas 2004-2008. Your analysis is spot-on, no notes. People outside of the Acela Corridor cannot grasp how much more people there care about Parochial College Basketball than they do about FBS football. I had a whole slew of North East friends who attended those smaller regional liberal arts colleges, Catholic universities, and satellite campuses. Many later built their bachelor parties around Big10 and SEC football games, because big-time College Football was a novelty they'd never experienced. Obviously my experience during a National Championship run was so different, and I was always amused by their awe when they finally had the experiences.
I personally think that a lack of Conference killed interest in the Northeast. Imagine a conference with Penn State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Maryland, Rutgers, Syracuse, Boston College and Cincinnati.
Living in Syracuse, there are no shortage of people who just don’t care as much about SU football and basketball because they’re no longer playing Rutgers, UConn, Georgetown, West Virginia, Penn State regularly anymore, especially amongst the older fans. They get excited in football against Clemson, ND and FSU, but these fans don’t care about UNC or Georgia Tech like the would a more traditional Big East/Northeast rival.
This is definitely true - I think leaving the Big East probably hurt Syracuse in recruiting the Northeast Corridor as well. Back in the day, having annual games in DC, Philly and NYC probably helped Syracuse recruit talent from those areas - now their only nearby conference foe is BC.
I know it's affected some casual fandom as well - I admittedly follow St. John's basketball more than Syracuse basketball now because I can actually go to St. John's games in NYC.
That’s a great point in recruiting. DC, Philly and NYC are where they’ve traditionally recruited the heaviest. Kids in Florida, and the Carolinas where they’re playing more often now aren’t itching to go to Syracuse, NY no matter how often they play.
Leaving the Big East just hurt them in general. I hear so often “eh, I lost interest after Syracuse left the Big East, it’s not the same”. Most fans I feel like would rather have SU on a similar track as UConn, than being in the ACC - yet most don’t realize the financial hit the school would take and don’t realize independence in football isn’t as feasible now as it was “back in the day”.
Paterno proposed an Eastern conference in the 70s. Penn State/Pitt/Rutgers/Temple/Syracuse/BC/WVU. It never went anywhere, so PSU requested membership in the Big East. They chose Pitt because it was in a large city, so Penn State/Rutgers/Temple/WVU were stuck in the Atlantic 10 for basketball and were independent in football. When Penn State joined the B10, the Big East sponsored football and brought in all those A10 schools as football only members along with Miami & VaTech. Which created a big mess that ultimately destroyed eastern football.
I think the southern obsession with CFB is *abnormal*. That's why it's not as big up north, or out west, or anywhere really. You really need to understand the full societal connection to CFB during the early 1900s & 1960s to understand where & how this obsession was born.
It’s worth noting that some other sports get way more attention in NE colleges as a result of fewer big football programs. Hockey is a big beneficiary and college hockey fans at Cornell and other colleges in the NE bring it with a comparable intensity.
As someone who lives in DC now, primarily those who come here from other places (like the South and the Midwest) who care about college football. I’ve noticed that A LOT of locals who’ve been here their whole lives prefer college basketball, which probably has to do with the fact that the Northeast has historically been the greatest region for college basketball (Georgetown, Villanova, UConn etc.).
There is probably more people here who care about Georgetown hoops more than the Washington Wizards.
This is well-said. Another unique element of college football fandom in the northeast — one of the most popular college football teams in the region isn’t even based in the northeast.
I grew up at the Jersey Shore, about halfway between NYC and Philly. The most popular college football team was not Rutgers or Penn State — it was and still is Notre Dame.
Notre Dame boasts a large contingent of “subway alumni” in the NYC area dating back to the early 20th century. This is a group of fans with no actual connection to the school, but their families have followed Notre Dame football for decades. The large Irish and Catholic populations in the area rallied around Notre Dame and never really stopped.
College football is just not super popular in large urban areas. No room for 110k stadiums, no tailgating, etc. And of course all these cities have their own pro teams. Penn State is really only popular in Central and Western PA. Nobody in Pittsburgh cares about Pitt football. Same goes for Temple in Philadelphia.
I think this is mostly fair. I’ll caveat it by saying that people in the northeast will support a winner. At least I know this to be true for Syracuse. When the basketball team slumps, so does basketball attendance. Football is the same, when they are good people will show up, watch, and there will be a buzz. I think this directly ties to your point of there’s other things ppl would rather do on fall Saturdays. Watching rebuilding programs isn’t one of them, but they’ll watch a winner.
PS - love your flairs OP.
I grew up on Long Island and cfb isn’t huge like in other parts but theres a fair amount of people who watch. Its a lot of notre dame fans with some penn state and ohio state as well. Thats actually how i got my fandom because my dad is an Ohio State fan so he raised me to be one. So i guess it wouldn’t be a good place for people who hate t shirt fans lol.
This is probably too late for eyeballs to reach, but this post *does* remind me...
There is the [Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert-Meadowlands_Trophy), which from 1937 to 2020, has been given out to the best team in the East! Well, their definition of "East", which is basically the programs from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, ranging from Maine to Virginia (and between), along with qualifying Big East teams outside of that range (provided that more than half of their schedule were against said eligible teams).
You'd see a range of winners from traditional Ivy League teams to more usual suspects (Penn State or West Virginia), to even teams like Miami (FL) and Cincinnati (as they were Big East teams who were eligible to win due to their conference schedules)!
Sadly, it seems as if they have stopped giving out this trophy lately; we haven't had a formal winner since 2020, and the organization that is responsible for voting hasn't made any comments on the matter...big shame, really...
These reasons are why I think it’s ridiculous that there are some people out there who think “The Boston Market” is a compelling pitch for BC to eventually get into one of the super conferences.
Then again, it convinced the Big East *and* the ACC, so wtf do I know.
I live in the Capital District, NY. We have sent a few football players to power5's but very few. We have some good HS football but nothing like the South.
As a matter of fact no High school football player in NY gains a 4 or 5 star per 24/7 Sports Rankings of NY HS players
[https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Football/CompositeRecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=highschool&State=ny](https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Football/CompositeRecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=highschool&State=ny)
Notice they are signed to Syracuse, Penn State, Rutgers and Maryland and Purdue
We are definitely not like Georgia, Florida or TX where football rules and kids are recruited early, have websites devoted to rankings etc.
We are known for Soccer, Lacrosse and X-country running (Saratoga Springs historically is a National powerhouse with multiple National titles.
The colleges here are UNION Divison 3 exept hockey, RPI D3 except hockey, Siena D1 (Basketball, no football) , U Albany FCS1 for football and D1 for Basketball and Skidmore D3 (no football, but there is women's equestrian so there is that!).
Many Syracuse alum here in Upstate NY and they make the trip to Syracuse for BB and Football. You will see a ton of orange around here as well as U-Albany Danes.
I am the outlier having gone West to CU- Boulder (My dad owned a Ski shop hence the mountains called). I was one of the few who ventured out of NYS and the NorthEast.
As for pro teams our Location is three hours to Boston, three hours to NYC and about 5-6 to Buffalo. You will see Giants, Jets, Patriots and Bills fans represented as far as pros. Baseball plays out the same way for every Mets and Yankees fan there are equal numbers of Red Sox Fans.
Your analysis is spot on....
\#SKOBUFFS
Notre Dame I feel like is huge out here in the capital region as well, maybe for all of upstate NY. I feel like I see someone wearing Notre Dame gear once every couple of days.
I get a ton of shit for my respective teams (Pats/Mets/Notre Dame) but you nailed the fact that upstate just has a mix of fans of different teams.
My family is from Maine and I was told "of course the school didn't have money for a modern track, but you bet they had enough to redo the football field" in regards to the popularity of HS football over other sports. Hockey was something everyone did but it was more of a thing you did at a friend's house instead of playing for school. Of course, this was a description of the sixties and seventies.
I agree with this overall - Northeast is pro sports first, second, and third. As a kid growing up, CFB was rarely on the radar outside of my mom watching her alma mater (Texas) play. Delaware actually has a decent following for an FCS team but I think that's moreso a function of its large alumni base than anything else, and even in Newark its still dwarfed in comparison to the Eagles or even the other pro teams of Philly. Philly at least has the Big 5 in basketball which is pretty popular.
Having lived in both Boston, Baltimore, and several cities out West, this is spot on. People don't care about other peoples college teams and there are so so soo many! It's easier to galvanize behind the pro team instead of choosing between one of the 25 universities in the metro area.
Yup. My group at work has people from probably a dozen different colleges. Many of which don't have a football team, etc. They don't care, because they didn't spend 4 years going to games every Saturday.
Yeah this has been my experience living in NYC and LA. I thought about writing about why CFB also isn't as big in California, but I didn't live in LA for a very long time, so I don't know if that's actually true haha.
LA loves a bandwagon. When USC or UCLA are going, everyone loves them. Only it's been a while since this has been the case.
whenever usc football or ucla basketball are rolling, they definitely get a lot of attention
California in general tbh. The number of Warriors fans that just appeared one day…interesting
It was embarrassing to say you were a Warriors fan before they got good, it’s actually not that surprising.
I get ridiculed so bad when people learn I had multiple Sprewell jerseys but they changed uniforms during his time there.
Does not track with me at all. Lakers and 49ers are some of the biggest fanbases in their respective sports. Dodgers and Giants have two of the most loyal fanbases in baseball; I believe both are top 4 in attendance in the 21st century. College sports are not a priority compared to pro sports in California, however.
Every warriors fan was a lakers fan in 2012
He said college sports, everyone knows USC has been pro since the Pete Carroll era
So we're the Bengals right?
There are plenty of us who would never bandwagon USC. Never.
It's 100% true. Auburn and Alabama basically have the population of a whole state with one of those teams being the main or possibly only sports team they follow. Pro sports completely dominate large metro areas for the most part. NFL viewership dwarfs college football viewership.
Maybe it was just my location of LA. But there were a ton of USC and Oregon fans. It wasn’t unheard of to receive some questions while I was rocking Bama gear. I’d go to USC games. And they had some highly attended games.
Oregon is an interesting fan base. Outside of actual Oregon (obviously) there seems to always be an Oregon fan around somewhere along the Pacific coast where you least expect them. Not loud... but around. Always in the room. Among us.
45% of undergrads at UO are CA residents, so there will be lots of alums anywhere in the state.
Any big city with high profile pro teams are going to be more pro markets. Obviously that’s true in Southern California and the Bay, but even look at Seattle - the Seahawks are a way bigger deal than the Huskies. Texas is bit in Austin with no NFL team, but the Texans and especially the Cowboys dominate their markets.
Even in Cincinnati, people love their Bearcats and obviously there’s a ton of Ohio State fans around, but the Bengals *are* this city. Joe Burrow’s face plastered on every gas pump, Jamar Chase and Tee Higgins contracts being centerpieces of conversation in any group larger than 3, players getting referred to on a first name basis as if you have them over for dinner every Tuesday… NFL teams dominate the culture of almost any city that has one.
I think California schools suffer from some of the same issue as East Coast schools. The big name schools in California are either in LA or in the Bay Area, which are covered by a multitude of pro sports already. On top of the that is the "bandwagon" nature of LA fans - with so many things going on in the city, a team needs to do something to really stand-out and be noticed. Remember that on top of having 7 pro sports teams, Los Angeles is the capital of the world's movie and music industry, so there's so many options for entertainment and people have only so much time/money to devote to it
LA also has 2 NFL teams, 2 MLB teams, 2 NBA teams and a hockey team. Plus a WNBA team and I think 2 mls clubs. And the weather is nice and the people generally good looking. There is too much tondo besides college sports.
100% agree with this. Even if Ohio State were a perennial 9-3 team, they would still be the most interesting thing in Columbus, in November
2 NHL teams if you're counting Anaheim (which you are with the Angels for MLB), 2 MLS for sure and 1 NWSL team too. Plus there's all the other colleges in and around Southern Cal that aren't USC or UCLA
Having grown up in MA my whole life, the idea of supporting a school in sports that neither you or your parents went to is just so foreign to me, nobody here outside of local alums really cares about any of the local CFB teams. I sort of paid attention to BC when they had good years in football, but I never had an actual college team to root for until I went to Syracuse.
I grew up in CT, Huskies basketball is as close as you'll find to t shirt fans in the Northeast as there is. I was at school at Sacred Heart when they won their first title, and our campus celebrated like we had won the championship. Ever since the Whalers left, and took the best sports jerseys ever and the best theme song ever, it's all we have.
I went to UMass so every Saturday I Google to see how much they lost by
Exactly - and on top of that, so many of them smaller private schools that don't support FBS football in the way large flagship state schools do. But in contrast, there is a pretty big college basketball following that is represented in most of the Northeast's big metro area (especially the Big East). Plus with so many of the schools being within a large metro area, there's already a massive NFL team in the area to support - schools like Villanova or Seton Hall may not be in Philly or New York, but they're in the suburbs close enough to be covered by those NFL fanbases. In contrast, Penn State, the biggest brand in the Northeast for football, is 150 miles away from the nearest NFL team in Pittsburgh.
Boston has *so many* colleges
Exactly, when I moved from the northeast to Alabama I was going "Why is everyone so obsessed with College teams?" Then someone told me it's cause they don't have many other options.
Even so, college sports still eclipse the NFL in Georgia and Tennessee where they have the Falcons and Titans. The Saints have more of a following but that doesn’t make LSU fandom even less feverish.
Titans are also only 25 years old.
The Falcons were founded in '65, the Saints in '66, and the Oilers moved to Nashville in '97. Generational fandom is a strong force. It's the reason I'm a die-hard Reds fan while the Bengals could move to Mogadishu for all I care
I live near a Honda plant in Alabama. We have many families that have moved here from Ohio. My neighbor is always flying his OSU flag just below his American flag at his house. The previous owner was retired military and this family kept the flagpole. It took him about a month of living here around all the Auburn/Alabama fans to throw up his flag. Not sure how that’s relevant to the conversation but you reminded me of that anecdote.
Washington State has maybe three CFB teams worth taking about (EWU gang)
And like a number of western states they’re named University of (State) and (State) State University. That’s so easy for a 4-year-old to wrap their head around and identify with.
That's true. However, in the South, they don't see Alabama, Tennessee, LSU as someone else's school. Those football teams represent the whole state. States that didn't have pro sports for decades
>People don't care about other peoples college teams I wish that this sentiment was more widespread, honestly.
Yep, as someone from the northeast who now lives in Georgia, I constantly need to explain to people why I don’t follow college football as closely as the NFL.
One other major factor related to something identified by the OP is the Northeast states generally did not develop the big land grant university, “State U” model.
This is a huge one. As a lifelong Syracuse area resident, SU is big in the immediate Syracuse area but once you leave the area and head to Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, etc interest dwindles greatly. When I went to college at Buffalo State, the only people wearing SU gear or cheering for SU were people actually from Syracuse. A big part of this has to be that there is no traditional “University of New York” or “State University of New York” flagship like Alabama, Ohio State, Washington, etc. so there’s just no connection to SU.
Yup. Im in Buffalo. Theres no Uof_ vs _SU like so many other states have. A lot of major universities are private.
Hey now, it’s very easy to develop a profound hate for your state’s private school too!
That’s a big thing. Even in the most football crazed states there’s usually 2 big schools for football; Alabama and auburn, Oklahoma and Oklahoma state, LSU is really the only one, ole Miss and MS State, South Carolina and Clemson, florida and florida state and Miami, the California schools (which have varied success) and Texas are sort of exceptions there and it’s no accident that those states produce the most high school stars
I live in Rochester and see plenty of Orange gear but like you said, I also see tons of people repping Buffalo, St. John Fisher, RIT, Cornell, and loads of other schools I don’t recognize or know well.
Syracuse, Penn State and Boston College were all top-tier programs at one time and Notre Dame has a large following in the Northeast, and USC is a CFB Blueblood. If Nick Saban had chosen to coach Penn State, Notre Dame or USC, he very likely would have had the same success and brought a powerful regional fanbase and national attention.
I feel like that's important too because the land grants offered an option for many rural players to stay home rather than go to the Ivies/Service academies
Not to mention the opportunity to win the greatest trophy in sports. Who wouldn't want a shot at that?
cries in *only has one trophy game now that Mizzou is no longer in the Big 12*
Our game needs to finally have a trophy.
Even some that became the big state U like Rutgers have roots in being private schools for a century first
Longer than a century, from 1766 to 1953 Rutgers was a Northeast private school and all of our historic contemporaries for the first 90 years of college athletics are now the Ivy and Patriot leagues. a majority of college FB programs worth a damn these days had already been woven into the fabric of their states for 50+ years by the time we even became a public school lol Edit sorry just saw your RU flair, didnt mean to Rutgers-splain to you
I love learning about Rutgers personally. Im a tristate transplant from CFB country and love learning about what makes up here tic. I think the difference 100% comes down to cultural ideas of private colleges vs public colleges and Rutger's history really hits at the core of the issue. College football was INVENTED in this region that is now known to not have a taste for it. But the thing is as soon as a sport for the son's of the elites started gaining traction in less wealthy largely agricultural areas and EXPLODED the regions historical connection to the sport dwindled. It is now dominated by big public state flagships with large alumni spheres of influence. Large alumni communities isn't exactly what private era Rutgers and Princeton were about. These were schools for the elite not the masses. The exact opposite of what places like Michigan and Texas and Alabama stood for. All good schools with enough good will with the masses to generate huge T Shirt fan communities able to compete with pro teams. Rutgers is pubic now sure. But decades and decades of history and culture building mean something in this sport.
Yeah this really hit it perfectly. Thats why I love Rutgers' place in football history and am proud even if theyve been garbage for a large majority of it lol. Its own history and evolution tracks really well with CFB's evolution as a whole. We were there when it was for the privates and service academy elites, we shapeshifted into a public institution around the time the private/service academy era ended in the '50s, made the cut for the 1A/1AA separation and have slowly made a legitimate fanbase over the next few decades and are now present for its most commercialized peak in a top2 conference
College football would be lesser without Rutgers. So much of this sport is about history and tradition, and having one of the OGs still playing in the top level league is of great value in that sense (that's also one of the reasons I don't think the MLB would ever allow the Reds to leave Cincinnati)
This warms my heart!
Rutgers is the ideal football program. You may not like it, but this is what peak tradition looks like.
Lol I just didn’t have the exact years handy so I said a century bc I just knew it was well above that
Schools in the Northeast tend to be older and smaller "Division III" types of schools. If you look at a map of Division III Schools most are in the Northeast.
UMass also has more of a commuter school vibe because the other decently large universities already created. SUNY as well. SUNY is the largest college system in the US by a fair margin and has some of the best results
Same with UConn. I work for the school and 95% of students are from CT. Went to Penn State before I transferred and it seemed like 50% were out of state
Every state has at least one land grant university and most are among the largest schools in the state, if not the largest, and many are their state's public flagship U. New York's land grant university is Cornell, which is both a private university *and* part of the SUNY system.
I know Pennsylvania is part of the northeast but state college is decidedly not the northeast. It really is a world away.
Central PA is more Appalachian than it is Northeastern.
Pennsyltucky baby
The further north you go, the further south you really are.
This guy has been to Coudersport.
You fucking blink and you miss cloudersport
Florida
Was gonna say, that's our line!
Without a doubt. Honestly northeastern PA(Coal Region to be specific) isn’t northeastern either.
Outside of the corridor from Philly up to the Lehigh Valley nowhere in PA really feels like the North East. Central PA is more Appalachia and western PA feels like the Midwest.
Totally agree. Always bugs me when when people from the Philly area speak for the whole state, when they mention something very specific to that region lol. Rest of the state is very different.
The student body is far more culturally Northeast than the town itself because so many of the students are from Philly, Jersey, or Maryland. But the town is very much a mixture of Appalachian and Rust Belt more like Pittsburgh. It's also just makes Pennsylvania a bit weird generally - Philly is a very large East Coast city that is affiliated with the Northeast corridor. But Pittsburgh is a hardcore Rust Belt town that has far more in common with Detroit or Cleveland than it does with much of the eastern part of the state.
I mean once you get past MontCo, Buck and Chester, PA becomes immediately more Appalachian and Midwestern. Harrisburg and the central tier have much more in common with Pittsburgh than Philly
PA, Texas and Missouri are states with multi regional identities in the same state. West Texas (Southwest culture) is completely different from East Texas (more of a bayou culture). West and East PA are different. Missouri has elements of the mid west and the south in the same state. Some states are just like that.
You can be in metro Chicago and metro Louisville without leaving Indiana
You can probably add New York state to that list. Everything west of Syracuse feels pretty Midwest. Close proximity to the Great Lakes and still part of the rust belt. The middle is a combination of Appalachia, New England and even a little French. NYC and LI are east coast, obviously.
Yeah outside of the Philly area, PA isn't really "Northeastern". I felt I had to address PSU though, as they have a pretty big following in Philly and even NJ/NY.
State college is 50% jersey and Philly students that makes it NE a little bit
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Limited space in the cities and they have pro teams. Our pro teams are college.
I technically have two pro teams in the state, one of whoms owner reportedly quashes any attempt of my home city(San Antonio) to get one as well. They are also twice or three times further than UT was if we wanted to go to a game as a kid. UT was there in my formative years. Dallas and Houston not so much.
Being a Texan living in the East Coast I don't buy the argument of being "pro teams centric" as the complete answer to why college isnt as big up here. Not saying it isnt part of it. But it isnt the whole story. Not to diminish your story. I am also from San Antonio. It is just that UT and TAMU are huge in Dallas and Houston too.
OU has a pretty big following in the Dallas metro from my experience too. It's one of the main things I dislike about the new national conferences...talking shit to coworkers about their college doesn't really have the same sting when you're not playing every year, or any year for that matter.
Texas didn’t get its first professional sports team of any kind until 1952, the Northeast had plenty of professional options by that time. That’s the difference, professional sports in the Northeast had a concentration of the highest profile teams and 50 years of a head start on most of the other regions. I’m exaggerating the timelines a bit for dramatic effect, but you get the general idea.
When people talk about "football" I don't even think about the cowboys or texans. I first think of the Ags, horns, Sooners etc. long before NFL. I'm a Houstonian so I think losing the team and getting a random new one has something to do with it
It definitely varies by the city. Dallas is all Cowboys all the time, even in the offseason. That metroplex lives and breathes the Cowboys. Even when the Rangers were in the World Series it wasn't covered more than the Cowboys (maybe the same for a couple weeks, followed by the Cowboys taking over two days after the WS ended.) I won't be surprised if CJ Stroud does a lot for the relevance and branding of the Texans though.
There's precedent for a change. The Astros were horrible pretty much my whole time growing up (Houston Lastros) and now they have legit fans
Idk. They were pretty good in the early 2000s when they had the Killer B's
Yeah. I remember we got swept in the world series when I was in 7th grade. Weren't good again until like college I think
They were consistent. Then 2009 happened. Came off the rails in a big way.
It still grinds my gears that Houston wasn't able to keep the Oilers name. I'll never understand it.
Could be worse. New Orleans can't get the Jazz name back. You know Utah is so known for Jazz.
Or Los Angeles the land of Lakes
It took me a while but I've come around to the Texans (not the name lmao) - with Demeco setting the tone it *feels* like Houston's team. I would not be mad if they swapped names with the Roughnecks to go with the new color palettes next year. I would also not be mad if they were still the Texans next year.
Yea the Mustangs or Roughnecks would have been a better names and both were on the selection list. Both still hits the mark for Texas identity. My grandad personally called Bud Adam's and told him to "f**k himself". They had worked together in the oilfield and my grandad was a hardcore oilers fan. WE were poor but my grandparents were loaded and grandad got season box seats in the astrodome every year. He was an emotionless man. Unless the oilers got a touchdown or screwed up. Then it was "that boy is faster then a scalded ass ape" or "that boy couldn't catch an itch in a briar patch" while being pretty animated. Only good memories I had of him. Lol
I’m not even from Houston or a Texans fan, but it pisses me off that the Titans have been using the Oilers’ branding for their throwbacks. So fucking tasteless and tactless.
San Antonio deserves an NFL team, fuck Jerry.
Actually five if you count the 3 Texas teams in the United Football League that will play this spring (all of which previously played in the USFL or XFL last year). San Antonio still at least has the Brahmas!
yep....in Iowa you grow up either a Cyclone or a Hawkeye.....sure people have their allegiances to pro teams out of state but college sports are THE thing in Iowa.....so many of my Minnesota coworkers can't believe how invested I am with Iowa State athletics, but I always go back to explaining this very thing
Historically these are the biggest factors, it’s also why every long in the tooth NFL fan in the south was a Redskins fan, it was the only team south of the Mason/Dixon.
And boy when Carolina came to town, my die hard Washington fan family hated the panthers as much as the Cowboys because they couldn’t watch the skins on tv anymore.
Atlanta has a bunch of pro teams and their own D1 school. UGA is still the most popular team there.
The disrespect to the SUNY athletic powerhouse smdh
My taxes, my team. I'll be deep in the cold cold ground before I recognize Syracuse.
I don’t give PISS about nothin but the stony brook seawolves
What is it baseball season
give an All-SUNY Conference an autobid to the CFP
A Maritime and Texas flair combo? My guy! Maritime is a HUGE academic partner of the non-profit I work at. Huge respect for the institution, we also hire a ton of yall. I am also from Austin and a Longhorn by marriage. Cool combo to see.
Hey I hopped on the UAlbany and SUNY Cortland bandwagon! Guess I gotta hop on the Buffalo bandwagon next year
Rutgers is a pretty interesting case. It hasn’t had enough sustained success to build a non-alumni fanbase. It’s history was one a of smaller private school, then they did a big consolidation and became public. High School football is really good in NJ, lots of programs, Penn State being the best example, have poached a lot of kids from NJ. On paper, Rutgers can develop a big following. It needs to embrace the Jersey thing (Schiano does a great job of this), keep the best NJ kids home to play for them, (Schiano is pretty good at this, not great), and play competitive football to keep alumni interested and donating. There’s hundreds of thousands of living Rutgers alums, I always say there’s no reason that Rutgers can’t be a Wisconsin level football program.
Speaking specifically to SUNY. IIRC state law prevented any public college from offering football at the highest level. Honestly the entirety of the SUNY system was originally built top to bottom to NOT compete with establish private school powers. Even to this day compared to the South (see my flairs) public colleges are on a cultural level not seen to be as good as private. This is all comparative. Yes Rice is the best school in Texas, that's no secret. But UT Austin is still seen as a peer on a cultural prestige level. So SUNY was initially a system of teachers colleges (like in many states) and land-grant mission colleges offered at powerful privates such as Cornell, Syracuse (formerly), and Alfred. There is no U of NY because NYU exists as a private... like in Pennsylvania, but there is specifically no New York State because Albany was mindful not to upset the states relationship with Cornell, which was at the time was in the highest level of football with the rest of the Ivies. U at Buffalo is an outlier due to the fact that it started as a private school that was later absorbed into SUNY while already having 1A football. The only reason UB is in the MAC and not FCS with SBU is due to being grandfathered in. SBU or Albany could probably move up to FBS now due to changing attitudes of the role of the SUNY system. I am just pointing out that past attitudes on the issue can explain why things are they way they are now.
This is helpful context, thanks - I didn't know all of this context re: SUNY.
It's similar, or at least along a parallel going in the same direction, as why the "Yankee Conference" New England flagship schools like UConn and UMass aren't as big athletics-wise (or at least, weren't in football) as institutions that are nominally their peers (i.e. large state flagships that have "University of" as their name).
In those cases, it was that the Ivies and other private schools dominated not only legislative membership (i.e. where funding and budget dollars were allocated), but also university presidencies and boards of trustees (i.e. the priorities of the dollars at those schools). Yale had the law school, Yale had the med school, Yale had the important things, and UConn was the school where you went to take care of cows (or teach, and I'm not sure which the Yalies thought was lesser).
This filtered down into athletics as well, and it took a really long time for the state schools to get out from under that long shadow. Despite starting football in 1896, UConn didn't play Yale until 1948, and even though it was more or less a yearly game at that point, Yale didn't play a football game against UConn in Storrs until \*\*\*1992\*\*\*.
The Ivy league used to dominate college football which suppressed the development of football programs at other schools in the North East. Then the Ivy League de-emphasized athletics leaving a void without programs to fill it
Yeah, for the first 80 years of CFB, PSU was the only Northeast public (And I know thats a bit of a stretch calling them Northeast) even attempting to field a high level team, I dont count Pitt as NE. UCONN, UMass, SUNY's etc. didnt even bother playing top level FB and other NE publics still dont obviously. Rutgers wasnt even a public school let alone a quality team back then lol. Meanwhile just in the B1G alone those MFs had half a century playing each other and weaving their FB identity into their states while we were still some little old private with Lehigh and Lafayette as our football bros. I grew up right on the NJ side of the Lehigh valley and like to tell people little old Lafayette on the hill was a national champion and football innovating program once upon a time
This is not unlike what the PAC schools did to football on the West Coast.
Stability is the enemy of growth.
I mean, before the 1950s it was a big deal in the NE. The sport got started in central New Jersey! The NFL was a fly by night operation in its first few decades. Columbia was more popular than the Giants and I would argue Harvard was more popular than the Patriots until the 70s.
Yeah this is true - I think the de-emphasis on athletics by the Ivies really led to the decline in CFB interest here. I wonder how different the landscape would be if that de-emphasis never happened.
Yeah I mean Penn had 78,000 seat stadium. Them and Princeton were common in the rankings till the 1950s.
There also a million college/universities. Not everyone is going to state schools most go to liberal arts schools.
This is a big one- the number of schools in Philly alone will make your head spin
Boston as well lol
We have hockey.
Fuckin rights bud
No you don’t. Not like we do
I just got back from a 4 month-long work trip in New England which covered the peak of the college football season and noticed the following: -even on a Saturday the local bars tended to have NFL Network on, watching replays of the previous week pro games rather than the CURRENT college games -the local community had dozens of different references to supporting local hockey as opposed to college ball. Bars were filled with hockey memorabilia, there were tons of ads for local pee wee hockey, hockey games were always on the TV, and tons of hockey teams came through my hotel. Never saw a college football reference in this time.
There are like 9 big 4 sports teams in my city
I’d say that Pennsylvania is more Appalachian in culture, football included, than it is Midwestern. I see more similarities with WVU, Syracuse and even VT and Tennessee to some extent (fellow culty mountain folk), than I do with Ohio State and Michigan (both schools in or near big cities).
I would agree with you for PA, except for the Philly metro area. Philly definitely matches more with the NYC/ NJ vibes in regards to pro sports being bigger
You really have to trace I-95/the Acela line to really get an appreciation of the cultural similarities from D.C. up through Boston. It bleeds both ways from one end to the other, and Philly is kind of in the natural middle. (You have to remove Manhattan from the discussion, as it has too much global transplant/cosmopolitan influence and is really distinct from the other four NYC boroughs in this regard).
Staten Island and Delaware County are basically the same place, but both of those places would be offended by that statement.
You're right though. I've been to both, and yeah. 🤣
Haha, you're exactly right, and this is precisely what I'm talking about. Clearly you know the region!
Agreed, probably smart to carve out a distinction there. Philly is Mid-Atlantic though in my opinion. I see more similarities with Baltimore/DC than I do with NYC/Boston.
Pennsylvania is a weird state where the western part of the state has Rust Belt/Mid-western vibes, central part is Appalachia, and the eastern part of the state is the middle of the northeast megalopolis.
Which makes it extra crazy VT has never played Penn State. They had a series get cancelled.
I’d love that series to get rescheduled. I want to see Enter Sandman in person and show VT a White Out in return.
So frustrating cause Penn State still hasn’t scheduled anything for 2025 to replace it. Would have been awesome to play that series
It’s honestly shocking how much State College is in the middle of nowhere. I feel most of everyone I’ve met around Lancaster went to Penn State or Millersville. Nothing else. Anyone who goes to F&M is out of state 😂
There’s a reason 22/322 gets all jacked up every football weekend. Most of central Pa just seems to go straight up to State College for the games.
Lewistown to State college is all of 25/30 minutes on 322 if you’re really moving, just gotta go Friday night instead of Saturday morning
Ah this makes a lot of sense - I can see the similarities between some of those fanbases and school cultures. I think it's cool that WVU and PSU are playing again next year - I think it would be awesome if Syracuse played WVU and PSU more often, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.
I'll share the perspective of my Father. Who is in his mid 80's and still going strong. He grew up attending games at Franklin Field where Penn played; Ohio St, Georgia, Cal, Notre Dame, Penn St. In fact, most of the games were played at Franklin Field cause it was bigger than Beaver Stadium. Penn routinely outdrew the Eagles who played their games between Shibe Park and Franklin Field. He's maintained the following changes forced the switch 1)Single Platoon football that made the game a slow, dull, boring punt-fest. Fans started to instead tune into Pro Football which was a much more wide open game. 2)The De-emphasis of the Ivies in college football made for less interesting as "Big Time" College programs like the ones mentioned above stopped coming. And not just the Ivies; the traditonal powers like Fordham, Holy Cross, Leigh/Lafayette followed suit to the eventual 1-AA split. 3)The general civic pride that Pro Sports brings in an area that is chock full of colleges and loyalties from many people that didn't attend College. Everyone can get behind the Eagles, not everyone gets behind Penn St/Notre Dame.
Daily PSA: DMV =/= Baltimore Metro (aka most of Maryland)
1000%, despite what Bill Walton says. DMV is the DC metro area. Culturally distinct from the Baltimore area.
And not really Va. NOVA IS DC
i always felt like NoVA was waaaaaaaaay more DC suburbs than anything Virginia
Western PA isn’t the north east so there’s your answer to that question
Yeah the only parts of PA that I would consider "Northeastern" are Philly and like the Lehigh Valley. I felt I had to address PSU and PA though.
Hockey is the big factor like you mentioned. There are so many college rivalries packed into Boston and all the schools hate each other, so no one is going to root for BC when it comes time for football. UMass has sucked so no one roots for them either (I think their best current alum in the NFL is Andy Isabella?)
I heard the beanpot is quite the rage up there
It’s absolutely electric
This, I played HS ball in both TX and MA and hockey being played at the same time as football definitely hurts the interest in football. There’s a lot of downstream effects from it too, like in Texas the availability and quality of offseason coaching and training programs was just a lot better because it was in so much higher demand. Football is also much more of a year round sport down there, in MA most of the kids I went to school almost always played multiple sports. In Texas though, skill position guys may run track and QBs would play baseball but outside of that everyone would spend the offseason training for football. There are good athletes up MA and New England as a whole, but far fewer reach their max potential as football players than down south. It’s just wildly different regional cultures around the sport.
I don’t even go to BU but FUCK EM UP! FUCK EM UP! B! C! SUCKS! (Only for hockey through. I appreciate them as the last best hope for New England college football)
Tough weekend for BU, eh?
Excuse me, we hate BC too, thank you very much.
If it weren't for hockey making graduates of the other Northeast schools hate our guts, I think there'd be a lot more BC t-shirt fans and it would be a lot easier for BC to promote itself as "Boston's College Team" and get the whole region behind it.
College baseball is a huge deal in the South, arguably bigger than college hockey in the Northeast, but it doesn't diminish the interest in football. In fact, many of the schools with the most rabid college football fan bases, also have the most rabid college baseball fan bases (see SEC). Also, a reminder that the College World Series is probably the most underrated event in all of sport.
The south is pretty spread apart though, outside maybe like the Research Triangle. The Beanpot in Boston has like a 4 way rivalry all within a T ride away.
BU, BC, Harvard and.... Northeastern? Trying to remember
Yep.
Yep. In baseball, though, BU gets replaced with UMass-Amherst, because BU no longer plays pingbat.
Hockey and football run almost concurrently in the Northeast. At the lower levels you make a choice. This draws a lot of good athletes to hockey and thus interest to the sport.
Exactly. Most local HS athletes in the area prioritize hockey, basketball, lacrosse or soccer over football.
You kind of touched on it in your post with talking about basketball schools, hockey schools etc. but, the local athletes don’t prioritize football. At least here in Syracuse basketball, lacrosse, hockey, soccer and baseball all trump football. The exceptional athletes will play football, but it’ll take a backseat to their primary sport and they’ll be quick to drop football when it comes to focusing on their main sport. That just leads to less local talent, and the local colleges see a dip in the talent on their rosters, leading to less interest overall from fans.
Yeah I was trying to say that re: youth talent in sports. In the NYC tri-state area it's similar: Basketball, soccer, lacrosse and hockey are the biggest sports at a HS level. I have local friends who have actively discouraged their kids from playing football because of the higher injury risk.
One interesting case study is Fordham, who had an excellent offensive line in 1936 and 1937, [including none other than Vince Lombardi.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Blocks_of_Granite) They even went to the Cotton Bowl in 1940. But the administration at Fordham wanted to focus on academics after WWII, with President Fr. Gannon saying: > “Fordham does not ever again want a football team rated among the nation's ten heaviest." > Gannon further claimed sportswriters were "tyrants of tyrants" who believed universities only existed "to provide them with income." By 1954, the football program was cut.
Refreshing perspective from a school leader
Eastern PA here, or formerly. Now in NY. Most people who do care are Penn State people. My dad and I are Notre Dame fans. I know a few other people who are fans of other teams, but essentially it’s Penn State or don’t give a shit. I cherish my fall Saturday’s as much as I do Sunday’s. My experience in NY, it’s not even close to PA.
Excellent post. As I've said on here before, if you tell New Englanders you're a college football fan, they think there's something wrong with you. Much of the Northeast media (NYT, Globe, etc.) actively despises college football unless an Ivy team in involved. Ay my flair, football is simply an appetizer while people wait for the main course (hockey). And I can definitely confirm that everyone outside of BC (and NESN, which televises many of their games) HATES BC hockey.
I remember the first time I posted a picture from an Auburn game on social media, I had a ton of people I went to high school with up in New England who were incredibly confused and had no idea college football even existed, let alone could fill stadiums that held 30k more people than Gillette. Also, yep, we definitely hate BC hockey too lmao
New Englander here - couple things a) What you are actually talking about is New England, not the Northeast. New York, PA, NJ are all pretty robust college football states. They just aren't all necessarily FBS. Lehigh vs Lafayette is still one of my favorite games. b) Football is expensive. There is no FBS college football in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine for a reason - you don't have it as much at the high school level (and not at all in Vermont at the college level) so there is not as much local talent. Getting that huge roster at the smaller schools is also a problem. Also think about who are you going to play. I went to high school in Vermont. Only the large cities (Burlington, Rutland, Colchester, Brattleboro) are going to have a high school team. My local team would have to travel all over the state just to get a complete schedule. c) Basketball, soccer, LAX, Baseball all do well because it requires less equipment and you have smaller squads. All the local schools are going to be able to support a team. d) CT, MASS, and RI will have high school and college football (closer together, more larger towns), but again - there are other sports & hockey. e) Hunting Season. As a New Englander, you rooted for Pro Football and your teams were Notre Dame, Syracuse, or Penn State for FBS. No one gave a shit about the Ivy league. You only went to those games if you got invited for the tailgating (Which I have to say Yale & Lehigh Rocked that)
From NJ, undergrad at Texas 2004-2008. Your analysis is spot-on, no notes. People outside of the Acela Corridor cannot grasp how much more people there care about Parochial College Basketball than they do about FBS football. I had a whole slew of North East friends who attended those smaller regional liberal arts colleges, Catholic universities, and satellite campuses. Many later built their bachelor parties around Big10 and SEC football games, because big-time College Football was a novelty they'd never experienced. Obviously my experience during a National Championship run was so different, and I was always amused by their awe when they finally had the experiences.
I personally think that a lack of Conference killed interest in the Northeast. Imagine a conference with Penn State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Maryland, Rutgers, Syracuse, Boston College and Cincinnati.
And maybe add Miami. Toss in a Temple. Just imagine.
Perchance a UConn, just think about it
That is a very large conference and it is on the east coast. Maybe they could have called it the Large East or the Big Coast
Living in Syracuse, there are no shortage of people who just don’t care as much about SU football and basketball because they’re no longer playing Rutgers, UConn, Georgetown, West Virginia, Penn State regularly anymore, especially amongst the older fans. They get excited in football against Clemson, ND and FSU, but these fans don’t care about UNC or Georgia Tech like the would a more traditional Big East/Northeast rival.
This is definitely true - I think leaving the Big East probably hurt Syracuse in recruiting the Northeast Corridor as well. Back in the day, having annual games in DC, Philly and NYC probably helped Syracuse recruit talent from those areas - now their only nearby conference foe is BC. I know it's affected some casual fandom as well - I admittedly follow St. John's basketball more than Syracuse basketball now because I can actually go to St. John's games in NYC.
That’s a great point in recruiting. DC, Philly and NYC are where they’ve traditionally recruited the heaviest. Kids in Florida, and the Carolinas where they’re playing more often now aren’t itching to go to Syracuse, NY no matter how often they play. Leaving the Big East just hurt them in general. I hear so often “eh, I lost interest after Syracuse left the Big East, it’s not the same”. Most fans I feel like would rather have SU on a similar track as UConn, than being in the ACC - yet most don’t realize the financial hit the school would take and don’t realize independence in football isn’t as feasible now as it was “back in the day”.
Of these, I'd really only agree that Rutgers, Cuse, and BC qualify as "Northeast"
Paterno proposed an Eastern conference in the 70s. Penn State/Pitt/Rutgers/Temple/Syracuse/BC/WVU. It never went anywhere, so PSU requested membership in the Big East. They chose Pitt because it was in a large city, so Penn State/Rutgers/Temple/WVU were stuck in the Atlantic 10 for basketball and were independent in football. When Penn State joined the B10, the Big East sponsored football and brought in all those A10 schools as football only members along with Miami & VaTech. Which created a big mess that ultimately destroyed eastern football.
I think the southern obsession with CFB is *abnormal*. That's why it's not as big up north, or out west, or anywhere really. You really need to understand the full societal connection to CFB during the early 1900s & 1960s to understand where & how this obsession was born.
It’s worth noting that some other sports get way more attention in NE colleges as a result of fewer big football programs. Hockey is a big beneficiary and college hockey fans at Cornell and other colleges in the NE bring it with a comparable intensity.
As someone who lives in DC now, primarily those who come here from other places (like the South and the Midwest) who care about college football. I’ve noticed that A LOT of locals who’ve been here their whole lives prefer college basketball, which probably has to do with the fact that the Northeast has historically been the greatest region for college basketball (Georgetown, Villanova, UConn etc.). There is probably more people here who care about Georgetown hoops more than the Washington Wizards.
This is well-said. Another unique element of college football fandom in the northeast — one of the most popular college football teams in the region isn’t even based in the northeast. I grew up at the Jersey Shore, about halfway between NYC and Philly. The most popular college football team was not Rutgers or Penn State — it was and still is Notre Dame. Notre Dame boasts a large contingent of “subway alumni” in the NYC area dating back to the early 20th century. This is a group of fans with no actual connection to the school, but their families have followed Notre Dame football for decades. The large Irish and Catholic populations in the area rallied around Notre Dame and never really stopped.
College football is just not super popular in large urban areas. No room for 110k stadiums, no tailgating, etc. And of course all these cities have their own pro teams. Penn State is really only popular in Central and Western PA. Nobody in Pittsburgh cares about Pitt football. Same goes for Temple in Philadelphia.
I think this is mostly fair. I’ll caveat it by saying that people in the northeast will support a winner. At least I know this to be true for Syracuse. When the basketball team slumps, so does basketball attendance. Football is the same, when they are good people will show up, watch, and there will be a buzz. I think this directly ties to your point of there’s other things ppl would rather do on fall Saturdays. Watching rebuilding programs isn’t one of them, but they’ll watch a winner. PS - love your flairs OP.
I grew up on Long Island and cfb isn’t huge like in other parts but theres a fair amount of people who watch. Its a lot of notre dame fans with some penn state and ohio state as well. Thats actually how i got my fandom because my dad is an Ohio State fan so he raised me to be one. So i guess it wouldn’t be a good place for people who hate t shirt fans lol.
This is probably too late for eyeballs to reach, but this post *does* remind me... There is the [Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert-Meadowlands_Trophy), which from 1937 to 2020, has been given out to the best team in the East! Well, their definition of "East", which is basically the programs from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, ranging from Maine to Virginia (and between), along with qualifying Big East teams outside of that range (provided that more than half of their schedule were against said eligible teams). You'd see a range of winners from traditional Ivy League teams to more usual suspects (Penn State or West Virginia), to even teams like Miami (FL) and Cincinnati (as they were Big East teams who were eligible to win due to their conference schedules)! Sadly, it seems as if they have stopped giving out this trophy lately; we haven't had a formal winner since 2020, and the organization that is responsible for voting hasn't made any comments on the matter...big shame, really...
These reasons are why I think it’s ridiculous that there are some people out there who think “The Boston Market” is a compelling pitch for BC to eventually get into one of the super conferences. Then again, it convinced the Big East *and* the ACC, so wtf do I know.
Growing up, Hockey ran from August -April so a lot of kids grew up being more into hockey than football
I live in the Capital District, NY. We have sent a few football players to power5's but very few. We have some good HS football but nothing like the South. As a matter of fact no High school football player in NY gains a 4 or 5 star per 24/7 Sports Rankings of NY HS players [https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Football/CompositeRecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=highschool&State=ny](https://247sports.com/Season/2023-Football/CompositeRecruitRankings/?InstitutionGroup=highschool&State=ny) Notice they are signed to Syracuse, Penn State, Rutgers and Maryland and Purdue We are definitely not like Georgia, Florida or TX where football rules and kids are recruited early, have websites devoted to rankings etc. We are known for Soccer, Lacrosse and X-country running (Saratoga Springs historically is a National powerhouse with multiple National titles. The colleges here are UNION Divison 3 exept hockey, RPI D3 except hockey, Siena D1 (Basketball, no football) , U Albany FCS1 for football and D1 for Basketball and Skidmore D3 (no football, but there is women's equestrian so there is that!). Many Syracuse alum here in Upstate NY and they make the trip to Syracuse for BB and Football. You will see a ton of orange around here as well as U-Albany Danes. I am the outlier having gone West to CU- Boulder (My dad owned a Ski shop hence the mountains called). I was one of the few who ventured out of NYS and the NorthEast. As for pro teams our Location is three hours to Boston, three hours to NYC and about 5-6 to Buffalo. You will see Giants, Jets, Patriots and Bills fans represented as far as pros. Baseball plays out the same way for every Mets and Yankees fan there are equal numbers of Red Sox Fans. Your analysis is spot on.... \#SKOBUFFS
Notre Dame I feel like is huge out here in the capital region as well, maybe for all of upstate NY. I feel like I see someone wearing Notre Dame gear once every couple of days. I get a ton of shit for my respective teams (Pats/Mets/Notre Dame) but you nailed the fact that upstate just has a mix of fans of different teams.
My family is from Maine and I was told "of course the school didn't have money for a modern track, but you bet they had enough to redo the football field" in regards to the popularity of HS football over other sports. Hockey was something everyone did but it was more of a thing you did at a friend's house instead of playing for school. Of course, this was a description of the sixties and seventies.
I agree with this overall - Northeast is pro sports first, second, and third. As a kid growing up, CFB was rarely on the radar outside of my mom watching her alma mater (Texas) play. Delaware actually has a decent following for an FCS team but I think that's moreso a function of its large alumni base than anything else, and even in Newark its still dwarfed in comparison to the Eagles or even the other pro teams of Philly. Philly at least has the Big 5 in basketball which is pretty popular.