In an MPSIMS thread about dashboard ducks, I got the impression that in Oregon, support for their college team was pretty much the biggest thing going sports-wise. (I may well be mistaken. Trail Blazers?)
In what states is a single pro or college sports team by far the most popular? I guess WRT college, one could either accumulate one college’s various teams, or say, “x-college dominates football whereas Y-University dominates hoops.”
Full disclosure here - I’m the furthest you can get from being a sports fan. Here in northern Illinois, I’d suggest the biggest are the Bears, Blackhawks, and Cubs, with no college team dominant. Further south, there are more St. Louis fans than Cubs.
I’m thinking of Nebraska and Oklahoma. At least when Big 8 was a thing, it seemed to be all Huskers and Sooners. Maybe UConn out east.
This is what came to my mind when I read the thread title. Nebraska football isn’t as good as it once was, but it’s still the biggest thing in the state.
UConn basketball is another possibility, but I personally live a long way from there, so I can’t speak to it as well as I can to Nebraska, my neighbor to the north.
Otherwise, I’m drawing a blank. Boise State, maybe?
I’m not 100% sure I get your question, but there are plenty of states in which there is only one team for a given sport. I’m sure 99%+ Oklahoma NBA fans are Thunder fans. Same with Utah and the Jazz.
Or do you mean states with multiple teams in the same sport but only one has any following? Or multiple teams in different sports but one is completely dominant even during seasons where both sports are in action?
ETA: Arkansas Razorbacks might be another good call. I don’t think there is much else going on sports-wise in Arkansas.
We have an Arkansan regular here who might have something to contribute, but when I spent time in Bentonville AR (this was 15-20 years ago) Razorback talk was indeed the dominant sports topic all year round. Though Bentonville itself was full of people from other parts of the country. Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturers had all set up offices there as did a bunch of logistics and IT companies. Walmart HQ was basically THE economic driver.
Further south in Arkansas, the Dallas Cowboys and the New Orleans saints were very popular, based on bumper stickers I saw. But my experience there was even earlier (~30 years ago)
Alabama sports are dominated by college football. Granted, there are two teams: University of Alabama and Auburn (RTR vs War Eagle), but over the past few years Bama certainly has been the most popular team in the state. Atlanta (Falcons, Braves, Hawks), Nashville (Titans, Predators) and New Orleans (Saints, Pelicans) are geographically close by, but Alabama football is still the dominant team.
The Portland Trailblazers are an NBA basketball team. They have two major colleges, Oregon (Ducks) and Oregon State (Beavers). Support for them is divided primarily by alma mater (though the Oregon Ducks have dominated in ability for quite a while).
I’m in Wisconsin. I’d say the Green Bay Packers but they are only a little bit popular. Just slightly. Not a majority of people here root for them. Most people don’t even pay attention to them. They’re not on most peoples minds at all.
The state of Tennessee is definitely dominated by the University of Tennessee Volunteers ( UT Vols). There are other in-state colleges and universities, as well as various professional sports franchises (TN Titans in Nashville being the probable next biggest thing), but none come close to The Big Orange (pronounced arnj).
I think you can say that in nearly every state in the Southeastern Conference, the state university football team is the dominant sport. The only exceptions might be Georgia and Missouri with their multiple pro sports teams. OTOH in Missouri the only thing that unites St. Louis and Kansas City is Mizzou sports.
At this moment, I’m sitting in my parents’ living room in Green Bay.
The state has two other big-league professional teams — the Brewers and Bucks — plus the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University; all of them have strong fan bases, but the Packers are pretty clearly Wisconsin’s team.
I recall seeing a poll-survey map that showed that Denver teams basically dominate the surrounding states around Colorado, due to Denver being basically the only major sports team city (with the exception of Salt Lake City and the Jazz.) So the Broncos were the most popular NFL team in Wyoming, Montana, etc., the Rockies were the most popular baseball team in Utah, Wyoming, etc.
I went through LinkedIn once and looked up all the biggest college football fans I know. Almost all did not attend the flagship State school they suppported. Actually for fans at state universities it’s 100%. The only fans of college football who support the teams at the schools they attended are Notre Dame and Villanova grads.
That’s an interesting one that I would likely DQ, as it is a single sport/level, but 2 very major teams.
Here in IL, this non-sportsfan sure hears more about the Ducks than the Beavers and Blazers combined. Gotta say, I used to be a HUGE fan of Clyde the Glide…
As an Illinoisian, I’d say Packers fans outnumber Bucks/Brewers/UW/Marquette combined. But I’d also likely DQ them due to the competition.
This one surprises me. I would wager that outside the state Titans interest far outweighs the Vols.
I think I’m being internally inconsistent in that I’m accepting multiple sports from a single college, but not different teams in different sports…. So Arkansas counts using both hoops and football, but Broncos and Rockies don’t IMO.
I don’t really follow sports these days but my team is UCLA. I grew up just a few miles away and I went to UC San Diego which at the time (80s) just had a few DIII sports. Most of us were from California and if we were fans it would have been UCLA, USC, Stanford or Berkeley.
In 2002 I worked with a dude from Green Bay here in California. His family had Packers season tickets for decades and by some arrangement three games a year were his. He’d fly out for those weekends and sit with the people he’d known his whole life who also had decades long season seats. He paid some ungodly amount of money back then to be able to watch the games live from Taiwan at 3am for whatever data cost back then.
Obviously California has so may teams and so many transplants there there isn’t anything close to a dominant team. Any reasonably sized city will have a designated Packers bar or Yankees bar or UW bar to watch their team.
The North Dakota Fighting Hawks men’s ice hockey team has made over 30 appearances in the NCAA tournament, appeared in the Frozen Four 22 times, and has won 8 NCAA Division I Championships.
From my visits to Grand Falls, the dominant ND sport is probably Ice Hockey, namely the UND team, which plays in “the Taj Mahal of hockey”, the Ralph Engelstad Arena. (ETA- or what @Railer13 said)
I’d also guess that the dominant professional sports names in ND are probably from Minnesota (Vikings, Twins, Timberwolves, maybe even the Lynx).
I do live here in Connecticut, and I agree completely. UConn basketball (including both the men’s and women’s teams) is the first thing that came to mind for me when I read the OP. There is a huge fan base here in Connecticut for UConn basketball. I know many people with no real connection to the university who have season tickets to their games. (Conversely, this actually locks out the students. My son graduated from UConn, and never went to a single game.) Both the men’s and women’s teams are really more like professional teams than a college sport.
Anyway, this popularity is not only due to the men’s and women’s team success in recent years but also likely because Connecticut doesn’t have any professional sports teams of its own other than WNBA’s Connecticut Sun. And the popularity of this team is largely because of the success of women’s basketball at UConn. Indeed, one-third of their current roster (4 out of 12 players) consists of former UConn stars.
For all other professional sports leagues, fans In Connecticut are instead generally split between the Boston and NYC teams. (The New England Patriots do try to appeal to the whole region, but of course they started off as the Boston Patriots in the old AFL.)
