Most of us tend to root for the home team in the city we now live or grew up in. But what if you live in a city that has two or more teams, like Cubs/White Sox or Giants/Jets? Do rooters tend to come from a certain area, social class, or ethnic group? Or is it totally random?
Growing up in SoCal until the mid 80’s, I rooted for both Dodgers and the Angels because I figured I had 2 chances for my team to make the World Series.
Same for football, I rooted for the Rams and the Raiders on their brief stay in LA.
In basketball I rooted for the Lakers.
Hey, I’m an idiot but I’m wasn’t stupid enough to root for the Clippers.
In Chicago, if you’re from the South Side, you’re supposed to root for the White Sox. North Side, the Cubs. I’m an anomaly, as I’m a South Side Cubs fan (I blame it on my parenting–my parents being Polish immigrants didn’t watch baseball and thus couldn’t show me right from wrong.)
How does that work out for the people who live outside the Chicago city limits in the suburbs? Is it pretty much open territory for both the Cubs and White Sox?
The geographic division still holds true. South/Southwest Suburbs = White Sox. North/Northwest Suburbs = Cubs. West Side/Western Suburbs can be a bit of a coin flip.
I’m from Liverpool, UK, which has two football teams - Liverpool and Everton. I follow Everton.
When my Irish grandfather settled in Liverpool after the second world war, Everton were the team that all the catholics followed. The die is now cast, and we’re an Everton family.
Unlike some other UK football clubs, there’s no overall catholic / protestant divide for the Liverpool teams (thank God). Everton were actually founded as a protestant church side (in 1878) - there’s been transient links to both catholic and protestant communities in the intevening years, for one reason or another. Maybe in my granddad’s time Everton had a lot of Irish players or something like that.
I grew up in Wisconsin, so I’m a Brewers fan.
I moved to Chicago in '89, and wound up adopting the White Sox as a second team, as my wife’s family are all Sox fans. Interestingly, their roots are actually on the North Side…my wife’s grandfather was originally a Cubs fan, but worked for many years at a factory where many of his co-workers were White Sox fans, and he converted.
Wait, what. One can convert? Why didn’t anyone tell me?
I’d note that my grandfather-in-law’s conversion from the Cubs to the White Sox happened sometime in the 1940s. It may not be possible today. 
I don’t know how accurate that is. When I lived in the Sacramento area, both the Giants’ and A’s (and 49er and Raider) fan bases overlapped.
And the east-side suburbs generally root for the Walleyes.
I’ve seen that map before and love it, but I’m pretty sure it gives the White Sox way too big a geographic area. The Sox have a lot of fans, but other than the South and Southwest sides, the Cubs are tough to contend with in terms of fandom. This makes it seem like the NW suburbs up to almost the Wisconsin border are Sox territory, and that’s crazy talk.
The National League team.
(Damn DH rule)
In Illinois, Bloomington and north are Cubs territory. South of that is Caardinal nation.
In Missouri, the geographies are delicately balanced. Columbia is Cardianl/Rams territory, but Jefferson City is Royals/Chiefs. Springfield generally follows the Cardinals in baseball, but the Chiefs in football.
Does anyone know where the Chiefs/Broncos line falls in Kansas?
Yeah, it is a rather odd map. Doesn’t really make much sense in the Cubs-Sox divide. It makes it seem like the Chicago metropolitan area is primarily Sox country, except for the North Side of the city proper, which is flat-out wrong. Also, I suspect a much larger bit of northwest Indiana, should be White Sox territory.
Very inaccurate. It was dissected when it came out a few years ago, and as I recall nobody believed that their team’s “territory” was drawn well.
Of course there are a lot of factors besides geography.
The Mets and the Giants, since my future father-in-law hates me enough already that if I rooted for the Yankees or Jets he’d probably shoot me.
I moved to the Bay Area out of college from Wisconsin in 1997, where I grew up as a Cubs fan (family legacy on my mom’s side).
I adopted the Giants as my favored local team instead of the Athletics, unless they were playing the Cubs. I chose the Giants for a variety of reasons:
- They were a better team at that moment.
- They had the better TV/radio coverage. The A’s were banished to a low-powered AM station that was scratchy at best at nights in Sunnyvale where I lived. Most every Giants game was on TV, not so for the A’s.
- As a Cubs fan, I naturally preferred the NL no-DH rules.
- By the time the A’s were fun and competitive in 2000, the Giants had opened PacBell Park, which made attending Giants game fun and enjoyable for the first time, meanwhile Al Davis had made the Coliseum completely unenjoyable with his Mt. Davis addition.
As for football, I grew up a Packers fan and had no reason to adopt either team as a local favorite.
The map was created from Internet input – people listed their teams and location. While there may have been some variation, it’s probably as accurate as anything out there.