Omniscient, I think you’ve nailed it. I was about to post something similar.
Also Southerners are sometimes accused of being fair weather pro sports fans. But from our perspective it seems silly to slavishly follow a pro team when it puts out a crappy product.
Been a while since you’ve been to game, huh?
It’s baseball season. That’s the going rate.
Football and basketball are a different animal.
Yes it does. You can look for similar situations elsewhere, but the reason pro sports are (sometimes) neglected in the deep South has everything to do with the popularity of the college game coupled with the total & complete absense of any pro presense. If you look at the number of college powerhouses concentrated in a small area (both geographic and populated), there is no real need to look for other answers. Get out a map and put pins in Austin and College Station. Then put pins in the 10 big SEC football schools as well as Clemson & Columbia SC, and Tallahassee, FL. That’s without NC.
Besides, I’m not sure anyone can factually demonstrate that the south supports teams any less than the rest of the country, if degree of success is taken into consideration. Titans, Panthers, Braves, Hornets, and others have all enjoyed a great deal of local support.
Since I agree with pretty much everything you said, I just want to know which two SEC teams you don’t regard as “big.” Not that I’m arguing or anything, because I always think it’s more like 8 or 9 “big schools” in football, with the cellar dwellers rotating spots year by year. This year, Kentucky stayed out of the cellar and Vandy has been coming on the past few years. The Mississippi schools have been big in the past and may be about to turn their fates around soon with the coaching changes and upgrades. Croom may have his boys ready to knock on the West title this year or next.
It’s probably worth pointing out that NC actually supports it pro teams relatively well. The Carolina Panthers are number 6 overall in attendance, completely selling out their home games. The Carolina Hurricanes, which unlike the Panthers have to seriously compete with college basketball for attendance, are #20 overall in hockey (which may not sound good, but it means there are 10 teams that draw worse). The Bobcats just suck, in all possible ways.
I was thinking Vandy, and whatever other school or two happens to be terrible that year. Truth is, though, that all 11 remaining schools have large stadiums that fill up most Saturdays, even when they aren’t particularly good. The football culture is almost always there, even if the team is bad.
Yeah, and the Hornets were always near the top in attendance when they were in Charlotte. I think a lot of Charlotte fans were pretty jaded after that owner ripped the team out from under them.
In Souh Carolina, it’s Clemson-USC football. In North Carolina, it’s UNC-d00k basketball. Georgia has UGa-Ga Tech, and Alabama has Auburn-Alabama. Those rivalries have defined sports in the South since the early years of the 20th century. Compared to that pro sports are relative newcomers. Get back with us in another 40 years and we’ll see if time has set up Pro rivalries to match.
After all, until Atlanta got the Falcons and the Braves (and the Saints in N’Awlins) in the 60’s there weren’t any pro teams, and even after that, there weren’t enough franchises to develop a real rivalry. Now that there are pro teams all over Dixie, we may see some rivalries develop (I’m pretty sure The Panthers and Falcons hate each other, but that’s only been going on 10 years or so, compared to a century of Auburn-Alabama).
Edit: Tennessee - UT-Vandy
Miss. - Ole Miss-Miss. St.
Etc etc.
Thanks. I would have said Vandy, too, in spite of the fact that I went there. I never attended a single sporting event my entire time there, and still won’t drive across town for a game. My main reason to support the Titans (as much as watching them on TV can be called “supporting” them) is that I miss the days when Daddy would take my brother and me to every Auburn game close enough to drive to and even a few we had to go to by bus or train. We expected to be on the winning side, even in the Bear Bryant years, and it was like being part of a big family being an Auburn fan. Hearing “War Eagle!” in a faraway place is like being in some secret club with a password or something. Vandy fans just don’t have the product and haven’t since the 50’s. Why Vandy stays in the SEC must be for the basketball.
But your map idea helps to make the point that the bigger metro areas in the South already have about as much pro football as they’re likely to. Montgomery, Mobile, Huntsville and Birmingham may see a pro football team before the state enters the next Ice Age, but I doubt it. Memphis and Knoxville, and maybe Chattanooga, might see one a bit earlier, especially if the Titans get to be perennial Super Bowl champs and some of the love in Tennessee, North Alabama, Southern Kentucky and other such “outlying areas” can be shared with those cities. But until Mississippi college ball returns to its glory days I wouldn’t be looking for a Jackson team, and after that one’s been considered, where else in Mississippi would you expect to put it?
My wife has a sister who is 18 years her junior. She has been her guardian for close to a decade now, and she has lived with us for most of that time. When she made the decision to go to Auburn, this Georgia Dawg wasn’t quite sure how to take it. We have developed a friendly rivalry, but I drew the line when she tried buying Auburn gear for my newborn son. Even the “secondary” rivalries tend to run very, very deep around here.
I doubt if it applies to most Auburn fans, pretty sure it doesn’t in fact, but after Auburn, and in pretty much this order, I root for the SEC teams with diminishing passion:
Tennessee – my brother and son went there
Vandy – I suppose mainly for the masochism coupled with stupid hope
Georgia – always has a class team and the rivalry with Auburn is (for me at least) one of the most civil
Kentucky – especially when they’re as good as they’ve been the past few years
South Carolina – has to be the Spurrier effect
Mississippi State – Croom is a fine man and has what I look for in a coach
LSU – I see their Auburn rivalry as second only to Bama’s in its intensity, but damn if those boys can’t play some football – even with Miles!
Ole Miss – Nutt could turn them around but Coach O was a joke
Arkansas – I guess I just can’t get used to them being in the SEC yet
Florida – Meyer is a jerk
Alabama – what did you expect? Daddy used to say (and it has stuck with me) that he had three favorite teams: Auburn, whoever is playing Bama this week, and whoever’s playing Notre Dame this week.
I should point out that I pull for any SEC team (even Bama) whenever they’re not playing Auburn or another SEC team (see the priority list above). I’m as pro-SEC as you can get, I believe. I tend to think SEC fans have that same attitude, too. And that regional pride thing is why I believe the OP’s issue(s) can be traced to this same attitude: pro sports are a Yankee thing.
Bottom line: I wouldn’t cringe over a friend or relative wanting UGA stuff. Lewis Grizzard was a fine ambassador for UGA and Larry Munson used to work at WSM and he ran a fine show that played my kind of music, back when WSM had more than country.
Some of my best friends are Auburn fans. When I was a guide on the Ocoee, I made a TON iof UT friends. We all love to get together & talk college football, and I always root for the conference teams when they play OOC.
But, my son doesn’t get to wear opposing teams’ gear. I live in Atlanta, and have a pretty big group of UGA buddies. The razzing I’d get if they saw a UF piggy bank in his room would be ruthless. Plus, it’s one of those father/son things that I never got to do with my Dad, but really look forward (god willing) to doing with the little guy.
That’s great. It’s a bond that doesn’t get deserted as time marches on and things get tough between the generations. One year before Daddy got too blind and weak to make it to games, he treated my wife and daughter and me to the Auburn-Vandy game in Nashville. All three of us were either Vandy alumni or had Vandy loyalties. But at game time we were all yelling “War Eagle!” and pulling for Auburn, who won the game if that matters.
In spite of their intense brotherly rivalry, one of my uncles who graduated from Bama provided a wreath at Daddy’s funeral that I have kept and which I cherish. It’s a big orange and blue Auburn sticker that was in a mum bouquet. The uncle even had a banner put on it that said “War Eagle.” That’s about as good as it can get between Auburn and Alabama fans, even when they’re brothers.
Absolutely. I give presents to my SEC brethren that contain their school’s logo & colors all the time. The folks at LL Bean practically know my name when I call to order one of those tote bags in Puple & Yellow with “Geaux Tigers” stitched on the side. As much as I sometimes hate to admit it, I’ve even given GT gear to friends in the past.
Did anyone besides Michael Jordan really want another team in Charlotte?
I should have mentioned in my listing of the SEC above, that GA Tech is among my teams I care about, because of their former SEC connections. To a limited extent I feel similarly about the non-Florida ACC teams, Clemson in particular, because Auburn used to have an ongoing rivalry with them and Furman and some other teams no longer on the regular OOC schedule. But I have moved my loyalties to the other Southern conferences whenever it’s appropriate to pull for one over the other, because of teams like MTSU, Memphis, Troy, UAB and such. You can’t believe how proud I was of Appalachian State last year, because my granddaughter had considered going there. (But that’s not the main reason!)
Bob Johnson.
The Bobcats are a bit of an odd duck. I’d never seen a case where the voters all-out rejected the plan to build an arena, but the city built it anyway.
Reminds me: Some one wrote into the paper the other day - “What we need is a coliseum that’s easy to get to, has a lot of seating, and has plenty of parking. Oh, wait. We already had one.” (paraphrased form memory)
I couldn’t help but think of this thread when I saw this Yahoo! Sports article in case fans of this thread may have missed it.
Yeah, that article is stupid, IMO. Atlanta as the most miserable city? How can you be miserable when no one cares about sports?
Their metric is weighted too heavily on the “almost, but not quite” good but not championship seasons. If your team is good that often, you can’t be that miserable.
And it doesn’t factor in fan support and such… if you want to find out how miserable Atlanta, San Diego, and Phoenix are, you could just poll their dozens of fans.
The only city on the list I can plausibly put ahead of Cleveland would be Buffalo… Cleveland benefits from a good championship win rate from 50+ years ago in this though - which is another thing, of course - it doesn’t value what’s recent highly.