Utah and Colorado both have lots of biking, too. Mountain and road.
If rodeo counts as a general sport category, add that to Texas.
New Mexico, hiking.
Lots of kite flying near Oklahoma lakes. Also, noodling!
I con’t think there is any one sport that’s emblematic of California. People here just don’t as a whole care that much about sports. That’s not to say that there aren’t any avid sports fans in the state (because there certainly are), just that considering the population as a whole, there’s no one sport that really stands out.
Texas has football (HS football in particular); Indiana has basketball; but California doesn’t have anything in particular.
California has baseball if you’re a fan of the Dodgers or Giants, or football if you’re a 49ers or Raiders fan. There are some big fans of certain college sports, but those are only local attractions. If you live on the coast, surfing might be big (or not at all, depending on which part of the coast we’re talking), but if you’re in the mountains, it’s skiing. The state is just too big and too diverse for any single activity to garner that much attention statewide.
I was thinking curling for Wisconsin, unless you choose speed skating
(at least participants / capita, not necessarily fans)
Brian
Given that, I’m thinking triathlon for California. It fits better there than anywhere else save Hawaii, and we’ve already established that it gets surfing.
Some others I’m throwing out there, argue against them if you have a better match…
Horse racing: Kentucky
Auto Racing: North Carolina. My brother lived in Charlotte for a while and he said it was serious business there.
Cross country skiing: Wisconsin? I don’t think anywhere else has anything like the Birkie.
If fly-fishing is a sport (and I’m not sure it really is), then is Montana the winner?
Soccer: I really don’t know regional popularity other than that the Seattle Sounders have by far the biggest following in MLS.
Rodeo: Probably Wyoming since it hosts the national collegiate championship, although Oklahoma might give it a run for its money.
College football: This is a tough one given that for this argument a sport gets only one state. I’d argue that it’s the USA’s most popular sport. Two states leap to mind: Alabama, which has the best intrastate rivalry in the nation, and Nebraska, whose support of the Huskers is remarkable given the state’s sparse population. I mean, on game days Memorial Stadium becomes Nebraska’s third-largest city.
In Northern California, it’s laughing at tourists thinking that they can surf in the freezing water.
NV is betting on a sport, any sport.
OR is probably biking.
Skiing is multiple states. As is hunting, but if we specify deer hunting, I agree that WI is probably the first state I think of. Texas or Alabama or some other southern state might be hog hunting. LA is crawfish fishing, and there or other southern states might do noodling.
Iowa is cornholing (SFW), or at least I know more people from there than neighboring states. And that has very different connotations outside of the Midwest.
Colorado definitely owns skiing. In addition to being a huge recreational sport among residents, Colorado produces ski champions left and right. Lindsay Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin are both Coloradoans (although Vonn moved from Minnesota as a kid.)
The University of Colorado is the current NCAA Champion and has won 20 team titles and 88 individual titles. Yes, skiing is an NCAA sanctioned sport, just like football.
Most of these are repeated…
Texas - High School Football
Alabama - College Football
Pennsylvania - Pro Football
New York - MLB Baseball
North Carolina - Minor League Baseball
Indiana - High School Basketball
Kentucky - College Basketball
…pro basketball is hard…
North Carolina - NASCAR
Indiana - Car Racing
Kentucky - Horse Racing
Michigan - NHL Hockey (of course Canadian provinces are ahead)
California/Hawaii - Surfing
Georgia - Golf
Wyoming - Rodeo
Alaska- Dog-sledding
Louisiana - Cockfighting
Tennessee -Bass Fishing
California - Illegal wildfires
If someone at a bar asked me to name the State I most associate with the NFL, I’d probably answer along the lines of:
Texas?
New York?
No, wait, either Wisconsin (they live for the Packers) or Massachusetts (they dominate the league)
Then if pressed to continue:
Maybe Pennsylvania?
Or Maryland? (Redskins count as Maryland, right?)
Maybe California or Florida if those teams didn’t suck so hard.
I give up. What do you think?
“Ohio”
Ohio? For real? Get out of here.
Pennsylvania- High School football
New Jersey- Baseball----you have 3 MLB teams within shouting distance, home to Derek Jeter and Mike Trout, 4 Little League World Series champions and three runners up.
I know some will argue pro football with two NFL franchises playing in Northern NJ, but New Jersey is a great baseball state, and Id say the runner up is between pro football and hockey.
Surfing is a huge sport in Santa Cruz. The Mavericks competition is held near Half Moon Bay. Both are in Northern California.
I thought about lacrosse, but I don’t really hear much about it any more. Oddly enough though UMD got rid of their swim team a few years ago, now the big team in Maryland is UMBC. I am a swimmer so obviously I know a lot of swimmers, but every community pool near me has a summer team, many of them with 100-200 kids on them. They have two meets a week during the summer it can be so popular.
Rhode Island - High School hockey. A handful of teams have dominated for decades, and people actually pay to go to games even if their children are not playing.
I hear more about it hear than anywhere else I’ve ever been.
Florida - Golf
NY State - Harness Racing
New Jersey - Extortion
New Hampshire- Hiking
The Hall of Fame is in Canton.