I’ve heard that Jets fans are typically more blue collar and Giants fans more white collar, although since many people have been fans since childhood this may be more about their parents’ lifestyle than their own.
You mean they weren’t created by a joint venture between the U.S. Geological Survey and Major League Baseball?:eek:
Sounds like the Seattle Mariners and Seahawks followed a similar strategy post-Kingdome. The Kingdome was like Comiskey - big turd in the middle of acres of parking lot. The new stadiums are neatly tucked into the surrounding neighborhood, and have architecture that blends right in. The result is a “community” surrounding the stadiums.
The sad thing about “new Comiskey”/US Cellular was that there was a good plan, not only possible but available, and they still missed. Look up a little book called City Baseball Magic for an example of what the Sox could have done, as well as some general discussion of principles by which ballparks fit into urban neighborhoods.
Not sure if this is covered there, but a big factor in the problems with Comiskey had to do with Mayor Daley. As a Bridgeport native he was reasonably insistent that it remain something of a bedroom community in the city. He supposedly roadblocked a lot of attempts by bar owners/investors to get liquor licenses in the area around the park in an attempt to prevent the area from turning into a less gentrified version of Wrigleyville.
PatriotGrrrl:
I think it’s more a matter of who can afford Giants tickets. The Giants have won 4 Super Bowls and played in another in the last 28 years, so they’re the “classy” team to follow, and their ticket prices are commensurately higher than the Jets, whose only championship was over 40 years ago, and whose playoff appearances have not been quite as regular. If you can afford Jets tickets, then you cheer for the Jets. This pretty much correlates to a “white collar” - “blue collar” split.
Melbourne is quite a big place (I think), I imagine it’s fairly analogous to London where there are 6 Premiership teams, 3 Championship teams, 2 League One teams, 2 League Two teams and even more non-league teams, plus plenty of other clubs just outside London. Even though there aren’t too many demographic differences between the support of the teams and some of them are very close (Chelsea and Fulham’s stadiums are less than 2 miles apart), team support is still fairly well-defined geographically.
What I don’t understand about the Dundee-Dundee Utd rivalry is that Dundee is pretty small (150,000 population) and I’m not sure there’s even a geographic distinction between their catchment areas of support.
There might also be some geographical issues. Both teams now play out of the same home stadium but for several decades the Giants played in New Jersey and the Jets played in Queens so there was a east/west divide in loyalties. If you look at the team loyalty maps, you can still see that northeast New Jersey is predominantly Giants country and Long Island is a Jets enclave.
As a fan of neither team, I would add the caveat that where they or their parents grew up is more important than where they’re living now. So a Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island CONNECTION for Mets fans.
I think Staten Island is pretty mixed. Refugees from Brooklyn are Mets fans and ex-Manhattanites are Yankee fans.
We’re actually talking about a very small number of places. So let’s lay them out –
New York – Yankees/Mets, Giants/Jets, Knicks/Nets, Rangers/Islanders
Chicago – Cubs/White Sox
San Francisco – Giants/Athletics, 49ers/Raiders
Los Angeles – Dodgers/Angels, Lakers/Clippers, Kings/Ducks
Former doubles –
Boston – Red Sox/Braves
Philadelphia – Phillies/Athletics
Chicago – Bears/Cardinals
St. Louis – Cardinals/Browns
Los Angeles – Rams/Raiders
New York – Giants/Dodgers/Yankees, Rangers/Islanders/Whalers
If you’d count the Whalers as “New York,” you’d certainly have to count the Orioles and Nationals as sharing the same metro territory. Which in turn points to the fact that major US team “markets” are really much larger than cities. Most of them have overlaps in the intermediate territories–far from either home field–where demographic and psychological factors hold more sway than strict geography. George Will has written about the factors that he purports sort between Cubs and Cardinals, for example.
Well, the question of how loyalties are chosen when an urban market offers multiple options is somewhat different from how people in areas far from any major club pick loyalties. Perhaps a related, but different, question.
And I remember rather clearly what George Will had to say about people in central Illinois choosing between the Cubs and the Cardinals. It’s clever and witty, but ultimately I think he was just talking out of his ass.
Heh. Actually I had much the same conclusion about Will’s bit there, I just thought it was a well-known example of someone addressing the notion.
I’m not sure that there’s so much difference between the choice in the city and that beyond, though, at least in the era of intensive television coverage.
I’d say this is accurate. The Giants have sold out their stadiums for decades, and most season ticket holders pass on their season tickets to their kids when they die. So, the Giants fans tend to be older, whiter and more affluent than New York as a whole.
Is that still the case? The Jets moved from Shea Stadium to the Meadowlands where the Giants play in 1984, which was almost 30 years ago.