Sports are a big deal. In many parts of the world, participating and/or watching athletic events is a significant part of people’s lives. Sports are a multi-billion-dollarindustry worldwide. In America, many NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball teams are worth more than a billion dollars. Several major soccer teams in Europe are as well. The reason why sporting teams are so valuable lies beyond their simple entertainment value. Association with a team helps build the identity of individuals and creates a sense of community. Supporting a team, for many people, functions as a kind of “tribal affiliation” in an anthropological sense. Teams help build a sense of community belonging, making sports of intense interest to geographers.
Participation in Sports and Physical Geography
Where people play a specific sport is a fascinating entry point for students of geography. Answering “why?” by first asking “where?” is an effective means of understanding numerous, important cultural dynamics. An analysis of sports offers us important clues into how cultural behaviors, far more important than games, evolve within societies
Climate is a significant factor in the geographical variation in sports participation. Ice Hockey, for example, is clearly a more favored sport among those living in northern climates, although as indoor hockey facilities open in warmer parts of the world, there is sure to be an increase in participation outside of the Frost Belt. Frigid, but smallish, Norway has won more medals in the Winter Olympics than any other country but has won only about half the number of medals in the Summer Olympics (281 vs 148), despite having more than triple the opportunities to win medals in the summer games. Golf, baseball, and water sports are more popular where warm winters permit year-round play.
Figure 2-34: Los Angeles, CA - Water Polo is a more popular sport in the US where climates permit year-round play.
Participation in some sports is conditioned by topography. The Austrians and Swiss dominate Olympic downhill skiing partly because those countries are situated in the Alps. Olympians from flat countries wouldn’t have much chance to practice those sports, so it makes sense that a Ukrainian has never won a downhill skiing medal. Various styles of auto racing seem to follow topographic cues as well. Drag racing is more suited to flatlands. Dirt track racing on small ovals is far more popular in Appalachia where building drag racing courses would be challenging.
Space is another key geographic element. Some sports require enormous amounts of space. For example, equestrian events, especially cross-country eventing and polo, require huge fields of play and so would be unlikely sports to gain popularity in either mountainous or urban regions. One bizarre exception to this trend is the famous polo series played at 12,200 feet in the Shandur Pass in Pakistan.
Figure 2-35: Santa Ynez, CA. Some equestrian events require hundreds of acres and expensive equipment. Here a rider competes in a dressage competition.
On the other side of the coin are the world’s most popular sports, like soccer, cricket, and basketball. Each sport requires little space and few resources. Full-sized cricket/soccer pitches and basketball courts are not necessary, especially for children to play these games. Equipment is minimal for each sport, players can create homemade goals, balls, and other equipment. Vacant lots, streets, parking lots and small parks are all capable of serving as fields of play.
Basketball
In the United States, basketball is the most common sport played by Americans. It was invented in the Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891, so it’s hardly surprising that the United States dominates this sport internationally. However, basketball is not uniformly popular in all parts of the United States. Certain states, like Indiana and Kentucky, have a special passion for basketball that is difficult to explain. It appears that Indiana developed a love affair with the sport from its earliest days. For many years, Indiana also hosted a statewide tournament for high school teams that attracted far more attention than similar tourneys did in other states. Perhaps, as a result, top athletes in Indiana have been drawn to the notoriety to be gained playing basketball versus that gained playing other sports. Indiana, and indeed most other top basketball regions, around Kentucky, Illinois, and New York, are relatively weak in other sports, especially football.
Analyzing basketball participation at the state level though hides another process that becomes evident viewed at a finer geographic resolution. Since the 1950s, most top basketball talent in the US has come from big cities. It stands to reason that athletes in large cities would be attracted to basketball more than other sports because baseball, football, golf, etc. each require much space and may be too costly for poorer inner-city families (and their school systems). Many large cities, especially on the East Coast and in the Midwest, have high percentages of black residents, which helps explain why African-Americans dominate professional basketball. Non-geographers might suggest that biological factors account for the predominance of African-Americans in the NBA, but to those who think spatially, location has more compelling explanatory power. In recent years, white players from big cities in Europe, Canada and Australia have become more common in the NBA in recent years, while suburban and rural whites from the US have dwindled.
Biology vs Geography
Geographers will readily admit that biology probably does explain a small part of the racial biases evident in sport, but mapping the origin of world-class athletes in various sports strongly supports an alternate theory. In places where a passion for a particular sport motivates large numbers of people to hone a specific skill, exceptional athletes in that sport almost inevitably emerge. Once “stars” are identified from a region, aspiring youngsters (and their parents) from those regions quickly identify local role models, prompting legions of youth to attempt to emulate their local heroes. When a local star athlete (or rock star, or movie star) emerges from a region, it provides critical information about necessary strategies for success. As the number of entrants into a talent pool increases, competition creates pressure to excel, creates additional knowledge about viable success pathways, and invites again more entrants. The pattern has a tendency to create a local virtuous circle; a type of positive feedback loop. Processes such as this are of great interest to geographers studying a wide variety of subjects.
Jamaica and Sprinting
Figure 2-36: Berlin, Germany: The Jamaican 4x100 meter relay team won gold in the world championship, demonstrating the power of the cultural obsession with sprinting in Jamaica.
Evidently, a virtuous circle has emerged in Jamaica where numerous world-class sprinters competing in track and field events have emerged. A lot of people have offered explanations how a tiny country like Jamaica could come to dominate sprinting events. Of course, some would suggest genetics. One study pointed to the effects of the high concentration of aluminum oxides in Jamaican soils. However, a study of high-profile US and Jamaican athletes found that neither group had an unusual genetic profile. The popular statistician/journalist Malcolm Gladwell makes a far more compelling spatially based argument. He notes that since running has the lowest entry barrier of any sport, it is attractive to people in the world’s poorest countries. What sets Jamaica apart is the national passion for the sport. One of the first great runners from Jamaica, Arthur Wint, became a national hero in the 1940s, and his popularity encouraged tens of thousands of young Jamaicans to copy him. The United States, with a population more than 100 times greater than Jamaica’s, dominated sprinting for much of the 20th century, but in recent years, exceptionally speedy American youngsters (especially boys) increasingly have other, more lucrative, pathways to success. Fast boys in the US are more likely to play football than to run track. American girls rarely dream about playing in the NFL, and the monetary rewards for competing in Olympic sports so small that in the US, the logical thing to do is to focus on getting good grades.
Athletic people everywhere are drawn to sports because they enjoy playing them, but the lure of fame, and especially fortune, create additional incentives to excel. An analysis of the origins of pro football and basketball players strongly suggests that sports are viewed as a viable path to economic security in places where opportunities to move up the socio-economic ladder are limited and/or poorly understood. Maps of per capita production of NFL and NBA players demonstrate significant over-representation of players from poor and working-class locations. Factory towns in the Midwest, inner-city locations and impoverished rural areas in the Deep South produce a disproportionate number of professional football and basketball players.
Figure 2-37: Agoura, CA. Many of the exceptionally athletic boys in the US often play youth football, baseball or basketball because there is a chance to play in college or professionally, however unlikely.
Fandom
Football, baseball, basketball, and hockey are the most popular American sports. Soccer is increasing in popularity rapidly. Auto racing, especially NASCAR, has declined in popularity recently. Each of these sports has regions of the country where it is more popular. Certainly,specific teams have fans inhabiting specific locations.
Recently, geographers have made clever use of information culled from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sources to create a series of interesting maps, and other infographics, about sports, politics, music, etc. Their series on college football is interesting on several levels for a geographer or anyone interested in sports, marketing or the politics of regional identity.
Several compelling trends are evident in these maps, and the story told by these maps goes well beyond what is immediately obvious. Click on the maps below and ponder the role of state borders on the pattern of fandom for some sports. The effect of borders on the college football fandom is fascinating. It appears that in much of the United States, college football fans won’t cheer for a team from another state. People living near state borders seem to be a minor exception. Also, because there is some neighborhood effect, when fans do cheer for a team, it’s usually in a neighboring state. Why do you think this pattern so evident and persistent?
There are a couple of important exceptions. In much of the Pacific Northwest, including parts of Northern California, the Oregon Ducks are more popular than teams from the “home state”. What does that indicate about the how people in Northern California identify as Californians? Fans of Notre Dame’s football team are found in both northern Indiana and the Chicagoland area in Illinois, as well as other scattered spots around the US where there is no strong affiliation with another school, and there exists many Catholics or Irish-Americans. The University of Texas also is claimed by fans well into New Mexico, a state without much of a college football history.
Figure 2-38: Infographics. On the left is a map of fan preference for specific college football teams. The map on the right is a map of the intensity of the fandom. Source: New York Times, The Upshot
The intensity of fandom (map on the right above) for college football seems to be a product of the success of the teams on the field and the availability of other outlets for attention (see map on right in figure 2.37) Alabama appears to have the highest percentage of people identifying with a college football team. This isn’t surprising. The University of Alabama has a long, rich tradition of success in college football.
In recent years, both of Alabama’s major football factories (University of Alabama and Auburn) have won “national championships”, certainly intensifying the effect. Other states, including Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Iowa also have strong fan support for college teams. The intensity of fandom may be related to the lack of a professional football franchise to split the loyalty of fans. Louisiana and Ohio are the two states that seem to have a love for both college and pro football.
Just as interesting are locations with a low interest in college football. An affinity for other college sports, especially basketball, may explain the relative lack of interest in college football in places like Kansas and Indiana. New Englanders, don’t seem to like college football much either. No championship-caliber college team has come from New England since the 1940s, and combined with their deep affection for the New England Patriots, a successful professional team, may account for New Englanders’ lack of interest in the college game.
Californians also don’t seem very interested in college football, even in Southern California where the University of Southern California (a private school) has had a long tradition of gridiron success, and until recently no NFL team to compete for loyalties. Perhaps the ethnic mixture of California helps undermine interest as well since most players are non-Hispanic whites or blacks. The lack of interest in American football may change as Latinos and Asians become more fully assimilated into American culture, and Asian and Latino football stars emerge in the NFL.
Consider the degree to which the patterns of fandom conform to age-old patterns of folkways discussed earlier in the chapter.
Similar patterns of fandom exist in other sports, and the patterns seem to have connections across a broad range of non-sporting behaviors. The maps below, also from the New York Times’ infographic service called “The Upshot” demonstrates how county borders, at least in Southern California determine affiliation for supporters of the two local pro baseball teams. People living in Orange County are much more likely to be Angels fans than Dodgers fans, even though the border is largely invisible on the landscape, and the Angels have tried hard to attract fans from L.A. County in recent years.
Figure 2-39: Infographic Maps - On the left, note the effect of county borders on fanhood. On the right, state borders seem to have little sway on baseball fanhood. Source: New York Times.
In Ohio, where fan loyalty for the local Ohio State Buckeyes college football team is well-defined by state borders, the same cannot be said of support for local baseball teams. In this instance, it seems that fan loyalties follow more of a contagious diffusion pattern. Fans generally root for the team closest to home, without regard to state borders. Consider why college football and Major League Baseball fan maps look very different.
Figure 2-40: Map - NBA fanhood by county, 2014. Source: New York Times
Another very compelling element of the maps presented on these pages is the methodology used to secure the data. Consider how you might use data from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to explore cultural practices, ideas, and fads. How might data culled from social media sources be unreliable, or corrupt? What misinterpretation might occur if you used this sort of data? One example comes from The New York Times’ Upshot infographic department’s 2014 map of NBA fan affiliation. Their data, collected from Facebook, suggests that many people in Ohio were rooting for the Miami Heat, a team located over 1,000 miles from Columbus. Why would this be the case? Geographers who know something of sports might point to the fact that LeBron James, the most famous Ohio-born basketball player played for the Heat for some years before returning home to play for his hometown NBA franchise, the Cleveland Cavaliers. For a time, the fans’ loyalty to the team from Ohio was overwhelmed by their devotion to their favorite player from Ohio: LeBron James. A similar map produced in 2019 might suggest that basketball fans in Ohio are rooting for the Los Angeles Lakers, where LeBron James plays in 2019. Astute consideration of the data source might also suggest that a significant percentage of those Ohioans probably switched loyalties to the Cavaliers upon the return of LeBron James, or to the Lakers upon James’ re-exit from Cleveland, but fan have yet to update their loyalties on Facebook.
