2.15: Fandom

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 is so evident and persistent?

Figure Infographics on the left is a map of dan preferences for specific college football teams. The map on the right is a map of the intensity of the fandom.

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 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.

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.

Figure infographic Maps- On the left, note the effects of county boulders on fanhood. On the right, state borders seem to have little sway on baseball fanhood.

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.

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 Maps- NBA Fanhoods by county 2014

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.