Lesser Divides (sports edition)

[jp the roadgeek]

The one in CT is the Red Sox/Yankees fan divide, which some refer to tongue-in-cheek as the Munson-Nixon line.  Truth is, there is no real true line, just more of a grey zone where it is pretty much 50/50.  The Yankees control Fairfield County while the Red Sox control Windham County.  The land between the two rivers (the Housatonic and the Connecticut) tends to be the grey zone, where families and neighborhoods are split.  The New Haven area and the Naugatuck Valley are mostly Yankees, while areas north of Hartford lean Red Sox.
Once you get east of the Connecticut River, Red Sox fandom tends to kick in.  As for Mets fans: they're interspersed, but tend to die out as you get farther from Citi Field; however, there's a significant enough fan base to warrant local coverage.  But the interesting thing: there is absolutely no correlation in the state between which baseball team you root for and which football team you root for.  I know many Sox fans who are Giants fans and Yankees fans who are Pats fans (Jets fans pretty much don't exist north of New Haven, and it irks me that our local affiliates go out of their way sometimes to air Jets games when there really is no fan base; I actually know more Steelers fans in CT than Jets fans).   

As for the soda/pop divide in the northeast, I would say it falls between Syracuse and Rochester, then follows the I-99 corridor. 

[ran4sh]

Yankees fans who are Pats fans

Gross. I hope those fans switch to the Red Sox now, due to their more recent success (And I hope the Yankees win a World Series soon, 12 seasons is too much to go without a title).

[frankenroad]

The Reds/Bengals vs Indians/Browns line approximates I-70 in Ohio.   Except, the Columbus Metro Area.   So many of the people who live in Columbus are Ohio State Grads who stayed, who either grew up in Cincinnati or Cleveland, that Columbus is very murky in terms of where the divide lies.

[Brandon]

In Illinois, a big one is the Cubs-Cardinals divide, which is a bit further north than one might think.  It runs somewhere between Dwight and Pontiac, cutting east-southeast toward Indiana and westward toward Iowa from there.

[CoreySamson]

The divide I immediately thought of is the sports markets of Houston and Dallas sports teams. The line basically runs from the Toledo Bend Reservoir to Lufkin, to College Station, then down south to Victoria and Corpus Christi. The RGV is no man's land. Essentially Dallas gets a much larger share of the sports market in Texas than Houston does.

As for the soda debate, I hear a lot of "coke"(notice it's not a proper noun) here in the Houston area and elsewhere in the South. I'm not sure where that line lies.

[texaskdog]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendoza_Line

The Mendoza Line is an expression in baseball deriving from the name of shortstop Mario Mendoza, whose poor batting average is taken to define the threshold of incompetent hitting. The cutoff point is most often said to be .200[1] (Mendoza's career average was slightly better than that, at .215)[2] and, when a position player's batting average falls below that level, the player is said to be "below the Mendoza Line". This is often thought of as the offensive threshold below which a player's presence on a Major League Baseball team cannot be justified, regardless of his defensive abilities. The term does not apply to pitchers, who are not expected to be effective hitters.

The term has come to be used in other contexts when one is so incompetent in one key skill that other skills cannot compensate for that deficiency.

[hotdogPi]

.200[1]

TypeError: 'float' object is not subscriptable

[CtrlAltDel]

In Illinois, a big one is the Cubs-Cardinals divide, which is a bit further north than one might think.  It runs somewhere between Dwight and Pontiac, cutting east-southeast toward Indiana and westward toward Iowa from there.

For what it's worth, this map shows the Cubs-Cardinals border as lying between Bloomington and Springfield.

[CoreySamson]

In Illinois, a big one is the Cubs-Cardinals divide, which is a bit further north than one might think.  It runs somewhere between Dwight and Pontiac, cutting east-southeast toward Indiana and westward toward Iowa from there.

For what it's worth, this map shows the Cubs-Cardinals border as lying between Bloomington and Springfield.

[img snipped]

That map also shows almost perfectly the line between Dallas teams and Houston teams I mentioned.

[The Nature Boy]

In Illinois, a big one is the Cubs-Cardinals divide, which is a bit further north than one might think.  It runs somewhere between Dwight and Pontiac, cutting east-southeast toward Indiana and westward toward Iowa from there.

For what it's worth, this map shows the Cubs-Cardinals border as lying between Bloomington and Springfield.

[img snipped]

That map also shows almost perfectly the line between Dallas teams and Houston teams I mentioned.

Nats fandom really doesn't go very far outside of the DC Metro Area. There are even pockets on the Maryland side that are still Orioles fans.

On the east coast at least, this seems to correlate well with media markets. The parts of Pennsylvania that support the Orioles are in the Baltimore media market. The Yankees/Phillies line in NY seems to follow the line for the NYC/Philly media markets but I'm not sure how exact it is. The parts of MA and VT that support the Yankees are also in the Albany, NY market, ditto for parts of NY State that support the Sox being in the Burlington, VT market.

[hotdogPi]

Cities with under 20% local team:

Charlotte/Raleigh/Norfolk/Richmond
El Paso
Jacksonville
Nashville
New Orleans
Las Vegas
Omaha
Oklahoma City
Salt Lake City

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Wisconsin is interesting. In the NFL, it's a hard line. Vikings and Bears fans do not cross the border into Wisconsin in any appreciable numbers. However in baseball, there are quite a few Twins fans in western Wisconsin which on that map correlates roughly with US 63. In hockey where WI has no pro team, the Wild have the western third, the Blackhawks the major cities in southern WI, and Red Wings closer to the UP.

[NWI_Irish96]

Wisconsin is interesting. In the NFL, it's a hard line. Vikings and Bears fans do not cross the border into Wisconsin in any appreciable numbers. However in baseball, there are quite a few Twins fans in western Wisconsin which on that map correlates roughly with US 63. In hockey where WI has no pro team, the Wild have the western third, the Blackhawks the major cities in southern WI, and Red Wings closer to the UP.

Kenosha County has a sizable number of Bears fans, possibly even a majority.

[tchafe1978]

Wisconsin is interesting. In the NFL, it's a hard line. Vikings and Bears fans do not cross the border into Wisconsin in any appreciable numbers. However in baseball, there are quite a few Twins fans in western Wisconsin which on that map correlates roughly with US 63. In hockey where WI has no pro team, the Wild have the western third, the Blackhawks the major cities in southern WI, and Red Wings closer to the UP.

Kenosha County has a sizable number of Bears fans, possibly even a majority.

There are also many Bears fans in Southwest Wisconsin near Platteville, mostly as a result of duh Bears holding training camp in Platteville from 1982-2000. Thankfully I'm not one of them and root for the good guys.

[NWI_Irish96]

Wisconsin is interesting. In the NFL, it's a hard line. Vikings and Bears fans do not cross the border into Wisconsin in any appreciable numbers. However in baseball, there are quite a few Twins fans in western Wisconsin which on that map correlates roughly with US 63. In hockey where WI has no pro team, the Wild have the western third, the Blackhawks the major cities in southern WI, and Red Wings closer to the UP.

Kenosha County has a sizable number of Bears fans, possibly even a majority.

There are also many Bears fans in Southwest Wisconsin near Platteville, mostly as a result of duh Bears holding training camp in Platteville from 1982-2000. Thankfully I'm not one of them and root for the good guys.

I wouldn't call a franchise that set out to deliberately injure Jim McMahon and ruin his career "good guys" but that's just me.

[Sctvhound]

North Carolina really has no dominant baseball team people support. Western NC (anywhere in the Charlotte media market west) supports the Braves very heavily, but the area is also zoned for the Reds because stations out there used to carry them during the "Big Red Machine"  days of the 1970s. Eastern NC (Greensboro east) really has no dominant team. The Orioles/Nationals (MASN) are zoned for most of NC, but they aren't on any cable systems in the populated cities (Greensboro, Raleigh, Wilmington).

South Carolina is almost all Braves. North Carolina is heavy for the Panthers except for when you get east of I-95 and north of I-40, when Washington fans start to become dominant.

[thspfc]

Wisconsin is split between the Wild and Blackhawks for hockey, I'd guess it's about 60/40 Blackhawks (if you don't count the Illinois vacationers).

[triplemultiplex]

this map

That's a cool map, but it pisses me off all these places nowhere near New York where the Yankees come out on top.  Gross.
Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nebraska, Utah; what the hell is wrong with those people rooting for the evil empire?
Even Alaska!  Are you kidding me? Those 'rugged individualists' are in with the Yankees?  Boooooooooo!!!!

[hotdogPi]

this map

That's a cool map, but it pisses me off all these places nowhere near New York where the Yankees come out on top.  Gross.
Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nebraska, Utah; what the hell is wrong with those people rooting for the evil empire?
Even Alaska!  Are you kidding me? Those 'rugged individualists' are in with the Yankees?  Boooooooooo!!!!

They're "no team reaches 25%" places, not Yankees hotspots.

[Alps]

this map

That's a cool map, but it pisses me off all these places nowhere near New York where the Yankees come out on top.  Gross.
Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nebraska, Utah; what the hell is wrong with those people rooting for the evil empire?
Even Alaska!  Are you kidding me? Those 'rugged individualists' are in with the Yankees?  Boooooooooo!!!!

Wow, what did you eat for breakfast? Whatever team you're a fan of is worse. Refute.

[thspfc]

this map

How defined the line between Cubs and Brewers is shows you how much the two states hate each other.

[thspfc]

this map

That's a cool map, but it pisses me off all these places nowhere near New York where the Yankees come out on top.  Gross.
Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nebraska, Utah; what the hell is wrong with those people rooting for the evil empire?
Even Alaska!  Are you kidding me? Those 'rugged individualists' are in with the Yankees?  Boooooooooo!!!!

Wow, what did you eat for breakfast? Whatever team you're a fan of is worse. Refute.

Obligatory "says the one who has at least 50 posts on here dedicated to hating the Patriots"

[Alps]

this map

That's a cool map, but it pisses me off all these places nowhere near New York where the Yankees come out on top.  Gross.
Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nebraska, Utah; what the hell is wrong with those people rooting for the evil empire?
Even Alaska!  Are you kidding me? Those 'rugged individualists' are in with the Yankees?  Boooooooooo!!!!

Wow, what did you eat for breakfast? Whatever team you're a fan of is worse. Refute.

Obligatory "says the one who has at least 50 posts on here dedicated to hating the Patriots"

[Roadgeekteen]

Yankees fans who are Pats fans

[NWI_Irish96]

Yankees fans who are Pats fans

Met a guy once who was a fan of the Cowboys, Lakers and Yankees. Never wanted to punch anybody more than I wanted to punch him.