Kong Wen wrote:
Don't lose heart—there's probably some good cultural-differences evidence! For example, we don't have college baseball here (as far as I know... certainly not on the same kind of nationally competitive level as in the USA), so Canadians are relatively indifferent to the sport. This makes marketing and brand more important factors than location or community affiliation. Canadians on the whole (other than Québec) don't have as strong an identification with province (whereas I'm led to understand that Americans tend to identify quite strongly with their state), which means that when those community-/location-based affiliations do exist, they tend to stretch to more distant limits than would be expected from an American perspective. And these are just a couple examples!
I find pro & college sport allegiances about equally odd & arbitrary, but then again, subculture participation is natural and ubiquitous, so I suppose we shouldn't find it too surprising.
Pretty interesting there. I'd say regional identity is pretty major in the States, yes. Maybe not down to the state level, but Americans often favor the sensibilities of their native regions of the South, New England, Midwest, Texas (yes, I consider Texas its own region for these purposes), or Pacific coast. Certainly that could be part of it.
I don't think college allegiances are nearly as arbitrary! At least I know the players on the team are students of my university, meaning I know I share at least a fair number of things in common with them. But then, the strength with which Americans tie their identities to their alma maters (almas mater?) may also be more intense than in other countries; I don't know. Also, it means more to me for a player to be playing on my team because he wanted to come to my university for whatever reason than for a player to play for my team because he was drafted to it or traded to it. Big difference. But I do understand that it is ultimately still caring about the outcome of a game played between people I don't know.
Kong Wen wrote:
Actually, part of the reason hockey fandom looks a lot more blurred is probably because so many kids from local teams end up on NHL teams all over the league. Crosby is from my town, Marchand grew up down the road from my old apartment, and MacKinnon, Fucale, Drouin, Voracek, etc. all played for our local Q team. And this isn't even a big city! This is probably a similar phenomenon for how baseball loyalties became so decentralized (to whatever extent that's true) in the US, with young college players from various communities moving on to pro teams all over the country.
Did you open the map I linked in my previous post? I'd say baseball loyalties are highly centralized, with the Yankees and Sox being the only national brands. Basically, the big classic dynasties like the Yanks and the Sox get fans all over the place, and the rest are constrained pretty strictly to regional fans. Look around that map. You'll almost never find a county where the Sox or Yanks aren't in 2nd or 3rd place behind the most nearby team.
Having said that, I know that when I watch NFL games, I'm looking to see former Georgia Tech stars. I find it hard to get excited about the Atlanta Falcons to an extent because their team features none of our alumni. The Detroit Lions, on the other hand, have perhaps our programs best all time player on their roster, so I find myself watching them as much as anyone.
For the most part, though, pretty much every American sports league has one or two national brands that you can find bandwagon fans of anywhere and then everyone else pulls for their region. The national brands in college football are Alabama, Notre Dame, and Southern Cal (there are some others, but it's a longer list than other sports since there are 130ish division 1 college teams). NFL has the Packers and the Cowboys. NBA has the Lakers. NHL has the Red Wings.
