MTV has been running a poll for the best college town in America, and WVU currently leads the race between Maryland, North Carolina, Penn State, and the Mountaineers. UNC is dead last in this poll, BTW...

The Daily Athenaeum Wrote:WVU in top four college sports towns on blog
By Erin Fitzwilliams
Published: Thursday, March 10, 2011
Updated: Thursday, March 10, 2011 00:03

West Virginia University is neck and neck with Pennsylvania State in a poll for "America's Best College Sports Town."

The poll is in honor of March Madness and is hosted by MTV's Clutch Blog. The poll aims to find which sports-obsessed town is the best among WVU, Penn State, the University of Maryland and the University of North Carolina. Voting ends at noon.

WVU is at approximately 50 percent of the votes while Penn State is at about 42 percent at press time. UMD has nearly 5 percent of the vote, and UNC is at approximately 2 percent.

MTV released an update Wednesday that said it had tallied more than 14,000 votes.

Student Government Association President Chris Lewallen said it is exciting for WVU to be a part of the poll. The school usually excels at online polls, and the community is involved in social networking, he said.

"Last time I saw the polls, we were at 78 percent," Lewallen said. "So everyone go vote as many times as you can."

Carol Ann Funkhouser, a public administration graduate student, was one of the students featured on the website in a picture taken from the Final Four game when WVU played Duke University. She, her two friends and one student recruited from the stands at the game appeared as a modified version of the rock band KISS, with their favorite basketball players as their characters.

"We have great history and tradition at WVU. (Morgantown has) mostly students, and it makes Morgantown a great place to be on gameday," Funkhouser said. "People say it's the biggest city in West Virginia on gameday because so many people travel to Morgantown for games."

Funkhouser said she has posted the website link to her Facebook and Twitter profiles so her family and friends could vote and support WVU.

"Growing up here, it's what everyone cares about. I was raised a Mountaineer," said Stephenee Gandee, a freshman general studies major. "I have a picture when I was two years old all dressed up as a WVU cheerleader."

Kiana Hayes, a freshman psychology major, said although she is from Hawaii, she still sees the statewide support for WVU and encourages others to vote.

"Because we have no professional sports team here, we have the whole state backing us," Hayes said. "It's about having pride in our sports and our school."

Sixteen schools were chosen across the country ,and the winner of each of the four regionals will go on to the polls for the "final four."

To vote or see the polls visit, http://clutch.mtv.com/2011/03/07/america...st-region.

I was about to wonder why the heck Maryland was even considered in this group along with neglecting a laundry list of other more deserving schools, but then I saw that this is a vote for only the *East Region* (not the entire country as of yet). Frankly, I'm shocked that UNC has received so few votes (they obviously haven't been coordinating a voting campaign down there) - with all due respect to WVU and Penn State, that's a spectacular college sports town. No love for Charlottesville, either? I would've replaced Maryland with UVA in a heartbeat.

I'll be curious to see what the other regions would look like. Madison is my personal vote for the best college sports town in the country and I don't think it's close - beautiful campus, tons of nightlife and they sell out *every* football (over 80,000 seats) and basketball game (over 17,000 seats) AND draws 12,000 or more for every hockey game (tops in the nation by about 40% more than 2nd place). There is absolutely no weakness there.

The MTV generation doesn't seem to agree with you about UNC, Frank. That's the crowd currently doing most of the voting. The younger generation doesn't seem to care about Carolina...

(03-10-2011 11:13 AM)bitcruncher Wrote:  The MTV generation doesn't seem to agree with you about UNC, Frank. That's the crowd currently doing most of the voting. The younger generation doesn't seem to care about Carolina...

I doubt that's the case - that article you posted basically said that WVU students are coordinating efforts to vote as much as possible, which is fine, but that's going to skew the numbers heavily.

Every other school has the same opportunity, and the MTV generation is computer savvy...