(07-19-2013 01:14 PM)TerryD Wrote:  Compare that map, the 2004 and 2008 Presidential election maps to the 1860 Presidential election map.

Not much has changed, really. Sectionalism is alive and well. There are two different "countries" in "America".

For the most part, the difference is that in 1860 we had a true Federal government that allowed the states to govern themselves on most matters. Today, we elect a mayor and a city council for the entire country instead of electing a congress and a president. Before Wilson, the only things that went federal were the things the states truly couldn't deal with on their own.

Of course, the one overriding issue that went against that trend was slavery and the Civil War, which dovetails perfectly into the joke about "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread...

(07-19-2013 11:46 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  This is an interesting discussion.

BTW, I am the one who argued WV's counties were the only ones moving the WVU needle in PGH and I am certain I'm right. If I weren't, that would show up by way of radio talk show discussion, television news features, newspaper features, etc.

Well, there is ZERO radio talk show discussion of WVU sports and limited television and NP features (once in a blue moon type stuff). What does that tell you about those media entities' research with regard to interest levels in this area?

Again, I want to make it clear that this is not rah-rah rivalry BS. It's a serious observation. Within the boundaries of West Virginia the Mountaineers are EVERYTHING to those people. That's why the Dude of WV's fairy tales took off in the first place - because big time college athletics is literally all they have and they were terrified of being left behind and the rumors gave them some hope.

However, PA and WV are EXTREMELY different culturally and as soon as you cross the borders of one state into the other those differences show up in a big way. They also show up in sports.

For example, in another life, I lived and worked in West Virginia for about two and a half years. The town that I lived in is called Nutter Fort, which is approximately two hours due south of Pittsburgh. Two hours!

Even though I was just two hours away, I felt like I may as well have been living in Arkansas. The cultures were just so radically different from each other and the mores and attitudes towards everything were so radically different that it really caught me by surprise.

Just a totally different world.

With that in mind, I really have come to believe that there are two distinctly different Americas culturally. Based on my experiences, I absolutely do buy into the whole red state vs. blue state divide and believe that it shows not only our political differences but also our attitudes towards media consumption, entertainment interests and even sports fandom. That would make a helluva book, IMHO.

If you want to know which states are the most passionate about college football versus those that are the most passionate pro areas, and politically conservative versus liberal, and Fox News watchers versus everyone else, and religiously zealous or homogenous or diverse or what have you - just look at an election map during any given presidential election and it will tell you everything you need to know.

It may not necessarily be 100 percent but it sure correlates on a high percentage of states, IMHO.

You do realize the map you posted has at least 2 major errors in it as Both Florida & Colorado went Democratic in the last election which significantly changed the electoral vote totals.

Virginia is also wrong, should be Blue.

(07-19-2013 04:05 PM)JunkYardCard Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 01:14 PM)TerryD Wrote:  Compare that map, the 2004 and 2008 Presidential election maps to the 1860 Presidential election map.

Not much has changed, really. Sectionalism is alive and well. There are two different "countries" in "America".

For the most part, the difference is that in 1860 we had a true Federal government that allowed the states to govern themselves on most matters. Today, we elect a mayor and a city council for the entire country instead of electing a congress and a president. Before Wilson, the only things that went federal were the things the states truly couldn't deal with on their own.

Of course, the one overriding issue that went against that trend was slavery and the Civil War, which dovetails perfectly into the joke about "other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread...

Yep, the Civil War increased the power and influence of the Federal government (Ironic, isn't it?).

So did World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Patriot Act, War on Terror, etc......

Let's look at the top 50 most watched sporting events for 2013:

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2013/07/...far/#chart


I wonder how much overlap there is among these different events? How many people watched all these same events?

(07-19-2013 06:27 PM)Dasville Wrote:  Let's look at the top 50 most watched sporting events for 2013:

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2013/07/...far/#chart


I wonder how much overlap there is among these different events? How many people watched all these same events?

Do you have the thread for something that lists a whole year's worth? This is missing all the info from July-Dec.

(07-19-2013 11:46 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  This is an interesting discussion.

BTW, I am the one who argued WV's counties were the only ones moving the WVU needle in PGH and I am certain I'm right. If I weren't, that would show up by way of radio talk show discussion, television news features, newspaper features, etc.

Well, there is ZERO radio talk show discussion of WVU sports and limited television and NP features (once in a blue moon type stuff). What does that tell you about those media entities' research with regard to interest levels in this area?

Again, I want to make it clear that this is not rah-rah rivalry BS. It's a serious observation. Within the boundaries of West Virginia the Mountaineers are EVERYTHING to those people. That's why the Dude of WV's fairy tales took off in the first place - because big time college athletics is literally all they have and they were terrified of being left behind and the rumors gave them some hope.

However, PA and WV are EXTREMELY different culturally and as soon as you cross the borders of one state into the other those differences show up in a big way. They also show up in sports.

For example, in another life, I lived and worked in West Virginia for about two and a half years. The town that I lived in is called Nutter Fort, which is approximately two hours due south of Pittsburgh. Two hours!

Even though I was just two hours away, I felt like I may as well have been living in Arkansas. The cultures were just so radically different from each other and the mores and attitudes towards everything were so radically different that it really caught me by surprise.

Just a totally different world.

With that in mind, I really have come to believe that there are two distinctly different Americas culturally. Based on my experiences, I absolutely do buy into the whole red state vs. blue state divide and believe that it shows not only our political differences but also our attitudes towards media consumption, entertainment interests and even sports fandom. That would make a helluva book, IMHO.

If you want to know which states are the most passionate about college football versus those that are the most passionate pro areas, and politically conservative versus liberal, and Fox News watchers versus everyone else, and religiously zealous or homogenous or diverse or what have you - just look at an election map during any given presidential election and it will tell you everything you need to know.

It may not necessarily be 100 percent but it sure correlates on a high percentage of states, IMHO.

First, to answer your question, YES, DMAs and Nielson's are obsolete at least in terms of college sports.

I would rather advertise my products during BYU games than I would Miami games, although Miami is in a larger market.

I can promise you that ECU football has more interested parties weekly than Temple (to use an example) does even though Temple is in a larger market. The problem is that it I have no idea of how to measure this other than to use the fans-in-the-stands numbers.

I'm willing to bet that advertisers will agree with me in the long run.

Regarding the make-up of our nation: we are unfortunately divided among many lines. I don't think it's going to get any better. There are individuals and there are collectivists. The collectivists outnumber the individuals and this will continue to cause angst for a long time to come.

NOTE: by "collectivists" and "individuals" I do not mean to imply that one political party's membership belongs to either group. I do mean to imply that there are those of us who want to be left alone and there are those who do not AND want to tell others what to believe, how to spend their money, etc.

(07-19-2013 03:11 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 03:06 PM)brista21 Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 11:58 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 11:46 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  This is an interesting discussion.

BTW, I am the one who argued WV's counties were the only ones moving the WVU needle in PGH and I am certain I'm right. If I weren't, that would show up by way of radio talk show discussion, television news features, newspaper features, etc.

Well, there is ZERO radio talk show discussion of WVU sports and limited television and NP features (once in a blue moon type stuff). What does that tell you about those media entities' research with regard to interest levels in this area?

Again, I want to make it clear that this is not rah-rah rivalry BS. It's a serious observation. Within the boundaries of West Virginia the Mountaineers are EVERYTHING to those people. That's why the Dude of WV's fairy tales took off in the first place - because big time college athletics is literally all they have and they were terrified of being left behind and the rumors gave them some hope.

However, PA and WV are EXTREMELY different culturally and as soon as you cross the borders of one state into the other those differences show up in a big way. They also show up in sports.

For example, in another life, I lived and worked in West Virginia for about two and a half years. The town that I lived in is called Nutter Fort, which is approximately two hours due south of Pittsburgh. Two hours!

Even though I was just two hours away, I felt like I may as well have been living in Arkansas. The cultures were just so radically different from each other and the mores and attitudes towards everything were so radically different that it really caught me by surprise.

Just a totally different world.

With that in mind, I really have come to believe that there are two distinctly different Americas culturally. Based on my experiences, I absolutely do buy into the whole red state vs. blue state divide and believe that it shows not only our political differences but also our attitudes towards media consumption, entertainment interests and even sports fandom. That would make a helluva book, IMHO.

If you want to know which states are the most passionate about college football versus those that are the most passionate pro areas, and politically conservative versus liberal, and Fox News watchers versus everyone else, and religiously zealous or homogenous or diverse or what have you - just look at an election map during any given presidential election and it will tell you everything you need to know.

As you discuss this, you might remember that a wanna be geographer did a piss-poor study of this that appeared in the media. He set up study where people at colleges could self report who they pulled for and pegged that to georaphic areas based on a number of flawed assertions. Among his results that I recall were that Arkansas State was more popular than most Divison 1 teams, that East Carolina was more popular than UNC in eastern North Carolina and that Rutgers was hugely more popular in NYC than ND, Penn State, or Syracuse. What he had done was dump all the colleges into a specific geography so when for example 210 Rutgers students voted, all their votes went into NYC, etc., etc. Only some colleges actually voted and there were no statistical controls.

On top of this a moron reporter took these bad results, masseged them and announced that Rutgers was the most popular team in the nation based on it's supposed popularity in NYC.

Watch out for extremely flawed data on this topic.

Dude, can you provide some links to back that up?

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09...ent-chaos/

It is my fervent hope to be seated upon a committee or reviewing a journal article and have the names on this work come before me - poor research design is a fact of life, poor students are a fact of life, but this crap is so bad and so flawed that it makes me want to vomit.

College sports/revenue articles in Forbes and the NYT over the last three years have been horrible. I should be able to accept that because journalists are usually horrible researchers, can't understand statistics, and certainly don't understand anything except the broadest of spatial concepts.

The irony is that this subject would make a great thesis for a doctoral student in Geography and would be a natural segway into a book that would probably sell very well. The problem is that it would take real work. You would need real data, not manufactured data or subsitutes using the partial universe of FBS schools. You would need a sociology component and a history component. You would also have to have a business component to understand how advertising is related to content and is related to viewership.

Here's a little information on the "person" who created this mess:

The CommonCensus Map Project has its beginnings in 2005 in an all-you-can-eat meat barbecue in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Its creator, Michael Baldwin, was at lunch, bemoaning the battle over Iraq's constitution, the territorial problems in India and China, and the mess over Congressional redistricting. In the 21st century, it remained impossible to even identify the exact extent of Upstate New York. However, rather than let the problems of the world ruin a perfectly good meal, Michael decided to tackle the problem himself. With a political science degree to his credit, he decided to use the common sense approach and simply ask everybody where they lived. He'd tally up the results and draw the first map with borders decided by the people within them, and not by a select group of politicians. Six months later he then actually sat down and did it. His mother came up with the name (all those hours of filling in crossword puzzles paid off) and the CommonCensus website was born two weeks later on September 22.



About the Creator

Michael Baldwin grew up in Clinton, NY, home of Hamilton College. He received a Bachelor's in Political Science from Yale University. He currently resides in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

(07-19-2013 07:12 PM)goofus Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 06:27 PM)Dasville Wrote:  Let's look at the top 50 most watched sporting events for 2013:

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2013/07/...far/#chart


I wonder how much overlap there is among these different events? How many people watched all these same events?

Do you have the thread for something that lists a whole year's worth? This is missing all the info from July-Dec.

What happens to impact these numbers from July-Dec.?

(07-19-2013 03:11 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 03:06 PM)brista21 Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 11:58 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 11:46 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  This is an interesting discussion.

BTW, I am the one who argued WV's counties were the only ones moving the WVU needle in PGH and I am certain I'm right. If I weren't, that would show up by way of radio talk show discussion, television news features, newspaper features, etc.

Well, there is ZERO radio talk show discussion of WVU sports and limited television and NP features (once in a blue moon type stuff). What does that tell you about those media entities' research with regard to interest levels in this area?

Again, I want to make it clear that this is not rah-rah rivalry BS. It's a serious observation. Within the boundaries of West Virginia the Mountaineers are EVERYTHING to those people. That's why the Dude of WV's fairy tales took off in the first place - because big time college athletics is literally all they have and they were terrified of being left behind and the rumors gave them some hope.

However, PA and WV are EXTREMELY different culturally and as soon as you cross the borders of one state into the other those differences show up in a big way. They also show up in sports.

For example, in another life, I lived and worked in West Virginia for about two and a half years. The town that I lived in is called Nutter Fort, which is approximately two hours due south of Pittsburgh. Two hours!

Even though I was just two hours away, I felt like I may as well have been living in Arkansas. The cultures were just so radically different from each other and the mores and attitudes towards everything were so radically different that it really caught me by surprise.

Just a totally different world.

With that in mind, I really have come to believe that there are two distinctly different Americas culturally. Based on my experiences, I absolutely do buy into the whole red state vs. blue state divide and believe that it shows not only our political differences but also our attitudes towards media consumption, entertainment interests and even sports fandom. That would make a helluva book, IMHO.

If you want to know which states are the most passionate about college football versus those that are the most passionate pro areas, and politically conservative versus liberal, and Fox News watchers versus everyone else, and religiously zealous or homogenous or diverse or what have you - just look at an election map during any given presidential election and it will tell you everything you need to know.

As you discuss this, you might remember that a wanna be geographer did a piss-poor study of this that appeared in the media. He set up study where people at colleges could self report who they pulled for and pegged that to georaphic areas based on a number of flawed assertions. Among his results that I recall were that Arkansas State was more popular than most Divison 1 teams, that East Carolina was more popular than UNC in eastern North Carolina and that Rutgers was hugely more popular in NYC than ND, Penn State, or Syracuse. What he had done was dump all the colleges into a specific geography so when for example 210 Rutgers students voted, all their votes went into NYC, etc., etc. Only some colleges actually voted and there were no statistical controls.

On top of this a moron reporter took these bad results, masseged them and announced that Rutgers was the most popular team in the nation based on it's supposed popularity in NYC.

Watch out for extremely flawed data on this topic.

Dude, can you provide some links to back that up?

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09...ent-chaos/

Thanks John. I figured this is what he was referring to.

Nate Silver is possibly the best statistical analyst out there. And on this one he in no way tries to say that Rutgers is the most popular team in the nation, in fact he believes Rutgers to likely be a middling addition for the Big Ten. I will concede that some of his source data assumptions on this one are on the questionable side though.

I disagree regarding the US being two distinct regions or cultures.

I've been to all 50 states and most provences of Canada and lot of foreign countries and I think the US is three distinct regions and cultures - North, South, West.

I'm from NC, and educated at four ACC schools. There is a Mason-Dixon line and I know when I cross it, but it's a linguistic and cultural thing. It's when the tea is not sweet. It's when you can't find Moon Pie in the convienience store. It's when people call Pepsi or Coke, pop or soda. It's also where folks start to have lots of vowels in the last names or silent consenents. Lots of subtle things.

Maryland is not really the South and Northern Kentucky, Southern Indiana and Southern Ohio is not really the North. West Virginia is very, very unique in that is an anomaly to all.

However, there is a West. Once you past Kansas City, or Ames, or Fargo, or Dallas, you are in the "West" and it hits you.

The weirdest thing for a person who thinks of themself as "Southern" is to be called "Eastern" by folks in Washington State and Oregon. It always strikes me as odd, but it tells me about how they see the US.

The US was due for a political party system reversal and collapse (as happens every 40-80 or so years) several decades ago, but this time both parties have worked to prevent that from happening and that's why the Tea Party is eating the Republican Party from the inside.

I think the real splits within the regions are Urban versus Suburban versus Rural. These three value sets are different and no single party can negotiate all three at the same time.

There really are two Wests, the urban west, and the rural west - as different as night and day. There are at least four Souths - the urban south, the rural south, the college/research town south and Texas from Fort Worth east. There are at least 4 Norths, the urban North, the rural North, New England and Manhattan.

I bet if you look at those electoral maps on a county by county basis, control for your rural/urban/college/Manhattan/New England split, you will find the rural areas across the US vote nearly identically and the urban areas and southern college towns will follow close behind on homogenous voting. Your real tossup or changeable region will be New England.

(07-19-2013 07:12 PM)goofus Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 06:27 PM)Dasville Wrote:  Let's look at the top 50 most watched sporting events for 2013:

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2013/07/...far/#chart


I wonder how much overlap there is among these different events? How many people watched all these same events?

Do you have the thread for something that lists a whole year's worth? This is missing all the info from July-Dec.

Here is what 2012 looked like:

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2013/01/...-the-year/


What is the viewership?

(07-19-2013 09:10 PM)brista21 Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 03:11 PM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 03:06 PM)brista21 Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 11:58 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 11:46 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  This is an interesting discussion.

BTW, I am the one who argued WV's counties were the only ones moving the WVU needle in PGH and I am certain I'm right. If I weren't, that would show up by way of radio talk show discussion, television news features, newspaper features, etc.

Well, there is ZERO radio talk show discussion of WVU sports and limited television and NP features (once in a blue moon type stuff). What does that tell you about those media entities' research with regard to interest levels in this area?

Again, I want to make it clear that this is not rah-rah rivalry BS. It's a serious observation. Within the boundaries of West Virginia the Mountaineers are EVERYTHING to those people. That's why the Dude of WV's fairy tales took off in the first place - because big time college athletics is literally all they have and they were terrified of being left behind and the rumors gave them some hope.

However, PA and WV are EXTREMELY different culturally and as soon as you cross the borders of one state into the other those differences show up in a big way. They also show up in sports.

For example, in another life, I lived and worked in West Virginia for about two and a half years. The town that I lived in is called Nutter Fort, which is approximately two hours due south of Pittsburgh. Two hours!

Even though I was just two hours away, I felt like I may as well have been living in Arkansas. The cultures were just so radically different from each other and the mores and attitudes towards everything were so radically different that it really caught me by surprise.

Just a totally different world.

With that in mind, I really have come to believe that there are two distinctly different Americas culturally. Based on my experiences, I absolutely do buy into the whole red state vs. blue state divide and believe that it shows not only our political differences but also our attitudes towards media consumption, entertainment interests and even sports fandom. That would make a helluva book, IMHO.

If you want to know which states are the most passionate about college football versus those that are the most passionate pro areas, and politically conservative versus liberal, and Fox News watchers versus everyone else, and religiously zealous or homogenous or diverse or what have you - just look at an election map during any given presidential election and it will tell you everything you need to know.

As you discuss this, you might remember that a wanna be geographer did a piss-poor study of this that appeared in the media. He set up study where people at colleges could self report who they pulled for and pegged that to georaphic areas based on a number of flawed assertions. Among his results that I recall were that Arkansas State was more popular than most Divison 1 teams, that East Carolina was more popular than UNC in eastern North Carolina and that Rutgers was hugely more popular in NYC than ND, Penn State, or Syracuse. What he had done was dump all the colleges into a specific geography so when for example 210 Rutgers students voted, all their votes went into NYC, etc., etc. Only some colleges actually voted and there were no statistical controls.

On top of this a moron reporter took these bad results, masseged them and announced that Rutgers was the most popular team in the nation based on it's supposed popularity in NYC.

Watch out for extremely flawed data on this topic.

Dude, can you provide some links to back that up?

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09...ent-chaos/

Thanks John. I figured this is what he was referring to.

Nate Silver is possibly the best statistical analyst out there. And on this one he in no way tries to say that Rutgers is the most popular team in the nation, in fact he believes Rutgers to likely be a middling addition for the Big Ten. I will concede that some of his source data assumptions on this one are on the questionable side though.

Nate Silver is just a well-known statistical analyst because he predicted the last several elections. I know the data he used to make his important election predictions were better than this and these are his own words from the poor article:

"One effort to study this is through something called the CommonCensus Sports Map Project, an online survey that asked fans to pick which college football team they’re most loyal to as well as to enter their geographic coordinates. After having collected more than 30,000 responses over the past several years, this has allowed the CommonCensus folks to divide the country up between the different college teams into what looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.



The CommonCensus data also allows you to zoom in on any particular region, and develop an estimate of how fan loyalties are divided in any particular part of the country.

Because this survey is not quite scientific — although the CommonCensus curators have made some effort to screen out ‘spam’ responses — I’ve adjusted the results based on a comparison to the college football revenues received by each team, according to disclosure data filed with the federal government. Teams that had a significantly higher- or lower-than-expected number of fans in the CommonCensus results in comparison to their revenues had their results adjusted accordingly. (The team affected most profoundly by this is Arkansas State, which was rather popular in the CommonCensus poll but which brings in few revenues from college football and doesn’t usually sell out its small stadium.)"

With his own mouth, Silver is telling the reader his underlying data sucks. He then goes on to tell the reader he substituted and massaged the data with sales and revenue data. Because he has faulty underlying data, he then goes on to tell us things like Georgia Tech has more fans and must sell more stuff and make more money than UNC. That's bull ****, pure and simple. Ever been to Georgia?

It's also not accurate that Auburn has more fans than Alabama in the State of Alabama. Again, these crazy results are due to deeply flawed data that Silver is attempting to massage.

He does indeed claim Rutgers is the most popular team in NYC, more popular than ND.

If you knew how this "study" was done, you would know that it went out to colleges and universities only, that it was available for different sets of time at different colleges and universities, that the so-called data came in over years and years of time. If you voted, you could vote for three schools, yet the moron listed results and geography just for the top vote getter in each small demographic blob, leading to a gross undercount of "fans" by Silver.

Few schools fanbases are as good as rigging a poll as NC State's fans. If NC State knew of a pole regarding NC State, they would have jumped on it and you would think NC State was the only school in the Southeast. Somehow, the folks on campus at NC State knew nothing about the poll - how can that be? Odd, isnt it?

What this kid did without a graduate degree in statistics or geography was to arbitrarily assign schools to certain geographic spaces and he then used tiny specks of data to fill in the empty holes. What Nate Silver did was to write an article using data he knew was faulty and was deeply flawed, and did it anyway. Even the fact that he discloses he knew the data was bad and that he tried to correct it doesn't fix the problem.

CommonCensus was a poll that was big back in 2005-2006. That's when it started. You have to realize then Facebook was in its infancy, and Twitter was nowhere to be found. The only links to something like that were news stories and message boards. Whoever got more word out was the most successful.

Schools like Mississippi and Mississippi State were not well represented. Many schools like those in rural states like MS had trouble because DSL internet hadn't expanded out of the major cities. More people generally voted in cities, while almost any area miles from a city had few votes. Now, it would be a much different story. That hasn't been updated since 2010; a lot has changed in college sports since then.

Agree about the culture change. You can tell especially when you're in VA. The Richmond area is huge for college sports. You have VCU, Richmond, Virginia and Virginia Tech close by, and college football and basketball are the major sports. Charlottesville is like that too with UVa.

However, if you go just a few miles to Fredericksburg and the DC area, everything changes. The Redskins are the topic nine months a year, and the other time is taken up with Caps and Nats talk. College sports talk is relegated to March and/or when a local team competes for a championship.

The original post isn't completely wrong. NYC is a pro market. That much is true. Then he derails. The needle definitely moves in New York for St Johns and other college teams. Rutgers holds almost all the highest rated college football games for The City. So there is interest there. You have to remember, this is not an area that has great college sports outside of basketball, but it produces great college talent that plays all over the country. There are plenty of transplants from other states here working in The City that want to see their school come here and play. Bottom line, win and the fans will come.

The second post isn't completely correct. Over air broadcasts and dmv's are on their way out. But cable/satellite is too. Take a look at your kids. They are watching internet TV. My kds are watching more shows and videos on the internet than on what we would call TV. That is where the future is. Think every school having a sports channel on YouTube.[/align]

Sure, online viewing on mobile devices the new thing overall. But I'd wager that sports viewership is another animal. It's much more of a social event. In the past we had basement bars or set-ups in garages where people watched together. Now, we see the concept of the designated 'man-cave' where people come together. No matter if it is a service provider's cable or satellite or streaming shown on a larger screen, researchers will develop ways to measure viewership.

(07-19-2013 09:50 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 09:08 AM)brista21 Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 08:33 AM)UConn-SMU Wrote:  College football means nothing to NYC. The NFL is 100x stronger. The only college sports teams that move the needle in NYC are UConn & Syracuse BB.

In the 5 boroughs maybe. In NJ, Rutgers "moves the needle". If NJ were its own market it'd be the 4th largest DMA in the nation. Not a bad place to be starting to grow the interest in the brands of Rutgers Athletics and yes the Big Ten.

The two statements above are not in conflict. NYC and New Jersey see themselves as distinct, and that shows up in sports loyalties, especially college sports.

Lately, someone argued that West Virginia's numbers in the Pittsburgh DMA were driven by a couple of WV counties.

In this day and age, how soon will we see this data broken out much more locally? Most people aren't getting their TV over-the-air, so how much does it matter how far you are from one or another TV station transmitter?

Or am I overestimating college sports in the grand scheme of things--political borders don't have nearly the effect on pro sports fandom, and none at all on nonsports programming.

I have to question Brista's statement that only Syracuse bb and UConn bob move the needle in NYC. I'd love to see a link to some actual data on that. I would think that Penn State FB and Notre dame FB move the needle and that St. John's bob moves the needle. Heck, I'm guessing that even Duke bob moves the needle and that there are some B1G games that move the needle.

(07-19-2013 11:46 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  With that in mind, I really have come to believe that there are two distinctly different Americas culturally. Based on my experiences, I absolutely do buy into the whole red state vs. blue state divide ...

Yes, urban American and outer-suburban / small town / rural America. Here is a map that goes by county and by percentage of vote, with 70%+ Democratic full blue, 70%+ Republican full red, and counties in between shades of color in between.



This explains why the best single predictor of whether a state is "red" or "blue" is the share of population in the larger urbanized areas ... this is almost the same as a national population density map.

Now, there are, indeed, quite distinctive cultural regions, but they number far more than two ... Joel Garreu's work finds "Nine Nations" of North America, though one of them, Quebec, is located entirely in Canada. More recent coverage from that group suggested that in political terms there are five nations ~ the blue Pacific Coast and Northeast, the red Old Confederacy and Great Lakes / Mountains, and the swing Great Lakes / "Industrial" Midwest.

(07-20-2013 07:27 AM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  The original post isn't completely wrong. NYC is a pro market. That much is true. Then he derails. The needle definitely moves in New York for St Johns and other college teams. Rutgers holds almost all the highest rated college football games for The City[b][i]. So there is interest there. You have to remember, this is not an area that has great college sports outside of basketball, but it produces great college talent that plays all over the country. There are plenty of transplants from other states here working in The City that want to see their school come here and play. Bottom line, win and the fans will come.

The second post isn't completely correct. Over air broadcasts and dmv's are on their way out. But cable/satellite is too. Take a look at your kids. They are watching internet TV. My kds are watching more shows and videos on the internet than on what we would call TV. That is where the future is. Think every school having a sports channel on YouTube.[/align]

"The City".

Right there we have a fundamental problem - defining what is NYC.

When I think of the the City of New York - I think of Manhattan, and the three boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx - the three boroughs directly connected to Manhattan Island. I think of it this way even though I know that's not the case and that I should include Staten Island, but I don't, because Staten Island seems like Jersey.

I don't think of the New Jersery side as part of the "City" - I think of it as New Jersery. I think of Staten Island the same way I do as Long Island - adjacent to NYC but not really part of the City. Now folks in Staten Island are NYC residents to be sure, and Long Island residents are not, but get out and drive around for a while and you can see the difference.

Since the "city" can be as little as Manhattan, or Manhattan and three boroughs, or those four and Staten Island, or those five and Long Island, or that six and New Jersery, or that seven plus White Plains, or that 8 plus about 20 more counties in three states, the definition of NYC is so fast and loose that unless you know what is meant by "the City" you don't know very much at all.

So if the school in question is Rutgers, is the support for Rutgers really in the core city of NYC or is it in the wider defintion of NYC that includes about 5-6 million folks living in the State of New Jersery? You could ask the same question about UConn based on the parts of the NYC that have been statistically extended into Connecticutt.

The widest defintion of NYC is with the combined census statistical are and that includes 31 or 32 counties in three states streaching from Trenton NJ, North to West Point NY, East through Connecticutt to Yale University and south to Tom's River NJ.

It would be akin to waking up in Charlotte one morning and being told Clemson is the most popular team in Charlotte. Then upon a litte research, you find that Charlotte was defined by it's combined metropolitan statistical area so that included in what supposedly in Charlotte are five or six counties in South Carolina and suddenly someone living in Gaffney SC near the Big Peach Water Tank and 60 miles outside Charlotte is given the same weight with a online vote or thought as yours despite the fact you actually live in Charlotte, pay taxes to Charlotte, etc. If you can then find one more person located in South Carolina to vote, then 2 of 3 voters can declare that Clemson is twice as popular as UNC.

Anyway, hopefully Silver will avoid using faulty underlying date during his stint at ESPN and moreover not feel the need to use faulty source material just to fill air space.

(07-20-2013 05:49 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(07-19-2013 11:46 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  With that in mind, I really have come to believe that there are two distinctly different Americas culturally. Based on my experiences, I absolutely do buy into the whole red state vs. blue state divide ...

Yes, urban American and outer-suburban / small town / rural America. Here is a map that goes by county and by percentage of vote, with 70%+ Democratic full blue, 70%+ Republican full red, and counties in between shades of color in between.



This explains why the best single predictor of whether a state is "red" or "blue" is the share of population in the larger urbanized areas ... this is almost the same as a national population density map.

Now, there are, indeed, quite distinctive cultural regions, but they number far more than two ... Joel Garreu's work finds "Nine Nations" of North America, though one of them, Quebec, is located entirely in Canada. More recent coverage from that group suggested that in political terms there are five nations ~ the blue Pacific Coast and Northeast, the red Old Confederacy and Great Lakes / Mountains, and the swing Great Lakes / "Industrial" Midwest.

Too bad the map is not adjusted for population density - that would make it an even greater eye opener.