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Well, it's not like the # of Facebook likes is an accurate measure.
Notice the Washington Redskins are in the middle of the pack, yet are consistently one of the most valuable sports teams on the planet.
It pisses me off that so many think all of Upstate NY is Buffalo territory when it couldnt be further from the truth.
Only part thats Buffalo territory on the whole is Western NY. Bills and Sabres. Which is also why the Sabres being on over the Rangers for some games in Utica and Albany is ****ing asinine.
I love how they gloss over the real reason for the Pats popularity in the UK... it's much more likely, and I've observed this first hand, that it's down to "England" being present in the name. British teens will often pick a "favorite" NFL team just like Americans will pick an EPL side, even if they subsequently never watch a game, at random. The name factor is too compelling to ignore.
Like the Harvard researchers, I find it utterly baffling that the NFL has ignored Mexico. All signs point to it being the big growth market for American football. And from there, it's only a hop skip and a jump to the rest of the hemisphere. Is it as sexy as western Europe? Of course not. But it's a lot more realistic as a growth strategy.
After weeks of us awkwardly guessing who wanted to watch which NFL games, Facebook finally used its terrifying trove of user data and made the map that no one else could. In our original post, we pointed out some of the more surprising fan pockets, but the data deserve a deeper dive.
Cowboys in the South
Although you'd never guess it from the name, the Washington Redskins have something of a racist history. The NFL integrated in 1946, before Major League Baseball. By 1953, every team in the league—aside from the Redskins, that is—had black players. It took nine years for the Redskins to cave on integration. And that was only because the president of the United States made them.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of Southern African-Americans turned on the team. Since the Falcons (1966), Saints (1967), and Dolphins (1970) weren't in the NFL yet, that left just one Southern team to root for: the Dallas Cowboys.
Vikings in Washington and Pasquotank Counties, N.C.
There is still a surprisingly large amount of Internet "dead space" in this country.
Rural counties in the plains, with older and poorer demographics, little online infrastructure, a cultural dis-iclination toward social media, and hundreds of miles from the nearest NFL team, might very well not have any residents who fall into the 10% that are represented in this survey.
Hmmm. There's a major problem with Deadspin's thesis that the NFL Facebook map reveals a history of Southern blacks rooting for the Cowboys because they turned away from the racist, non-integrating Redskins -- much of the "surprising" Cowboy regions on their map are areas of the South with very few black people.
Take southwest Virginia. According to that map tons of Cowboys fans. That's Appalachia. That's mountains and hills. If you look at the Census maps that breakdown ethnic and racial geography you quickly learn that Appalachia is very, very white. Like Iowa white. It was in 1950. And it still is in 2013.
The areas of the South that have a large black % are the flat, lowland regions where, historically, there was farming and plantations. Southeast Virginia is an example, as is eastern North Carolina.
The much more likely explanation for why so much of southern Virginia (both the nearly all-white southwest and the 1/3rd black southeast) roots for the Cowboys is because they are the hated rivals of the Redskins.
In Virginia politics, the rich Northern Virginia area has come to dominate. This naturally causes resentment in the rest of the state. NoVa people root for the Redskins. The rest of the state hates the NoVa people and thinks they are rich snobs and all around jerkfaces so they cheer for the opposite of the Redskins -- the Cowboys.
Of course, maybe Deadspin is right and the poor, rural white Appalachian mountain counties turned against the rich, big city Redskins because they were slow to integrate black players in the 1950s.
Do people forget how poorly supported the Raiduhs were in SoCal during their time there? They were consistently a 10 win team, won a Super Bowl right away in fact, and used to have 15,000 empty non-tarped off seats at all of their games.
I firmly believe SoCal would much rather have the Rams back.
You'd be wrong.
In my 9 months living here I've seen exactly 0 Rams-related things. The Raiders are, far and away, the most popular team in LA.
Keep in mind that for the majority of the Raiders time in LA the Rams were playing in Anaheim. That move really hurt the Rams popularity in LA County.
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“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile, but that it is indifferent. If we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death, our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” - Stanley Kubrick
The problem of the map is that it treats counties (entities with in some cases over 1 million people) as monolithic entities. Of course it gives you a nice overview but if you look at a regional picture in a detailed way (the Redskins-Cowboys rivalry in the Southeast for example) you need a more differentiated picture than just this map. We'd need to see shaded maps for each team in each county to recognise something closer to the true picture.
The segregation angle on Cowboys/Skins has a number of weak spots, for one the Cowboys weren't a relevant team until the second half of the 60s and it's probably fair to say much of their national fanbase is a result of their success in the 70s. It's not *that* likely that in the 1970s racial grievances from the 50s were a decisive factor. In addition, the Cowboys are probably the closest thing to being "the establishment's team" and enormously popular with people of all backgrounds but especially in the non-metropolitan broader "South" and the above poster is probably correct - I doubt their popularity in rural SW Virginia comes from blacks there. Dallas, Texas wasn't exactly known for its progressive attitudes at the time either.
I would suggest a closer look at the media coverage at the time, the Redskins radio network used to be huge in the Southeast, it's possible that radio stations unable to secure Redskins broadcasts looked for an alternative and went with the successful media-friendly Cowboys.
In my 9 months living here I've seen exactly 0 Rams-related things. The Raiders are, far and away, the most popular team in LA.
Keep in mind that for the majority of the Raiders time in LA the Rams were playing in Anaheim. That move really hurt the Rams popularity in LA County.
I'd say that's true on some level but at the same time there is also the uncomfortable truth that the Raiders are most popular with the demographic least likely to shell out thousands of dollars for the better season tickets or even suites.
The Raiders have a "reputation" and I think there are substantial parts of the SoCal population who would be more welcoming of another team moving there or of an expansion team than they would be of the Raiders. And I think that group is demographically more typically representative of the commercially relevant support base of pro franchises.
