Sports States: My New Sports Blog
Beginning in 2010, I started making a daily pilgrimage to ESPN.com to vote in the SportsNation poll on the front page of the site. Not because I necessarily cared about the issue being voted on, but because by voting I would get to see a US map of results of that poll, broken out by state. In many ways, sports fandom is one of the few vestiges of isolationism left; much of the rest of our differences has been washed away in a sea of connectedness and globalization.
I know, for example, that Boise St. fans (and thus Idahoans) passionately hate the BCS, while Southerners don’t mind an institution that has brought them so much success.
I know that fans love their favorite players long after they graduate or switch teams, and that religion can be a powerful factor for sports fans.
So, together with my brother Matthew, I’ve started collecting some of my favorite SportsNation polls of the past and present on a new blog called Sports States. Every few days, we post a poll that catches our fancy and play pop psychologist as we try to divine why fans from certain states vote the way they do.
