On Mar 17, 10:13 pm, "It's the Principle!"
<brandy....DeleteThis@kittylitternewsguy.com> wrote:
> Default User <defaultuse....DeleteThis@yahoo.com> wrote in rec.arts.tv:
>
> > Jim Reid wrote:
>
> >> I grew up in Tulsa. Everyone there is a Sooner fan unless you
> >> went to Oklahoma State, University of Tulsa or are a Sooner
> >> hater.
>
> > My dad did his graduate work at OSU back in the 60's. Seemed like
> > you didn't get far away from Stillwater before it became Sooner
> > territory.
>
> > Brian
>
> My Texan boss is a MAJOR Longhorns fan. He went to Baylor.
>
> --
>
I grew up in New York State, outside New York City, and went to high
school in the 1970s. As things were then, and in large part still
are, we had no local Division I football programs to root for. There
was some interest in Penn State, as they sometimes recruited area
players, and we sort of thought of Syracuse as a home state favorite,
but there were so few televised games in those days that you might see
them on TV once a year, plus maybe a bowl appearance. But the State
University of New York doesn't have a pair of supercampuses attached
to football programs the way many of the states to the south and west
do, and the glory days of Fordham, Cornell or Columbia were long gone,
so actually going to college games wasn't a popular outing, the way it
would be in, say, Oklahoma. We had pro teams for that, anyway.
I've lived out in the Midwest for many years. I find that plenty of
people root for the State University's teams even if they never went
to college. Local kids that they or their children went to school with
are often on the roster. I guess this is a point of local patriotism
that I don't share.
As far as basketball goes, the NYC area was a hotbed. The old ECAC
holiday tourney and the NIT were big deals, and the ECAC had a
syndicated TV deal, so that local independent TV stations showed
several games each weekend. (I think this was with Eddie Einhorn's old
TVS outfit.) I used to root for Villanova, where my Dad played, and
when they weren't playing I would usually back a team if I knew it was
a Catholic instiutution. We saw a lot of St. Bonaventure, Fordham,
Iona and St. John's, besides Notre Dame, DePaul and similar schools
from out of our region. Think of this as an extension of what the New
York tabloids used to call the "subway alumni" - fans who never went
to Notre Dame, but supported it because they were Irish and/or
Catholic. I first noticed Marquette from watching them play hoops on
TV. My Dad pointed out Al Maguire and his brother Frank's history
with the Knicks. I wound up applying at MU partly because basketball
put them on my radar, and because the financial aid package beat the
hell out of the ones from Georgetown and ND.
Over the years I have refined my rooting interest. If a game doesn't
involve my alma mater, I really don't care who wins, except that I
like to see the private schools beat the state institutions, though
nowadays that's based on my politics, not on any religious sentiment.
[I happen to think the Constitutional Convention made a mistake when
it didn't guarantee separation of education and state, along with
press and church.] I was SO hoping Xavier could have closed out
whichever state university from Ohio they played on Saturday. I root
for Northwestern to win the Big T1e1n, for Mises' sake! I realize
that the average sports fan might find this perverse, but to me it
seems eminently logical.
Once televised sports exploded with the introduction of satellite
feeds and cable hookups, "national games" made for TV, on the order of
the 1968 UCLA v Houston showdown at the Astrodome proliferated. The
NCAA tourney became a big TV hit. The Big East could even be seen as a
"made for TV" conference, though the changes in the tournament that
forced almost all the major independents into conferences entered into
that decision. Once all those games became available almost anywhere,
people without a local favorite to latch onto could take their pick
based on any criteria - admiration for a particular coach or player,
style of play, uniform colors, cutest cheerleaders, or the old
standby, pure frontrunning. Even anti-frontrunning is a plausible
reason. A lot of folks hate Duke, but many couldn't stand UCLA back
when the tourney only had 16 teams, and the West regional they had to
negotiate was an annual lead pipe cinch.
As championship time approaches, people who only have connections to
mediocre or poor programs that don't make the postseason will
naturally gravitate to some clubs over others when they watch the
tourney. It'd be boring to watch so many games without developing
some rooting interest. As in my case, that can lead to a real
connection to a school. Admissions offices report spikes in
applications when a school's team has a great NCAA run, or plays in a
prominent bowl game. I guess that can have a similar effect on those
who aren't in the pool of prospective freshmen.
Kevin
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