[clemsongirl]

Originally Posted by ASTalumna06

I think it's definitely because a lot of southern states don't have professional sports teams, and some of the cities that do have teams don't have all of the major 4 sports covered.

Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, etc. all cover 3 or 4 of the major leagues - NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA. In some cases, they have two teams for just one sport. And then you look at an area like New England, where all of the Boston teams really "represent" and have fans from 6 different states.

Then you look at states like Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, etc. that don't have any professional teams across the entire state, or they have very few. And then there are some large cities that you would expect to have at least one team (Austin, TX, I'm looking at you!) that have none. College sporting events are the only ones to attend.

And yes, the focus on high school sports in the south is huge compared to the north. I must say, I had NO IDEA how big football was here in TX until I got here. I drove by a football stadium and asked my bf, "Which college is that?" He told me that it was, in fact, a high school stadium. And that's not the only one around here that's enormous.

Plus there are a lot more smaller liberal arts colleges up North where athletics is not a focus and not important, versus the South where you can have one or two large state schools that absolutely dominate the local culture and consequently the sports in-state, i.e. USC and Clemson. The number of colleges Massachusetts manages to cram into such a small state (and it's not even the whole state because there is no Massachusetts past Worcester) always astounds me.

The stadium that marching band practiced at before the bowl game this year was gigantic, and it was only a high school stadium as well! I was amazed that so much money would be devoted to a facility that only gets used for one season out of the year, but it's not my money to spend. Marching band is equally huge in the South-when I went to band camp this past summer and told people that I had never marched before because we had no marching band at my high school, I got looked at like I had three heads.