For me it's college football. It's basically nonexistent in the northeast and in southern California, it's increasingly losing it's relevance. Hell, college ball isn't even as popular it used to be in Seattle.
What's something tha used be a nationwide thing that you now feel like it's a regional thing?
CULTUREThey are still popular in rural areas with bad internet.
They all closed, didn't they?
No I’m saying in 2024, the year of our lord, I can drive an hour in a few different directions and rent a video from a Family Video. I for sure know of 2, I’m not 100 on the 3rd
We have them here too. They all sell CBD now 🤷🏻♀️
They've been doing that for years
We had one until last year where i am
We had two nearby, and I'm not exactly out in the sticks.
But, like you, I thought Family Video went out of business in 2021 & liquidated ALL their stores.
Even Wikipedia says so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Video
I didn’t realize Family Video was nationwide. I didn’t see it until I lived in Wisconsin.
Yeah I did too up until covid spelled the beginning over the end. Shortly after the company finally went under, though I don’t doubt there’s a “The Last Blockbuster” or two, just with Family Video instead, though I haven’t seen it, yet.
They always make me smile driving by them, it’s such a blast from the past. Sorry the ones around you are gone
Yeah, I miss movie rental stores. Them and random places selling PC games. Sure I can pretty much get either of them in any number of other ways but that element of discovery in the world was fun. Now it’s all just ads or nothing.
i think some ethnic stores still rent/sell movies from their countries
We have a couple independent rental stores in Portland. And Bend (just a couple hours south) has the last existing Blockbuster.
They don’t have Internet there or it’s slow
I tho k we still have that song on a building in town. But it’s no longer an actual video store. Just someone who didn’t want to pay to have the sign removed. 🤷🏻♀️
College basketball feels largely the same way. I’m from Kentucky. It’s what we had. Most people are from areas with NBA teams and their college programs aren’t as “larger-than-life” like our college program felt. It feels a little bit like a relic of the past in some of the more populous parts of the country.
UK is in some interesting territory now post-Calipari when it was being treated like a one-and-done factory for NBA relevance for so long (while he was the second-highest paid college basketball coach in the country, making $8.5mm/year). But I guess part of that is the NBA sapping away the college fan base a bit.
I think the states of Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana and North Carolina will always be college ball first states… even with half of them having pro teams
Growing up in Cincinnati was amazing for college basketball. We had the UC/XU rivalry, plus UK, U of L and IU within 100ish miles.
I don’t think college basketball is going away in any real respect, I just think football is having a moment. Give it 10 years and I think things could well be very different
I guess you could say NC has TWO pro teams.
Hurricanes - 1
+ Hornets - 0.5
+ Panthers - 0.5
2.0
College Ball isn’t much in NC anymore. The Hurricanes have a very large fan base around the triangle. The other two are so far away from the Eastern and Central areas that most of those folks don’t care about them either.
Yeah, I don't know anyone here that follows the NBA. But everyone cares about college basketball
I don't think the college basketball fanbase has really bled into the NBA. The NBA is way less popular than it was in the 90s, according to tv ratings.
I think college basketball is "suffering" from the same disease as baseball. When you can watch 100% of your teams games on tv, why would you watch any other games? College basketball, like baseball and unlike the NBA, revolves around fans who root for uniforms rather than stars.
The one-and-done thing has really hurt college basketball, and I have to admit I started rooting against Kentucky because they were so reliant on it. Couldn't stand seeing a team so heavily reliant on one-and-dones having success.
Completely agree. I stopped keeping up with it as much for the same reason. At least now Mark Pope seems to have skin the game and was on two of UK’s SEC championship teams (and an NCAA championship) playing there from ‘94 to ‘96, so I’m hoping there’s going to be a culture shift there going forward.
BBN !!!!! L's down ! But yeah, college sports were huge in Lex, especially basketball. Even though I came from a major Texas city, it was impressive for non professional sports.
One and done was already hurting college basketball, and then the nba added the g league ignite and overtime elite became a thing so even more guys were just skipping college entirely.
Now that + the transfer portal and conference realignment is in danger of killing college sports.
I grew up right next to Michigan state, I’m a huge college basketball/football fan, but even a lot of people I know have been losing interest in recent years.
I understood the benefit of allowing one and done players before, because a lot of those guys were talented enough to be earning generational wealth for their families and only had a limited amount of time to physically do it. But now that college players are allowed to get paid anyways, I think it would be better for the sport as a whole if the nba required kids to go to school for at least two years, if not all 4. Nobody bats an eye when any other job requires a degree to apply. Being a professional athlete is a privilege. The quality of play in the nba would be better, with kids coming in more polished and with a better understanding of high level team play, and the kids would be better off staying in school a bit longer. They’re making good money anyways. They’ll probably make more if they stick around these communities for a few years and build their brand.
And do something to limit the amount of transfers in football and basketball both.
I grew up in the northeast and always felt college football was for students and alumni. When I moved south, it was very weird to me that "Georgia Bulldog til I die" is said by people who have never been near any college campus, let alone Athens. Definitely a different cultural thing in the south.
Ohio was like that. I didn’t get much football growing up in Indiana but man if you move to Columbus it is ride or die for OSU. I’m talking flags on porches, yard signs, merch worn by like a quarter of people in the grocery store, the games, the tailgating, rabid fan following.
Now here in New England it is mostly non existent.
Now the Pats are a different story, but that’s not college.
Indiana? Home of the Hoosiers, Purdue, and that damn leprechaun?
Leprechaun? Never heard of them.
Purdue and IU are life.
Notre Dame would be the leprechaun
Notre Dame. I assumed they'd be the most known and revered in the state. They should join a conference and make my team money.
Yeah we have big teams but OSU just has a whole next level of fandom.
But you get to west Lafayette, Bloomington, or South Bend and it looks a bit different.
Only city in the northeast I've seen that has anything close to that is Syracuse, NY.
Growing up in rural Ohio, 2+ hours from Columbus, we had multiple Buckeye spirit days in elementary school and learned the words to the fight song
Now that’s just extra hardcore fandom. My kid was born at the OSU hospital and on the day after delivery we got this little “starter pack” of useful stuff for a new baby. It also included a picture book about game day and a little plush Brutus. So my kids first book and first toy were OSU swag.
Norte Dame...? Theyre huge and have fans all over.
Outside of northwest Indiana, Notre Dame doesn't have the in state fanbase you'd expect from a major college football team. They have fans all over Indiana, but it's not like Ohio State in random towns in Ohio.
I live in a random tiny town of 1800 people in Ohio on the Indiana border and it just so happens the head of OSU football operations is from here, graduated with my wife in a class of about 50 and his mom is my 9 year olds 3rd grade teacher.
I grew up in Michigan and both my brothers went to Michigan State.
In both States we live and breathe college football, Indiana could not care less.
So there's more OSU memorabilia around Ohia than there is ND memorabilia around Indiana? I've only driven thru Indiana but I've met a decent amount of ND fans around the south. One is from Chicago.
ND has a national fanbase. And yes, they are huge in Chicago and northwest Indiana. In the rest of Indiana you will not see too much ND gear. Certainly nothing like Ohio with Ohio St. IU and Purdue are both more popular than ND, but their fans care more about basketball. Lots of IU fans also support ND in football, but they are IU fans first and would have IU flags outside their house.
Ah the typical Indiana bandwagon fan. IU for basketball ND for football.
Yeah in northern Indiana ND is very popular, even down in Indianapolis, and maybe some alumni that moved away, but OSU is just so much bigger as a school and institution. It’s insane how big the fandom is for OSU football.
With OSU you find so many rabid fans that never even went there and no one in their family went there.
SEC and Big 10 football is like a religion
Even my school’s mostly shitty football team is beloved (but basketball will always be first)
Boiler Up!
It is. And it's fun, don't get me wrong. My daughter went to Georgia and was in the Redcoat Band for four years. But some of the people who have latched on to UGA as fans....it's a little crazy.
Oregon is like that too since we don't have an NFL team. It's all Ducks and Beavers.
Same with Hawaii. Go Bows!
Makes more sense than professional-team loyalty, I suppose. For a lot of sports, a pro team's degree of attachment to the place is that owners and management who might live there hired a bunch of people to wear shirts with the local name on them and call the stadium "home" for the time being. And unlike a professional team, a whole university isn't going to pack up and relocate in the middle of the night because the deal they're getting on a stadium is better.
NIL and the transfer portal has completely changed college sports. The movement is even greater than the pro teams these days.
I also grew up in the Northeast as a big fan of professional wrestling. When I was a teenager in the '90s, the WWF's (now WWE) main announcer was Jim Ross, who wore a cowboy hat and proudly talked about his Oklahoma roots. A big part of Ross' persona was his fandom of University of Oklahoma football. I thought it was weird when I learned he had not attended the University of Oklahoma. So I guess I question OP's premise that college football used to be big in the Northeast.
I moved to Conn from NYC and ppl sure do love their UCONN huskies here. Bta, a lot of ppl are UConn alum in this state.
Haha also from the northeast and moved to the south. The obsession with LSU football was so bizarre to me. Then again I’m from NJ, we only have a hockey team.
I grew up in Hawthorne, NJ.
Oh yes, the SEC conference. Geaux Tigers!
You managed to spell both Go and Dawgs wrong.
I felt the same way when I moved to Georgia from Northwest Indiana. Pro football was the thing up north (except for Notre Dame, but that was special).
Also originally from the Region. It was definitely a pro sports first area, but I always preferred college sports.
Rutger's college football program for the most part has never been well actually amazing so while there are plenty of plans nothing that obsessive.
Blockbuster is regional solely to Bend, Oregon
We had two in my town. One became a furniture outlet and the other is a Verizon store
Look at you, tall cotton, with your two Blockbusters
College football has never really been a thing in the Northeast.
The only people that care about BC football are students and alumni.
The only people that care about Ivy League football are students and alumni.
Other than that there are no notable programs.
In SoCal, USC football is basically what you’ve described. That plus a handful of fans from LA city proper who grew up rooting for them back when we didn’t have our own homegrown teams.
For UCLA, there’s enough students and alumni who do care that they could fill up a stadium. But there’s so many more of us who don’t. Personally, I always thought that going to/watching games was way too much effort for a team that wasn’t even good.
It doesn’t help that the Rose Bowl is 30 miles from the UCLA campus
30 miles to a Southern Californian is nothing.
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21d
northeastern
football program
Have I got some news for you
Fireflies in the night.
They’re still around! I live less than 25 miles north of NYC and we have them in our yard all summer.
Are they anywhere anymore? I was reading a book to my son about them and he asked if we can see them. I got kind of sad because I remember them being everywhere when I was a kid in the summer.
When was the last time a bug flew into your car windshield?
😳
One literally hit mine on Friday
I see them every summer
I feel it’s less and less each year. Might see a handful now and then, but there used to be so many more.
From what I understand is that the temperature average is too high for the eggs to properly develop, so it’s only in more northern areas with temperate climates that they remain. They left the south in the 90s because they died off. At least that’s my experience in Texas.
We have lots of them where i live in the middle of nowhere southwest Mississippi.
90’s kid from NC can confirm it’s nowhere near the same. Remember the entire yard being lit up
It's largely about light pollution from what I understand. People don't even turn porch lights off anymore and everyone has lights blasting everywhere. Plus, towns don't alternate or adjust street lamps the same ways or they choose awful LED lighting that are damaging to lightning bugs as well as other wildlife (and humans, really). It's like we all suddenly became afraid of the dark and are destroying everything good in service of it.
Guess that would make sense. Even visiting family in the Midwest where I grew up I don’t see them in the summer anymore. 😢
I'm in East Tennessee and I could see plenty of them out this evening.
We have lots of them here in MD, especially in the woods near the creeks and rivers. They lay their eggs in moist leaves, so if you rake and bag your leaves in fall you destroy the chance of the eggs and babies surviving.
I've actually seen more fireflies in the last few days (about 10 or a dozen) than I had in awhile. I'd usually see like one to 3 a year over the last decade.
I still get them in southern PA, though it doesn't seem like as many as when I was little.
They're still here. One flew into my hood.
They’re still very common in Ohio. Especially the more rural areas.
Maryland has them, I'm pretty certain. Been some years since I've been there, though
college football
Because the conferences are a farce, and so is the ridiculously limited playoff system.
Plus the NFL is stealing its audience.
Good, it’s much better run
They're expanding it to 12 teams next season so it should be more interesting
SEC schools will have just have more scrimmages.
I feel like hunting and fishing is becoming more regional, particularly hunting. Used to be lots of folks who would come from "back east" to places like Arkansas or Kansas for duck hunting or pheasant/dove hunting trips, not as much these days.
Hunting often requires having connections to people that own the good hunting land. It's becoming increasingly difficult for the average person to get into it.
In Ohio, there are areas open to the public for hunting but it's just difficult to find deer or wild turkeys there.
Most states have some publicly available hunting land (Maryland does as well). But, like you said it usually isn't very good hunting land.
Matters what your hunting. Small game is still abundant everywhere but when I talk about squirrel hunting to someone outside of the Ozarks/Appalachians they look at me like im crazy.
Grew up squirrel hunting as a kid. From the Ozarks. Can confirm.
I had no luck finding deer last year and ironically, the one day when I was driving home from a public hunting area, I almost hit one with my car.
Probably 10 years or so ago, we went out for duck opener here in MN. We've been going to the same area my whole life, a public area right around 600 acres. We counted 37 vehicles in the parking lots, which likely amounted to probably close to 100 hunters. In 30 years, i've never seen that amount of people in 1 place, we still got birds but I can't imagine many made it out that day. The other crazy part was the following week, we counted 3 vehicles, ours included.
Come to northern MN, deer are so numerous here that the owner of my work is okay with us taking any we see on the work property, even while on the clock (our site sits on 30 acres) if one walks through an open area. I normally buy separate tags for archery, rifle and muzzle-loader seasons just because I can easily take 3 and then give venison out to the rest of the family/extended family as i'm the only deer hunter. A couple years ago the owner sent me a picture of a deer in his garden with the caption "it's getting fat on my hard work, he's all yours!". Opening morning of archery I was glad to send him a picture with the message "got him!".
My father-in-law is having this issue. The man whose land he used to hunt on moved away and he's having trouble finding someone who doesn't either already lease their land out to other hunters, or wants to charge a reasonable rate.
I know people used to come from Pa out west when I was a kid. I just think folks can’t really afford it anymore.
Not to mention PAs hunting has done nothing but gotten better, so there’s less incentive. People do still go south for turkeys though.
Lots of people come west for elk, the opportunity in the East is harder and mainly PA, KY, etc.
I heard on the radio the other day here in KY that they only gave out 500 permits for elk out of over 20k applicants.
We still get a crowd for fishing where I am
In SoCal there are several Ohio State bars that have alumni of all ages showing up regularly. I'm talking everything from people in their 20s to people in their 80s with walkers and canes. Everybody wearing jerseys. Everybody doing the chanting during good plays.
That’s only a small subset of folks in SoCal, though. I’d have to imagine that 20 years ago when USC was at its peak, they captured a broader segment of the population, you saw Trojan stuff everywhere, people talked about them at water coolers, and so on. The local team was a big part of the local culture. Not that expats from a football-hungry part of the US come out to several bars completely across the country.
You can find alumni bars for big football programs in pretty much every big city though. As a lifetime OSU fan I’ve never had trouble finding bars where people congregate.
This is a cool thing. My daughter has gone to watch parties for Georgia football in a Seattle bar. It's a fun connection. "A Dawg Never Barks Alone."
Yeah same. I live in Seattle and I know where the Michigan bar is town is, there are three OSU bars I know of.
Do you know the name of the Georgia bar? Wonder if I’ve ever been there
Fuel in Ballard
Hahaha I was literally there earlier today meeting up with some friends. Talk about small world.
So funny! She went to several of the watch parties in the fall with her husband and baby. He went to Georgia Tech, but will dress for the Dawgs except when they play (should I say beat) Tech. I went to Virginia for grad school. When I was in there, in the Stone Age, it was all about the basketball. I am moving from Tennessee to Edmonds next month. Very excited about it.
Bucks.
Abortion?
To soon
Yes. NC is the last state in the south with abortions after 6 weeks.
🥳
They are working on changing it...probably after the election
While there are some areas of the US where the NFL drowns out CFB overall ratings are climbing each year and show little signs of slowing down.
Outside of that womens College sports had a great year with Caitlin Clark driving record-high viewership and things like "Volleyball Day in Nebraska" breaking the world record for most attended women's sporting event.
Broadcast and Cable companies are figuring out that standard TV shows can't drive audiences like they used to. Sports, both College and Pro, can make up for a lot and we are seeing some of those results.
USC football is nonexistent is socal? When did that happen?
I live in Seattle. College ball still seems super popular to me. At least huskies ball. You know they were in the championship game.
Seems like an optimistic soccer fan trying to will this into existence.
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21d
LOL I never even looked at their posting history, I just assumed! Hilarious. I have friends in Seattle and they constantly post about the insane sailgates for regular season UW games so I figured it had to be some angry soccer hipster.
Bowling.
What region would you say it’s regional too?
Places with specialized bowling: Maryland and Massachusetts. I think bowling is still popular in the Midwest? It seems it's not as popular on the rest of the East Coast as it used to be.
I loved candle pin bowling as a kid! Definitely not as into the traditional, larger ball bowling now that I’ve left Mass.
Bowling is still fun and normal in Utah
Especially styles like candlepin or duckpin.
Baseball.
I don’t even think it’s a now thing. Indiana never had much baseball. Folks growing up had to adopt Chicago teams, or the cards, or if they were truly evil, the reds.
MLB also has done an absolutely terrible job marketing the game to younger generations. If you were to ask millennials in the northeast, it would probably be ranked lower than the NHL, it's that bad.
Not in Philly
We’re fanatics for it
All across eastern PA really, we love baseball up in NEPA as well.
Their ass backwards broadcast rules don’t exactly do much to bring in the younger generations who don’t have cable. Even with an MLB TV subscription you can’t watch your local team play because it’s blacked out.
I’m an Orioles fan, and an adopted Giants fan now that I live in California. I usually go to a few games a year, but aside from that, the only time I can ever watch them is when they happen to be the Friday game streaming on Apple TV+.
Young people get older. Older people often get more into baseball and golf as they age. The NBA has the opposite problem. Lots of kids love the NBA because they develop a favorite player due to the marketing, but then lose interest as they get older. Hard to develop a man crush on millionaire 20 year olds when you are fully grown man. Baseball being focused more on the uniform than the stars has an appeal to older folks.
I severely doubt millennials all-of-a-sudden get an interest in baseball. We were mostly the generation raised on video games. We will be geriatrics and still playing video games.
Most people my age are playing way less video games as they age.
I’m a white Sox fan and wish baseball didn’t exist right now
Xennial from the north east. This is probably how I would rate sports interest in general from how the general public shows interest.
NFL
No interest in sports
MLB playoffs (if our team is in it)
NBA
Final Four, Triple Crown
NHL, College Football, Golf
World Cup
NASCAR
Olympics
Soccer, MLB
Their horrible PR, scandals, and umpire problem certainly isn't helping either.
I am still surprised last season wasn't completely shutout. The MLB has so many problems that were kicked down the road to the next CBA.
I know people hate it, but I don't see States/Cities bending over backwards to fund new ballparks either. At least with NBA&NHL, they can share an arena and be good concert/event venues too. Obviously next-to-no tax dollars (outside of infrastructure upgrades) should go towards these projects, but it makes even less financial sense for a ballpark.
Way more people walk through the gates for MLB games compared to NBA or NHL games, so that makes up some of the difference. 35k for 82 games vs. 20k for 41 games. MLB stadiums are also used for other purposes as well, though not as much as indoor arenas.
I tell you, it was huge when I was a kid
Granted a lot of older people still played the game on the radio in the background.
Then around late high school/early college movies and TV started blatantly saying it’s boring.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VlORWhsJjNM&pp=ygUVaG9tZXIgYmFzZWJhbGwgYm9yaW5n
Since then cable has gotten more restrictive on what games are played (from what I’m told by friends who try to watch), and people are a LOT busier than they used to be, so setting aside hours for multiple days a week to watch games just isn’t realistic.
I regularly forget baseball exists. I've only ever known a couple of people who have been baseball fans, and they weren't natives to the area.
My high school technically had a baseball team 20 years ago when I was a teenager, but they just had one little set of those cheap old wooden bleachers for a handful of parents because it was basically treated like a casual intramural sort of thing. I went to a relatively small school (84 in my graduating class) and I couldn't even tell you a single player on the team, but I knew who played every single other sport at the school. Not like, I didn't know the people who played, I mean I don't know who at my school was on the team because no one gave a shit about it.
Kmart, I guess. It used to have lots of stores nationwide, but today only 3 stores remain open: one each in Virginia, Michigan, and Iowa.
Visit New Zealand.
State and County fairs.
I feel like they used to be a really big thing everywhere, but now you really only hear about them in the Southeast and Midwest.
County fairs are huge here in Pennsylvania.
New Hampshire still has them.
College football is dying because of the trade portal. Players want to trade to the best teams because that helps their draft capital for the NFL. This makes every team except the top like 10 schools as unable to even contend because all of their players enter the trade portal after showing any promise
When was college football a thing in the northeast?!
Pre WWII.
My man
There are definitely “football schools” in the northeast, but outside of Syracuse and Penn State nobody really cares unless they’re a student or alumni.
A bit: peak during my life probably Doug Flutie’s time at Boston College - won the Heisman trophy in 1984
Syracuse was occasionally Top 25 through 2001
Learn something new everyday.
Well you see, it was kind of born there. Football was born on the campuses of northeastern schools, particularly Ivy Leagues. By the 20th century they were increasingly losing their dominance to Midwest schools, though.
Raquetball
Full service gas stations.
In some places in Texas, they take college football seriously.
They take High school football serious
Growing up around Ohio it was the same way. The whole community would turn up for high school football games. As a teenager that was the place to socialize on Friday night.
Maybe if UCONN could actually win a game people would care. Works for their basketball program.
As a Purdue alum… :(
The chicken people?
It's basically nonexistent in the northeast
Penn State football is a religion in PA. College football might not be popular in NY & New England, but that's kinda always been the case.
College football was always mainly regional. Pacific Northwest and the northeast have never cared about it as much as the south and Midwest have.
As somebody from NYC, why should I care about college football? I have an NFL team to go for. I get it if you're from a place that doesn't have an NFL team but why like college football more than NFL? The only reason I could think is that you went to that college but I don't think all those fans went to that college
Mainly food items. Peanut chews, herrs chips, soft pretzels, Wawa, tasty kake, utz, yuengling, A treat.
I know you can find this stuff in other places, but here it's basically everywhere.
Does PA count as northeast? Haven’t been in a while but that was huge around Harrisburg
I forgot about Purdue, which is weird because I'm a saints fan.
It definitely is popular here in North Carolina but it will never be as much as basketball. Honestly it is all about the tailgating. And for many it is a family tradition. Any luck of interest i think stems from people being less social
We have Penn state football in PA, it’s just the birds and Steelers get more attention.
Didn't Washington just play in the national championship?
Common suffering for the overall good.
Nah, the only time I can ever remember College Football being big on the west coast was before any NFL teams had moved there and Pete Carroll had the best teams in the whole country
Anchovies on pizza
Nobody does it anybody unless you live in the city
Salary. Used to be fine if you were making 40k a month. Now 40k lets you scrape by with a roof over your head
Midwest. College football is kind of a thing that alumni and students care about, and everyone else just says, “Oh, that’s nice.” when someone brings it up.
College football is bigger than the NFL in large parts of the midwest.
I have a hard time believing the Midwest doesn’t care when the B1G became the richest conference in college athletics
Yeah, I don’t know what this person is talking about. College sports, especially football, are HUGE in the Midwest. It’s much more rare to find someone who doesn’t watch.
If you’re taking it from a MN perspective, the Gophers haven’t often been comparable to even our border rivals in the way the state cares for their flagship university and its sports teams, let alone Michigan or Ohio State. UMN alums are notoriously non-invested compared to just about any other flagship school in its peer group.
Minnesotans have an inferiority complex around the U of M and other state stuff — we think it’s inferior to many other places, which the stats don’t actually bear out.
This is coming from a 1%’er in terms of caring for Gopher football.
Too bad you Viqueen fans don't feel the same.
…I’m in the Midwest and this has not been my experience. More like family members getting into real fights and corporate higher-ups trash-talking on Teams leading up to the rivalry game.
Non-existent in Southern California? What about USC and UCLA? They still seem to be pretty popular…
Growing up in the Chicago area, it was pretty much something that I was aware of existing but I thought it was just for people who went to college.
Now that I live in Nebraska, it's pretty terrible that it's a religion here.
Political common sense
I still drive through towns with Family Videos. Like video rental stores
Never seen them elsewhere