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Most Popular sport in the south


brewerw

What is the most popular sport in the south?  

53 members have voted

  1. 1. What is the most popular sport in the south?

    • Football
      42
    • Baseball
      2
    • Basketball
      8
    • Lacross
      1
    • Hockey
      0


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Football all the way.

Maybe not so much in *South Florida, but the reset of Florida is pretty rabid.

* UM and Miami Dolphins have problems with sellouts, UM fans do not travel at all.

Jacksonville, has one of the biggest stadiums in the NFL (needed for the Gator Bowl, annual FLA/GA game, and the ACC Football Championship) and is one of the smallest markets that has an NFL team, yet are middle of the pack in annual NFL attendance. (ignore the media and the blackouts, the game might be blacked out, but there are still 70K fans in the stands during the game)

Tampa fans had to endure almost 2 decades of losing seasons.

FSU and UF have a rapid fanbase.

Up here in Jax, its usually college football on saturday, then NFL on Sunday. Followed by Sunday Night and sometimes MNF.

During the offseason, its usually NASCAR or Golf.

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Football all the way.

Maybe not so much in *South Florida, but the reset of Florida is pretty rabid.

* UM and Miami Dolphins have problems with sellouts, UM fans do not travel at all.

Jacksonville, has one of the biggest stadiums in the NFL (needed for the Gator Bowl, annual FLA/GA game, and the ACC Football Championship) and is one of the smallest markets that has an NFL team, yet are middle of the pack in annual NFL attendance. (ignore the media and the blackouts, the game might be blacked out, but there are still 70K fans in the stands during the game)

Tampa fans had to endure almost 2 decades of losing seasons.

FSU and UF have a rapid fanbase.

Up here in Jax, its usually college football on saturday, then NFL on Sunday. Followed by Sunday Night and sometimes MNF.

During the offseason, its usually NASCAR or Golf.

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70k in the stands at a Jags game? If there were the games wouldn't be blacked out. I think the number is more like 50k in the stands. Tampa has the best fans, as far as attendance is concerned among FL NFL teams. Football is big in South FL but the U of M's attendance problem has everything to do with the OB's (Orange Bowl) size and the actual size of the school and the number of alumni that actually reside in the state. I can tell you from having lived in Miami that there are more FSU and Florida grads in South Florida than there are U of M grads. That makes it hard to fill up the OB outside of the FSU v. Miami game. But for the most part, UM fans are fare weather and they need to learn how to adjust to getting there butts whipped in the ACC. FSU and Florida fanbases are much larger than U of M's so we can understand why FSU gets 82,000 per home game and UF gets 95 or 97,000 per home game.

I think that football for the most part is the most followed sport in the South. Florida and Texas probably lead the pack but the other states are two far behind in terms of passion for the game. NASCAR is a sport that has gained nationwide acceptance and love so I wouldn't confine it to just one region of the country. Look at the number of race tracks outside of the South.

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2004

14. Jacksonville - 555,464 (total attendence) - 69,433 (Per game attendence)

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/attendance

2003, 2002 and 2001 were much lower, however.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The problem with averages is that they can be overweighted with a couple of large numbers or underweighted with small numbers and therefore useless sometimes. Show me the median and then we can talk. I would bet money that the median is something on the order of 55k or less. If Jacksonville was getting 69,433 per game there wouldn't have been any blackouts. Keep that in mind. When I watch those games on the Sunday Ticket on Directv there is nothing but empty teal seats in Alltel. So while the average may technically be right, I wouldn't use it as accurate marker of attendance. Maybe if someone could create a Bell Curve out of the attendance numbers we would be able to see what I'm talking about.

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Jax had to average over 64K Season Tickets alone to avoid blackouts.

Hence the reason Wayne is covering about 9000 seats.

The number of tickets to be sold each game was ~68K, making it one of the largest stadiums. (only about 8 other stadiums are larger) And this had to be done before 72 hours beffore kickoff. Many more tickets were bought after the 72 hour deadline had passed.

The Jaguars had to sell more tickets to avoid blackout than the average # of seats of all stadiums.

The stadiums that were bigger: MSA Rank (2000) - Population

14. Phoenix - 3,251,876

37. Charlotte - 1,330,448

6. Miami-Ft Ld - 5,007,564

42. Buffalo - 1,170,111

22. Denver - 2,179,240

26. Kansas City - 1,836,038

1. NYC - 18,323,002

7. DC- 4,796,183

45. Jax - 1,122,750

Buffalo has had a team longer, Charlotte requires PSL ownership, and Arizona has 37K average.

We had more people attending a game at once than cities like Philly, Seattle, Boston, Nashville, St Louis, Dallas, Detroit, etc... can even hold to begin with.

You want to question NFL attendance here now? Don't listen to media, look at the numbers.

http://slam.canoe.ca/StatsFBP/BC-FBP-STAT-...LATTCOMP-R.html

Our lowest game attendance this past year was 66,413 tickets sold.

1 69,127 Denver

2 73,114 Indy

3 66,413 KC

4 66,431 Detroit

5 69,703 Tenn

6 76,877 Pittsburgh

7 67,572 Chicago

8 66,227 Houston

All of this from a town with a team only 10 years old, imagine in 20 years. Good luck finding a seat.

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damn right  :D  check and see how many pro teams can pack a house like the vols can  ;)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

And compared to the size of the city...

UT vs. UF - 109,064

City of Knoxville - 173,890

That's about 63% of the size of the city...I think we have a winna. :silly:

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I voted for Basketball and I know football is huge in the south, but here in NC, ACC Basketball is everything, especially this time of the year. GO TAR HEELS!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

People from NC would think that football wasn't as good. :P

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The issue with blackouts is tickets sold, not attendance. I believe the NFL rule is that the game has to be a sellout within 72 hours of kickoff or it is blacked out on TV locally. Also, Alltel has a 75,000 + capacity for the FL-GA and ACC Championship games and it is not fair to make the Jags sell out an outsized stadium (compared to others in the league) to avoid a blackout. The NFL should have a proportional system whereby the number of seats required to be sold would be related to the MSA population. Instead, Wayne Weaver is forced to cover the 9,000 seats to avoid local blackouts. But, please dont imagine the Jags suffer from a lack of interest from local fans.

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I dont think Neyland is any more spirited than Florida Field, it is just a little larger. In fact, I think the UT fans are more fair weather fans than are Gator fans. UT fans will leave at the first hint of defeat, witness the UT-UF game in Knoxville (which I attended), where many UT fans had left before the Vols came back to beat the Gators.

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Number of Division I football programs by state.

Florida - 5

North Carolina - 5

Tennessee - 4

I don't think Tennessee is any more nuts about football than the rest of us.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Florida - 15 million people

North Carolina - 8 million people

Tennessee - less than 6 million people

We don't have as many schools as these other states.

Tennessee is more united behind one team...the other states are a lil more spread out.

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I dont think Neyland is any more spirited than Florida Field, it is just a little larger.  In fact, I think the UT fans are more fair weather fans than are Gator fans.  UT fans will leave at the first hint of defeat, witness the UT-UF game in Knoxville (which I attended), where many UT fans had left before the Vols came back to beat the Gators.

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This year??? I was at that game, no one that I saw left. Now some people do move down to better seats after halftime, and some parents with young children leave during the late games (I think this one ended around 11:30), but the average fans don't budge.

Of course, I had a great view from the Student section... :)

Here's a video:

http://web.utk.edu/~zrichard/Videos/fg_vs_fla.mpeg

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The fact that you are able to move down after halftime indicates than people have left.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not really. The row I was on had 28 'seats'. That was about how many there were at the beginning of the game. By the end of the game, I was standing sideways and there were about 40-45 people on my row. Where did you sit, btw?

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