OT: U-C-O-N-N! UConn! UConn! UCONN!

[BennyBledsoe]

The fact is, when you're representing a whole region where for most of the states there are no other even remotely closer options to root for than the Boston teams... is it a surprise how uniform the rest of the region is EXCEPT for the one state that is right across the water from another major city? And not just another major city, but the largest and most influential city in the country?

 

[Bill Lee]

There's an interesting article at http://harvardsportsanalysis.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/finding-the-true-border-between-yankee-and-red-sox-nation-using-facebook-data/ that uses facebook 'like' data to draw a map of CT town by town to try to figure out where the border is:



I think it's pretty good. I grew up near Waterbury and the area is shown as 50/50 and that's about right.

I could have gone with the NY teams as when I was growing up all the NY teams were dominant, but I liked being the contrarian! These were the days before cable TV so it was pretty hard to follow the Boston teams. I could see the Pats games on the Hartford TV stations and could listen to the Sox on WTIC AM, but could not see a Sox game on TV unless it was a NBC national game or if they were playing the (hated!) Yankees. Same goes for Bruins and Celts.

I am also a proud UConn grad. This was in the BC Era (Before Calhoun) so the mens basketball teams sucked, but mens soccer was a national title contender. They used to let us bring kegs of beer to the hill behind the soccer field so it was a pretty rowdy crowd and a lot of fun to be there! The drinking age was 18 so we got away with a lot of things that just would not happen these days.

In my era, UConn was viewed as a low rent, plan B kind of school. This was before the plan A schools were charging so damn much money for tuition. That doesn't mean those of us that were in UConn didn't love it, we did, but it's still strange for me to go back to CT and see so many people proudly wearing UConn garb. In my time only those of us directly involved with the school would wear the stuff and you could only get it at the UConn Co-op. Now every Walmart has the stuff and every dope walking down the street seems to be wearing it.

Speaking of dope... nah... save that story for another time!

 

[BennyBledsoe]

Yeah, I started at UConn in 1998, just before things REALLY blew up once they won National Championships. By the time I left in '04 (hooray for changing majors that add years onto the experience!) we had started getting the influx of the 'dudes' who were just there for the basketball notoriety.