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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2106 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 31, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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This is the most natural way to coalesce pre-existing cultural affinities, but how would you account for differences in the importance of allegiances? Delco is both Eagles and Sixers country, but it cares about the Eagles vastly more. I imagine there are places this might become relevant.

Delco isn't the best example because it's Philadelphia any way you slice it. It would be more of a judgment call than anything else, though it only really applies to places with allegiances to teams in two different cities (neither city being the place itself), and in my experience those are usually pretty weak allegiances. For instance, I was chatting with locals at a bar in Clinton County many years ago, and I asked this exact question. The answer I got was "If there's any baseball team people follow here it's the Yankees, but we don't really follow hockey. Steelers definitely." So I'd include them in Pittsburgh and not New York because he made it sound like the Steelers were bigger there than the Yankees, even though there's no way I'd have previously considered it part of the Pittsburgh co-prosperity sphere.

That being said, I'm also taking the position that not all places have allegiances to all sports. People who make those maps try to include everywhere, but I can tell you right now that Pittsburgh does not have an NBA team. The maps lump us in with the Cavs, but the only sense that anyone here is a Cavs fan is that we might root for them if they're in the championship, and they'll play a poorly-attended exhibition game here once every decade or two. But it's not like the Post-Gazette has a Cavs beat writer or they regularly show highlights on the local news.

That being said, I'm also taking the position that not all places have allegiances to all sports.

College allegiances also probably play a role.

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