Curious: for those who leave out college sports, are college sports just not popular at all in your area? Or are you just not sure on the numbers?
Thanks for the responses so far!
The few people in New York who care about college football like Notre Dame, Syracuse, (and supposedly Michigan in the classier circles). Obviously tons of Rutgers fans in my breeding grounds who are really super passionate even though my family was for Princeton. Their passion never bothered me since it's borderline cute that they expect results. Philadelphia is even more of a pro-town - Temple has pretty bad attendance for a team with their successes in recent years, and the sizable Penn Staters are total wagoners yet somehow infinitely more annoying than either Notre Dame and Rutgers.
The famous map of college football fandom also includes Florida precincts, but I've never encountered that (perhaps retirees with a second house down there? ha. Doubt they have the Facebook accounts - or population size - to account for that).
In basketball, the life blood of the Big East remains ever present in Midtown while UNC and Duke fans also exist, especially in the upper class. Unsurprising given the state of professional basketball in New York for decades, this is the one college sport that can remain popular; after all the city was the center of the game for decades before it was forcibly removed. Syracuse remains the waning top dog to an extent. Nova/Duke/UNC/UConn probably fight for #2 while the Johnnies are in eternal slumber.
Though the Sixers have more popularity than they could ever deserve, college basketball remains on equal footing. Villanova, Temple and St. Joe's all have rather sizable fan bases, but the Hagan trashbin is a bit limiting for St. Joe's and the other two take a giant slice of the fans. Unlike in football, Rutgers has no popularity across the stretch of 95 between the cities. In Philadelphia, there is much less presence from outsider teams than New York of course, but Hoyas, Heels and Blue Devils will be found.
Not to insult the thread idea, Tom, but this is mildly dull on account of geography creating logical answers. The thing I was hoping to see was rankings across professional sports to show what is most important to each area (while football is almost certainly most popular everywhere, what I mean is what is a higher deviation from the norm). This is a most interesting study when it comes to Boston due to their enormous recent successes. Probably still goes Pats - Sawx - B's - Celtics in rather ordinary order, but I can't be certain. I'd be tempted to put college hockey before either of the other two though BC and Harvard football do draw.
In New York, I find MLB to at least as big an affair as the local football fandoms even as it tails off slightly, followed by hockey, college basketball, basketball and finally, college football. (e: Oh and soccer has overtaken the bottom 2-4 but I am no longer in tune enough to say just where it falls)
For Philadelphia, it has to be Eagles dominating the town (ugh) followed by NBA, college basketball, and then I'm not too sure. Probably Phillies, college football, Flyers in that order though the relatively few Flyers fans are obviously super passionate in their fandom, above and beyond the two above. I can make another thread for this if you dislike my hijacking
