[hinckley buzzard]

East Coast teams have no drawing power and excite no interest outside the remote coastal fringe. Rutgers? I mean, Really? The Big Ten, if they insist on expanding, have strong midwestern candidates they can court.

[wrcase]

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/

For those who don’t wish to give the NYT a hit it gives a chart of the top television markets for college football (2011)

CITY, POPULATION, %FANS, # FANS,
1. New York City, 20,234,243, 14%, 2,911,514
2. Atlanta, 6,481,132, 41%, 2,633,017
3. Los Angeles, 15,258,292, 17%, 2,582,840
4. Dallas-Ft Worth, 6,986,116, 27%, 1,892,114
5. Chicago, 9,430,878, 19%, 1,756,048
6. Birmingham, 2,011,831, 85%, 1,702,758
7. Philadelphia, 8,120,182, 20%, 1,649,448
8. Houston, 5,862,228, 28%, 1,637,337
9. Tampa-St Pete, 4,833,628, 30%, 1,431,867
10.Detroit, 5,072,294, 26%, 1,330,846

The article goes on and shows the number of fans for each school in the major conferences. This data shows that even though NYC is not a hotbed of college football enthusiasm percentage-wise, the sheer number of people makes it worth the effort to try to get into the market. Sorry for the formatting of the chart, it looks good when you post it in the reply box, but not the finished product.

[STJPII]

Basketball. Baltimore/Washington tv market

[STJPII]

Basketball. Baltimore/Washington tv market