89Hen wrote:clenz wrote:
If I typed all the teams out my list would look more impressive than looks by just going "All Chicago franchises". Sure, you have more out east. You also have to deal with a shit load more people than I do. I'd take fewer sports franchises over that bull shit any day. I have 44 that I can think of. You listed 56. That's really not that many more.
No doubt, you're in the middle of nowhere but actually really close to an amazing amount of teams. BTW, if I throw in NBA-D and MLS I get six more.
Iowa sports fans gets treated like Iowa in the political campaigns.
No one wants to set up shop here permanently, but everyone realizes just how passionate and valuable the Iowa market can actually be because we don't have "our own". It's why, because of the MLB black out policy, Iowa is blacked out of 32-35% of MLB games every single season. 6 MLB teams call Iowa "home territory". A Twins reporter has kept a running tally for about 3 to 4 years. Every year it's between 32 and 35 percent.
Iowa has a massive mash of fans of teams from all over the country.
The NFL, for example, Iowa is largely ruled by Green Bay, Chicago, Minnesota and Kansas City fans but the number of 49er, Steeler, Cowboy, Dolphin, Bronco and Jets fans in this state are crazy. Most sports stores carries one main team for jerseys and then a handful of popular players. Sports stores around here carry jerseys for over half the league teams because it's just a mash up.
Same for the MLB. It's almost exclusively Cubs, Cards, Twins with pockets being heavily White Sox, Brewers and Royals. The number of Yankee, Giants, Astro, etc... fans is crazy. It goes beyond the normal "Yankee/Red Sox bandwagon fans".
The NBA is dominated by the Bulls with far northern Iowa following the Wolves and a small pocket of Bucks int he NE corner.
NHL is mostly Black Hawk fans but the Wild arne't far behind.
WGN and Comcast Chicago dominate the air waves in the state of Iowa, and have for decades (at least WGN), so the eastern half of the state is largely an extension of Chicago.
It's also why Iowa gets so many minor league teams. The Iowa Energy are currently only by Memphis (another NBA team with a bunch of Iowa fans) but the Wolves just bought them starting with next season because it's 3 hours straight up I35 from Des Moines to MPLS. It's like a 1 hour flight. Shuffling players back and forth is easy. The Wild have been doing it with success and so the Wolves jumped on it. We don't have "our team" or "our sport" so everyone tries to get a piece of the pie, because we have nothing else to do so we take our sports faaar too seriously.
The Hawkeyes and Cyclones have a following that could rival the SEC football fan bases in terms of just stupid intensity because those are "our pro teams"
Vegas is loading up on draft picks, so while they may not be good for a couple years, it shouldn't take them long to be competitive. Will be interesting to see what kind of attendance they get.
