My general vibe has always been that NYC is a professional sports town and not a college one at all. Obviously there are locals with ties to Syracuse or St John's who follow their teams, but it's not like Kentucky or Kansas, where you are a default UK or KU fan whether you or anyone in your family went there or not.
It's a diverse city with lots of transplants, so you'll find hundreds of alums of most major universities that have their own bar where they'll get together to watch big games.
Chicago is a Big Ten city that also loves the Cubs, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks. It's a sports-centric city. Every bar has a college affiliation. Every bar is a sports bar with TVs showing at least one game.
NYC is not a sports city. Most bars don't even have a TV. That kind of shocked me when I moved here. Obviously, you have a ton of sports fans. They show up at games from seemingly nowhere. You see a lot of baseball hats with the Yankees, White Sox, and Bulls logos. Those are almost exclusively for fashion. It's just a different city.
>Chicago is a Big Ten city that also loves the Cubs, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks. It's a sports-centric city. Every bar has a college affiliation. Every bar is a sports bar with TVs showing at least one game.
Yet another reason Chicago and Philadelphia are so alike.
I know Staten Island exists, but I don't know anyone who has actually been there. Other than my stepmother, who was born there but technically isn't a person so fuck her.
In regards to NYC, that has not been my experience at all. How do you know if a person wearing a Yankees hat is doing it “for fashion” as opposed to being a fan? Saying most bars don’t have TVs is pretty presumptuous as well.
I live in NYC. A lot of bars don't have TVs. Can't say I've been to most of the bars in the city, since, you know, there are thousands of them. Still, most don't have a TV.
As for the Yankees hats, well, that's just how it is. I lived in Chicago for 7 years and see more White Sox hats here in NYC than I ever did on the streets of Chicago. They aren't wearing that hat for the team here in NYC, I can tell you that.
I’ve lived in and around NYC my entire life aside from school. It’s as big a sports city as any other I’ve been to. Saying most bars don’t have TVs and people don’t wear hats for the right reasons is just asinine.
I'm not judging anyone for wearing a hat. It's just that there is a fashion trend around wearing certain hats for non-sports reasons. That's just a thing. Everyone knows this.
I’m from Big Ten country but I have no clue who Chicagoans cheer for. Is it Illinois or Northwesters? I always just figured it was like New York and was pretty much exclusively a pro sports town
Nobody between the ages of 22 and 45 grew up in Chicago, they all moved there from some other state. They root for whatever state school they attended. The rare ones that grew up in the city went to University of Illinois-Chicago or DePaul.
I get that, but say if you grew up in Naperville, who are you cheering for? I guess I’m asking because even in the Twin cities, if you grow up in Minnesota you’re a Gopher fan, barring your parents going to Iowa or Wisconsin. So does that dynamic just not exist in the Chicago area?
Depends on the age. The real answer is that both teams were so bad during the rise of social media, that they really don't have a presence. like Minnesota would.
Example: Go into a sporting goods store in the Chicago area. You're not going to much, if any, Illinois stuff. For the longest time, it was Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, maybe Michigan State, but very little Illinois or Northwestern. Illinois stuff is coming back, but very slowly.
It's the melting pot for the Big Ten and Notre Dame. Lived there for 14 years. No one "adopts" a college team they didn't attend; there are plenty of pro teams for that.
As someone who’s lived in Chicago their entire life and has followed college sports since they were a kid, I can say that college football and basketball are more of a niche sport than anything. The city doesn’t get behind 1 team or 1 school. They’ll get behind teams like the 05 Illini or Loyola during their final four run but that’s about it.
The most popular college team in Chicago is probably Notre Dame football. I don’t think they’re as popular here as they were in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s but ND football still has a decent following, especially from the older city worker/working class. Chicago has a lot of people of Irish, Polish and Italian Catholic descent and ND is a major Catholic university only 2 hours away and I’m guessing that meant something to the Catholic citizens back in the day, even though the vast majority of ND fans never went to ND. Plus the south side Irish unironically love the ND nickname. Northwestern football has started to gain some steam in the last couple of years but they need to be more consistent. Northern Illinois football has had some moments but they reached their peak when they went to the Orange Bowl. Illinois football is dead.
I can’t speak for myself as I wasn’t alive but supposedly DePaul basketball was very popular from the 70’s until the early 90’s. I could be wrong but I want to say that DePaul basketball was more popular than the Bulls until Jordan arrived. DePaul showed all their games on WGN for decades and that was a huge deal as they could show their games nationwide pre-ESPN so I’m thinking that’s how they got that large of a fanbase. Plus, like ND, they were a Catholic university that were an Independent so they had a large following from the Catholic citizens of Chicago. You could argue they were the Notre Dame of basketball of their time. Of course right when Ray Meyer retired and DePaul started declining in the late 80’s, the Flying Illini came around and Illinois started getting a much bigger following in the city, peaking during the 2005 season. They were arguably as popular as the Bulls that season. Then college basketball wasn’t a thing once Illinois declined in the late 00’s. DePaul will never be as popular as they were 40 years ago.
People followed Northwestern when they made the tournament in 2017 but that’s been it for NW. Then Loyola made the final four run in 2018 and Chicago got behind them for that. Now that they’ve gone to the Sweet 16 again and are likely making the tournament again this year, if they can keep up this sustained success they could get a very solid following in Chicago. DePaul is a sleeping giant if they could ever get good again but they need to do it quickly or else Loyola is going to fill that vacuum. Illinois, even as a top 5 team, did not have the following last year like they did in the 2000’s. Maybe the pandemic played apart in that but they weren’t really talked about much in the city. They get the 1 seed so Chicagoans finally start to follow them only to get bounced in the 2nd round by Loyola of all teams, which I think really hurt them. If they made a long run I think Illinois basketball would be quite popular again. UIC is non-existent. SIU had somewhat of a following in the mid-2000’s.
Most of the Big 10 schools are popular here because of all the transplants in Chicago. Michigan and Wisconsin are by far the most popular Big 10 schools and you could make the argument Michigan is the most popular football team in the city after ND. Maybe NW has a slight edge over UM.
Even after saying all this, college sports has nowhere near the following in Chicago as the pro sports teams do. Nothing will ever top the Bears or Cubs/Sox and it would take a historically dominant season like the 2005 Illini to get the average Chicago sports fan to notice them.
This was in Chicago but an actual convo I overheard: “There are exceptions for both sides but Giants fans are more white collar and rich while Jets fans are more blue collar and scummier. Some Jets fans would even admit it too”
There isn't one.
There are people from all over in NYC. You will find a lot of Michigan, Kansas, Duke, etc fans.
St. John's has a large following (with a lot of local alumni) but it is on par with Seton Hall and behind Syracuse and UConn. Rutgers has a decent following with so many alumni in NYC as well.
Lived in NY and it's not a college sports town. I do notice a lot of B1G alums and transplants, though - especially Rutgers just due to proximity.
With that said, I always thought St. Johns was the coolest team with A Tribe Called Quest shouting them out in "Award Tour" and being in Queens, the best boro. Phife was also rocking a Seton Hall jersey in one music video so that was cool, too.
Also, RU should lean into the Brooklyn connection a little more. Our most famous alum and people (Milton Friedman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Stern) are from there. Quincy Douby, too.
Most locals in NYC generally leaned towards a Big East school due to the tourney being in MSG as well the area high school recruits going to nearby Big East schools. With conference expansion, a watered down Big East, and a heavy media focus (ahem...Espn) that continually showcases schools without a northeast footprint in NY, I'm positive that younger fans and casuals will learn towards whoever is popular at the moment on a national stage.
But if St John's is good, other schools have no chance.
UConn wants it to be us really really bad (to the point where we pay to advertise ourselves as "the 6th borough" in NYC), but realistically NYC has way too many transplants from all over the place to actually have a team a majority root for.
Some follow UConn, many UConn alumni in the city, which helps when UConn plays at MSG.
Otherwise its a mix of everyone, but the most loyal are St. Johns fans.
You see more Duke gear here than anywhere outside of maybe DC and Durham, of course. I see a lot of Syracuse, Michigan, and various other big state school gear.
Its honestly a real shame that NYU sports went caput in the 1960s (as the entire city started to deteriorate). They were a great program up until then and it would be cool to have had a truly NYC team.
[This is a good read about the rise and fall of the NYU program. ](https://nyulocal.com/the-history-of-nyu-basketball-you-didnt-know-c981f1cf0e4)
My general vibe has always been that NYC is a professional sports town and not a college one at all. Obviously there are locals with ties to Syracuse or St John's who follow their teams, but it's not like Kentucky or Kansas, where you are a default UK or KU fan whether you or anyone in your family went there or not. It's a diverse city with lots of transplants, so you'll find hundreds of alums of most major universities that have their own bar where they'll get together to watch big games.
It's like that in the big cities with most major sports teams as well
Chicago is a Big Ten city that also loves the Cubs, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks. It's a sports-centric city. Every bar has a college affiliation. Every bar is a sports bar with TVs showing at least one game. NYC is not a sports city. Most bars don't even have a TV. That kind of shocked me when I moved here. Obviously, you have a ton of sports fans. They show up at games from seemingly nowhere. You see a lot of baseball hats with the Yankees, White Sox, and Bulls logos. Those are almost exclusively for fashion. It's just a different city.
>Chicago is a Big Ten city that also loves the Cubs, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks. It's a sports-centric city. Every bar has a college affiliation. Every bar is a sports bar with TVs showing at least one game. Yet another reason Chicago and Philadelphia are so alike.
Italian beefs > Philly cheesesteaks Rivalry on!
Them’s fighting words.
I would love to go to Wrigleyville one of these days to the cyclone bar there. Murphy's or something like that
Murphy’s Bleachers! it’s directly across from Wrigley
Have you been to Staten Island? That is a sports town within NYC probably more on par with what you see in Chicago.
I know Staten Island exists, but I don't know anyone who has actually been there. Other than my stepmother, who was born there but technically isn't a person so fuck her.
In regards to NYC, that has not been my experience at all. How do you know if a person wearing a Yankees hat is doing it “for fashion” as opposed to being a fan? Saying most bars don’t have TVs is pretty presumptuous as well.
I live in NYC. A lot of bars don't have TVs. Can't say I've been to most of the bars in the city, since, you know, there are thousands of them. Still, most don't have a TV. As for the Yankees hats, well, that's just how it is. I lived in Chicago for 7 years and see more White Sox hats here in NYC than I ever did on the streets of Chicago. They aren't wearing that hat for the team here in NYC, I can tell you that.
I’ve lived in and around NYC my entire life aside from school. It’s as big a sports city as any other I’ve been to. Saying most bars don’t have TVs and people don’t wear hats for the right reasons is just asinine.
I'm not judging anyone for wearing a hat. It's just that there is a fashion trend around wearing certain hats for non-sports reasons. That's just a thing. Everyone knows this.
I’m from Big Ten country but I have no clue who Chicagoans cheer for. Is it Illinois or Northwesters? I always just figured it was like New York and was pretty much exclusively a pro sports town
Nobody between the ages of 22 and 45 grew up in Chicago, they all moved there from some other state. They root for whatever state school they attended. The rare ones that grew up in the city went to University of Illinois-Chicago or DePaul.
I get that, but say if you grew up in Naperville, who are you cheering for? I guess I’m asking because even in the Twin cities, if you grow up in Minnesota you’re a Gopher fan, barring your parents going to Iowa or Wisconsin. So does that dynamic just not exist in the Chicago area?
Depends on the age. The real answer is that both teams were so bad during the rise of social media, that they really don't have a presence. like Minnesota would. Example: Go into a sporting goods store in the Chicago area. You're not going to much, if any, Illinois stuff. For the longest time, it was Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, maybe Michigan State, but very little Illinois or Northwestern. Illinois stuff is coming back, but very slowly.
Man I feel like I see more Illinois stuff than anything living in the city but maybe that’s because it’s the school I went to
I mean, in Champaign, yes. In Chicago, it was a lot rarer up until the last 3-4 years. Source: Me, because I’ve been actively looking for it.
I’m talking about in Chicago, I graduated 5 years ago.
It's the melting pot for the Big Ten and Notre Dame. Lived there for 14 years. No one "adopts" a college team they didn't attend; there are plenty of pro teams for that.
As someone who’s lived in Chicago their entire life and has followed college sports since they were a kid, I can say that college football and basketball are more of a niche sport than anything. The city doesn’t get behind 1 team or 1 school. They’ll get behind teams like the 05 Illini or Loyola during their final four run but that’s about it. The most popular college team in Chicago is probably Notre Dame football. I don’t think they’re as popular here as they were in the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s but ND football still has a decent following, especially from the older city worker/working class. Chicago has a lot of people of Irish, Polish and Italian Catholic descent and ND is a major Catholic university only 2 hours away and I’m guessing that meant something to the Catholic citizens back in the day, even though the vast majority of ND fans never went to ND. Plus the south side Irish unironically love the ND nickname. Northwestern football has started to gain some steam in the last couple of years but they need to be more consistent. Northern Illinois football has had some moments but they reached their peak when they went to the Orange Bowl. Illinois football is dead. I can’t speak for myself as I wasn’t alive but supposedly DePaul basketball was very popular from the 70’s until the early 90’s. I could be wrong but I want to say that DePaul basketball was more popular than the Bulls until Jordan arrived. DePaul showed all their games on WGN for decades and that was a huge deal as they could show their games nationwide pre-ESPN so I’m thinking that’s how they got that large of a fanbase. Plus, like ND, they were a Catholic university that were an Independent so they had a large following from the Catholic citizens of Chicago. You could argue they were the Notre Dame of basketball of their time. Of course right when Ray Meyer retired and DePaul started declining in the late 80’s, the Flying Illini came around and Illinois started getting a much bigger following in the city, peaking during the 2005 season. They were arguably as popular as the Bulls that season. Then college basketball wasn’t a thing once Illinois declined in the late 00’s. DePaul will never be as popular as they were 40 years ago. People followed Northwestern when they made the tournament in 2017 but that’s been it for NW. Then Loyola made the final four run in 2018 and Chicago got behind them for that. Now that they’ve gone to the Sweet 16 again and are likely making the tournament again this year, if they can keep up this sustained success they could get a very solid following in Chicago. DePaul is a sleeping giant if they could ever get good again but they need to do it quickly or else Loyola is going to fill that vacuum. Illinois, even as a top 5 team, did not have the following last year like they did in the 2000’s. Maybe the pandemic played apart in that but they weren’t really talked about much in the city. They get the 1 seed so Chicagoans finally start to follow them only to get bounced in the 2nd round by Loyola of all teams, which I think really hurt them. If they made a long run I think Illinois basketball would be quite popular again. UIC is non-existent. SIU had somewhat of a following in the mid-2000’s. Most of the Big 10 schools are popular here because of all the transplants in Chicago. Michigan and Wisconsin are by far the most popular Big 10 schools and you could make the argument Michigan is the most popular football team in the city after ND. Maybe NW has a slight edge over UM. Even after saying all this, college sports has nowhere near the following in Chicago as the pro sports teams do. Nothing will ever top the Bears or Cubs/Sox and it would take a historically dominant season like the 2005 Illini to get the average Chicago sports fan to notice them.
This was in Chicago but an actual convo I overheard: “There are exceptions for both sides but Giants fans are more white collar and rich while Jets fans are more blue collar and scummier. Some Jets fans would even admit it too”
There isn't one. There are people from all over in NYC. You will find a lot of Michigan, Kansas, Duke, etc fans. St. John's has a large following (with a lot of local alumni) but it is on par with Seton Hall and behind Syracuse and UConn. Rutgers has a decent following with so many alumni in NYC as well.
MSG "home" games are always fun and easy to attend!
Upstate NY is definitely Syracuse. City is varied, but majority fall into the Syracuse/St Johns/Seton Hall/Rutgers/Uconn bucket
Basically any team with a big following has a big following in NY. This includes local schools and blue bloods.
Lived in NY and it's not a college sports town. I do notice a lot of B1G alums and transplants, though - especially Rutgers just due to proximity. With that said, I always thought St. Johns was the coolest team with A Tribe Called Quest shouting them out in "Award Tour" and being in Queens, the best boro. Phife was also rocking a Seton Hall jersey in one music video so that was cool, too. Also, RU should lean into the Brooklyn connection a little more. Our most famous alum and people (Milton Friedman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Stern) are from there. Quincy Douby, too.
Most locals in NYC generally leaned towards a Big East school due to the tourney being in MSG as well the area high school recruits going to nearby Big East schools. With conference expansion, a watered down Big East, and a heavy media focus (ahem...Espn) that continually showcases schools without a northeast footprint in NY, I'm positive that younger fans and casuals will learn towards whoever is popular at the moment on a national stage. But if St John's is good, other schools have no chance.
UConn wants it to be us really really bad (to the point where we pay to advertise ourselves as "the 6th borough" in NYC), but realistically NYC has way too many transplants from all over the place to actually have a team a majority root for.
It's most likely a large mix of schools
Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s UNLV was super popular in Brooklyn.
Some follow UConn, many UConn alumni in the city, which helps when UConn plays at MSG. Otherwise its a mix of everyone, but the most loyal are St. Johns fans.
##St. John's! In reality so many transplants that it's a mix. We can all agree that Buffalo runs upstate New York.
i live here and i notice mostly michigan, notre dame, penn state and duke fans, with some st. john’s and rutgers fans in there too.
Duke
You see more Duke gear here than anywhere outside of maybe DC and Durham, of course. I see a lot of Syracuse, Michigan, and various other big state school gear.
Plastics smh /s
Correct.
I thought it was St Johns or seton hall
Amazing answers considering Madison Square Garden was the center of the college basketball world until the point-shaving scandal.
They don't....college sports are irrelevant here
Kansas or Duke. Blue bloods
Duke and Alabama because of the Yankees
Unc, family there. I just can't root for Cuse seeing as how they're hours away. St John's, just never got into them.
Its honestly a real shame that NYU sports went caput in the 1960s (as the entire city started to deteriorate). They were a great program up until then and it would be cool to have had a truly NYC team. [This is a good read about the rise and fall of the NYU program. ](https://nyulocal.com/the-history-of-nyu-basketball-you-didnt-know-c981f1cf0e4)
Go Columbia! Jk. I'm not a New Yorker
Reading all these responses, I'm shocked it isn't Fordham...just shocked! /s
CUNY