So What's Up With South Jersey Football Fans?

The New York Times has a great interactive college football fan map on The Upshot today. It doesn't surprise me that Syracuse, Notre Dame, and Army are the most popular teams in my Hudson Valley county and Zip Code, and it doesn't surprise me that the area around New Brunswick is solid Rutgers country, but why is southern New Jersey so heavily Penn State country? And why doesn't Rutgers even make the top three in many of those counties? This map is based on  Facebook likes, so please like some Scarlet Knights links if you live in the lower counties of New Jersey.

The map and the accompanying article are fascinating and just a little bit addictive. I was surprised by the size of Fresno State's popularity in central California for one thing. Another surprise is the most popular team in the midtown and downtown Manhattan Zips, our visitors tomorrow, the Michigan Wolverines.

The Updated BCS Map for 18 November 2012

The Rutgers Scarlet Knights (9-1, 5-0) are still the only team from the Northeast among the 25 colleges in the BCS rankings announced tonight. Ohio has gained color once again with the Kent State Golden Flashes moving into the BCS picture at number 23.

Geographical Distribution of the 25 ranked BCS football teams on 11/18/12.

The Updated BCS Map as of November 12

The Northeastern United States still has only one representative in this week's updated map of the 25 teams included in BCS rankings of November 12, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights:

Geographic distribution of 25 BCS-ranked teams on November 12, 2012.

The Northeast Again Has a Representative on the BCS Map

Rutgers has again brought the Northeast back onto the BCS map this week, without running a single play.

Geographic Representation of the 25 ranked BCS teams, 4 November 2012.

Idaho, West Virginia, and Arizona dropped off the map this week, replaced by New Jersey, Illinois (Northwestern), and Ohio (Toledo is the third representative from this battleground state to rise onto the BCS rankings in 2012, after Cincinnati and Ohio).

This may be the last BCS map I post on BeatVisitor dot com

With the departure of schools from New Jersey and Ohio and the addition of more schools from Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Arizona, all is once again well with the college football world.

There may not be any more representatives from the Northeast threatening the football world's traditional southern and western tilt this year.

You can check out my entries from October 14 and October 21 to see how the BCS top 25 has changed this year.

The Updated BCS Map

There have been some minor geographic adjustments in the top 25 BCS rankings this week. Texas lost one of its teams, Iowa lost its sole representative on the list and Wisconsin and Michigan have entered the map (Ohio lost one, but gained another.)

The Northeast is still represented in the BCS rankings by only a single team, the #15 Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

The BCS Map at a Glance

Excuse the amateur Etch-a-Sketchy graphics, but I thought it might be interesting to see the density of all 25 BCS-ranked schools represented geographically. It's easy to see at one glance how strong the tilt towards the South and West:

The 25 BCS teams plotted on a map of the United States
(I'll add Alaska and Hawai'i when one of their schools is ranked).

Not to put more pressure on our #15 Scarlet Knights, but they are not only playing for the honor of Dear Old Rutgers, or the Garden State, or the New York Metropolitan Area. The Knights are THE team carrying the hopes of the Northeast in 2012.