The Southeastern Conference (or SEC) was formed in December 1932, and began play in 1933. It was formed when 13 schools from the Southern Conferencece left to form their own conference. 10 of these schools still play in the SEC. At the end of 1991, the SEC expanded to 12 schools, with the addition of Arkansas (from the disbanded Southwest Conference), and South Carolina (who had been independent). Since 1992, the SEC has been split into 2 divisions. The Eastern Division is made up of Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt. The Western Division comprises Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi (usually referred to as “Ole Miss”), and Mississippi State. The winner of each division plays in the SEC Championship Game, held each December at the Georgia Dome, in Atlanta. Here are the biggest rivalries in the SEC. Alabama vs. Auburn (“The Iron Bowl”). Florida vs. Georgia (“The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party”). LSU vs. Arkansas (“The Battle for the Golden Boot”). Alabama vs. Tennessee (“The Third Saturday in October”). Florida vs. Tennessee (“The Third Saturday in September”). Auburn vs. Georgia (“The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry”). Thanks to the NFL Helmet Store, Midwest Collectibles, Elite Deals, CBS Sports Store, and Sports Unlimited Inc. websites.
November 12, 2007
College Football, The SEC. 2006 Attendance Map.
November 9, 2007
College Football, The Big 12. 2006 Attendance Map.
The Big 12 was formed in 1994, and began play in 1996. The schools of the Big 8 joined with four Texas-based schools from the disbanded Southwest Conference. Although the Big 12 does not officially claim the history of the Big 8 as it’s own, most fans see the Big 12 as an enlarged version of the old Big 8. [The chart on this map lists total conference championships as the sum of Big 8+Big 12 Titles; and the sum of Southwest Conference+Big 12 Titles.]
Keeping with the rivalries theme of my last NCAA football map, here are the main rivalries in the Big 12. Oklahoma vs. Texas: “the Red River Shootout” (politically correct name is ”Red River Rivalry”). Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State: “the Bedlam Series.” Texas vs. Texas A&M: “the Lone Star Showdown.” Texas A&M vs. Baylor: “the Battle of the Brazos.” Kansas vs. Missouri: “the Border War” (p.c. version: “Border Showdown”). Kansas vs. Kansas State: “the Sunflower Showdown.” Five of these annual match-ups have trophies for the winner (the A&M-Baylor game doesn’t). Three more rivalries also have trophies, but aren’t big enough (I guess) to have an actual name. Thanks to the NFL Helmet Store, Elite Deals, Joes Sports, and Midwest Collectibles webites. Also thanks to All-Time Database (http://nationalchamps.net/NCAA/database/). I will do the Southeastern Conference next.
November 8, 2007
Baseball of the Northeast, 1992.
I made this map in 1992, back in the days before the internet: my source for team information was “The Baseball Almanac, 1991″ by Dan Schlossberg. The minor league team’s affiliations are noted by small crests or icons of the parent club. The green and tan baseball diamond in the center of New York State represents Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall Of Fame. Many of the smaller minor league teams shown here are defunct, like the Albany-Colonie Yankees, the Geneva Cubs, the Watertown Indians, the Welland (Ontario) Pirates, the St. Catherines (Ontario) Blue Jays, and the Utica Blue Sox. Some of the logos here I took the liberty of inventing, like the Blue Sox crest, and the one for the Frederick Keys, in Maryland. I carved out domains for the Major League teams, trying to be as realistic as possible, while still maintaining a graphic balance. The New York Yankees got all of Upstate NY, northern and coastal New Jersey, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. The New York Mets got all of Long Island, NY, plus a Met-colored bar cutting a swath through northern NJ. This style of representing fan bases proved too problematic and arbitrary, though. My maps have evolved to where I now usually depict team crests larger or smaller, depending on average attendance. Showing each team’s “sphere of influence” would entail a census-taking of Herculean scale, and would ultimately be open to dispute.
November 6, 2007
College Football, The Pac-Ten. 2006 Attendance Map.
Any sports fan knows of the galvanizing power of a good rivalry. The Pacific Ten (or Pac-Ten) is great because the conference is essentially comprised of 5 separate in-state rivalries. The rivalries are: the Washington Huskies and the Washington State Cougars; the Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State Beavers (aka “the Civil War”); Stanford Cardinal and California Golden Bears (San Francisco Bay area); Southern Cal Trojans and UCLA Bruins (Los Angeles area); the Arizona Wildcats and the Arizona State Sun Devils. In fact, the 2 Arizona colleges joined the conference as a pair, in 1978. Thanks to the NFL Helmet Store, Midwest Collectibles, and Elite Deals websites.
November 5, 2007
NCAA Football, The Big Ten. 2006 Average Attendances.
The Big Ten is actually an 11-team conference, since Penn State joined in 1990. It boasts 3 of the top 4 draws in all of American collegiate football (Tennessee is third). The amount of spectators that the big-time college football programs draw is staggering. In 2006, 57 teams had average attendances over 40,000. The helmets on this map are sized proportionally to reflect the teams average gate. Thanks to the NFL Helmet Store for the photographs.
November 4, 2007
Japan: The 2006 J-League, with attendance figures.
I like the J-League because it has sprung up out of nowhere, and has such maniacal fans. The fans make the games a colorful spectacle Also, the caliber of play is better than one might expect, and you are likely to see some pretty nice goals here. The Urawa Reds are poised to become Japan’s first “big” club. They draw the biggest crowds (45,500 average), and finally won the league title last season. Albirex Niigata draw extremely well (38,700), in spite of being a mediocre club. FC Tokyo, Yokohama F. Marinos, and Oita Trinita average in the 20,000 to 24,000 range. There are 10 clubs with respectable gates of between 13,000 and 18,000. The J-League averaged 18,292 per game in 2006.
November 1, 2007
The Golden Age of Baseball.
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Between 1903 and 1952, there was no franchise movement among the 8 National League and 8 American League baseball clubs. This map shows all 16 clubs, with emblems, cap crests and uniform details from that time period. Included is an inset map of the Greater New York City area. In it, the locations of Yankee Stadium (NY Yankees), the Polo Grounds (NY Giants), and Ebbets Field (Brooklyn Dodgers) are marked. The evolution of these three clubs’ crests and the evolution of the ball clubs’ colors are also shown here. This map was drawn in 1993, and would not have been possible without the incredible book “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century” {at Amazon, here}. That book was researched, written, and illustrated by Marc Okkonen. His artwork for this book can now be found as the main uniform database (from 1900 to 1994) for the Baseball Hall of Fame site “Dressed to the Nines – A History of the Baseball Uniform“.
October 28, 2007
English Premier League, October 2007 attendance update.
English Premier League attendance is up 5 % this season, but some of that can be explained by the addition of Sunderland. The Black Cats have rocketed to the 5th best attendance in the country. They are up 10,000 from last season’s final totals (when they won the 2nd Division). As for the two other newly promoted clubs, Derby has an increase of 6,200, while Birmingham’s gate is up 4,100. The 2 biggest gate increases of non-promoted clubs are at Aston Villa and Manchester City. Both these clubs are seeing a rejuvenation on the field, and it has been reflected in the turnstiles. Villa are 3,000 above last season’s average; City shows an increase of 1,600. The club with the biggest downturn is Bolton, at -2,000. They seem doomed to relegation, and it looks like the fans know it.
October 26, 2007
Hockey of the North Atlantic, circa 1994.
This is a map from my early days of sports maps, around 13 years ago. As you can see, I was way more into the unbridled use of color and form, and less into accuracy. I can remember, halfway into the map, deciding to put in minor-league hockey clubs, only to realize (pre-internet) that I had little chance of finding the logos for most of these small clubs. So I improvised: Ontario Hockey League trading cards I had helped; and for the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League teams, I just used their names alone. This map has teams from the National Hockey League; the American Hockey League; the aforementioned OHL and QMJHL; and the East Coast Hockey League. Minor league affiliations of AHL clubs are noted by small logos of their parent NHL clubs. The player in the map’s legend is New York Ranger goalie Mike Richter, in his 1994 All-Star team uniform.
October 24, 2007
1979: The North American Soccer League.
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This map shows the 1979 North American Soccer League, whose heyday was in the late 1970s. The league averaged 13,084 in 1979, and hit its high of 14,201 the following year. The league is most famous for the New York Cosmos and their star-studded roster, but the Vancouver Whitecaps were champions in 1979. The Cosmos had won it in 1977 and 1978, and won it again in 1980. The Cosmos rise (and subsequent fall) was meteoric, to say the least. Before they signed Pele, in 1977, they were playing in a rundown stadium on Randalls Island, drawing 5,000 at best. In the short span of four years, 1974 to 1978, the Cosmos’ average gate went from 3,578 to 47,856.
In 1979 the Cosmos averaged 46,690. That same season, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, and Vancouver all drew very well, between 22,000 and 27,000. Seattle, and somewhat surprisingly, Tulsa, were drawing respectable crowds in the 16,000-18,000 range. San Jose drew 15,000; Los Angeles, though fielding Johann Cruyff, only drew 14,000. Also, Chicago averaged only 8,000, a poor showing considering the size of the city and the fact that the team was competitive. In retrospect, that last attendance figure could be seen as the writing on the wall. For if a decent team, in a huge city, in middle America, couldn’t pull 10,000 through the turnstiles, then the viability of the whole project was in doubt. Especially with the high salaries of the overseas players.
Growing up in Rochester, New York, I was a devout follower of the Rochester Lancers. Opposing players dreaded the barracks-like atmosphere of their crumbling concrete stadium and its potato patch field. This gave the scrappy, Slavic-heavy Lancers squad a solid home advantage. Before game time, me and my brothers would go up to the top of the stadium and watch the traffic pulling in, trying to will more fans through the turnstiles. In 1979, Rochester had its best gate, 8,600. But it wasn’t enough to keep them alive, and after the 1980 season, the Rochester Lancers of the NASL dissolved. The NASL was dead to me at that point. It died for real, 4 years later. It had existed from 1968 to 1984. Its most vibrant period was from around 1976 to 1981. Pele, Eusebio, Rodney Marsh, George Best, Franz Beckenbauer, Bobby Moore, Giorgio Chinaglia, Trevor Francis, Carlos Alberto, and many more world football legends graced the rosters of NASL teams. The stodgy rules of the game were relaxed, with a striker-friendly 35-yard offside line, and shootouts instead of penalty kicks. The shootouts were awesome. It was a 5-second-Chinese-fire-drill, with the goal keeper usually rushing towards the shooter. The shooter then had to decide whether to elude the keeper, rifle the ball low, or chip it. Offense was further encouraged by awarding points in the standings for goals scored. So even if you lost, you could gets points in the standings.
But the league over-expanded, diluting on-field quality. The league expanded from 16 to 24 teams in 1977, and many franchises shifted to other cities. The clueless new ownership of many franchises aped the Cosmos, overspending on aging internationals and letting domestic talent languish on the bench. When the crowds fell off, the owners bolted. Some also believe that when FIFA awarded the 1986 World Cup to Mexico, instead of the US, it hastened the league’s demise. Still, the NASL ultimately contributed to the overall improvement of the quality of American (and Canadian) players, and their national teams. The US national team has been transformed from also-rans to a competitive force. And no American ever played in the English 1st Division before the NASL. John Harkes was the first, with Sheffield Wednesday, in 1990. Today, the USA is represented in England by the likes of Brian McBride, Clint Dempsey, Carlos Bocanegra, and Kasey Keller on Fulham; Marcus Hanhnemann and Bobby Convey on Reading; Brad Friedel on Blackburn; Tim Howard on Everton; Jonathon Spector on West Ham United, and Jay Demerit on Watford.
