Midwesterners parochial or East Coast bias?

[MarquetteDano]

Stole the link below from the "other" board.  ESPN has a poll on best conference and it is broken down by state voting.  Interesting that only Midwesterners and Texas voted for their own conference over the Big East.  Mountain areas, West Coast, Deep South... all voted Big East.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/fp/flashPollResultsState?sportIndex=ncb&pollId=86217


It may have something to do with the SEC clearly not being the best league and the PAC-10 sucking so badly this year that those areas are willing to vote for another conference.  Though, that doesn't explain states like North Carolina who have a lot of ACC teams and no Big East teams yet voted for the Big East.

This seems to be proof that Midwesterners (of which I am one; born and raised) and Texans are parochial

[MUBurrow]

Big Ten fans absolutely have a larger and more irrational bias for their conference than other geographical areas.

A couple possible reasons that I've been able to come up with:
    - Big Ten network
    - Lack of recruiting base
        * I think this is big.  For football particularly, kids from big ten geographies always go to the home team. The best recruits from WI go to WI. Iowa kids go to Iowa, etc.  The only recruiting hotbed that ships nationally is maybe Ohio.  I think the lack of kids going across the country leads to an insulated view of college sports generally.  People in Texas talk about local kids playing in the Pac 10, the Big 12, the ACC.  Big 10 kids stay at home more than any other conference, largely because it doesn't pay for schools from other BCS conferences to establish a recruiting base in those states.
      I know this references mainly football, but the fact of the matter is that a majority of the knowledge of most Big 10 sports fans derives from football.

[MarquetteDano]

Big Ten fans absolutely have a larger and more irrational bias for their conference than other geographical areas.

A couple possible reasons that I've been able to come up with:
    - Big Ten network
    - Lack of recruiting base

May be some of the reasons, sure.  Let's not just single out Big Ten fans as other Midwestern states voted for their Big 12 conference too.  And, you have Texas as well.

[chapman]

 Though, that doesn't explain states like North Carolina who have a lot of ACC teams and no Big East teams yet voted for the Big East.

People in NC know college basketball in general.  People in Wisconsin make no effort to get any perspective and for the most part cannot comprehend things that happen outside of Lambeau Field or UW's campus.

[TheButlerDidIt]

People in NC know college basketball in general.  People in Wisconsin make no effort to get any perspective and for the most part cannot comprehend things that happen outside of Lambeau Field or UW's campus.

Yikes...a bit harsh. Not all MU fans are alumni.