Both Gimpy and Stealth are right.
There's always gonna be bandwagon fans. Those are the ones who bought Lawrence Timmons jerseys this year and Tommy Maddox jerseys a few years ago.
But there's a lot of displaced Pittsburghers. My entire family lives in Philly, Phoenix, Austin, and the Bay. That's why ever city has a Steelers bar. It takes more than bandwagon fans for that kind of shit.
Stealth I am an urban geographer, I've seen all of those population fluctuations from each decade, you're dead on about Pittsburgh not always being a small town (as far as big cities go). STL is the same way, it used to be a much bigger factor than it is today. But that being said, it was never a HUGE city, and today there are
far more displaced New Yorkers, Bostonians, Philadelphians, Chicagoans or Los Angelans in every city in America than there are Pittsburghers. And you don't see bars for each of their teams in every city, thought they do exist.
Don't worry about the shots, if you're real, they ain't directed at you. Your team having this embarrassing component of the fan base is a product of it's success and nothing else. The real folks who are either from Pittsburgh or who have strong family ties to the area (and don't have a local team in their new area) can't help that these losers jumped on in their desperate search to be a part of a winner.
There are a lot of Steelers fans around…way more than the people from Pitt moving around the country.
So why does someone from say…the Bay…or LA become a Steelers fan? Or Dallas or GB? You like them cause they are a good team. It’s as simple as that. Well…unless you like their colors (yes…I’ve heard that before).
The Steelers have been pretty good for a while now…since before Tommy Maddox. Good teams get a lot more air time than crappy teams.
Why don’t you see a lot of fans of crappy teams out there? Nobody starts liking the Jets or Cinci. But you sure do see a lot of Pitt and Dallas.
Gimpy you're dead on, that's some real talk right there, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has to preach that shit on here anymore. All you have to do is count up all of the out of area fans (which is impossible of course, there is no Census for this), add up the historical winning percentages of the 10 franchises
most likely to attract out of area fans, and do the same for the 10 franchises
least likely to attract out of area fans, and you would see, there would be a
massive correlation.
** But don't word it as "bandwagon" fans, b/c a lot of people interpret that to mean they were once fans and then they stopped being fans only to become fans again. You will run into a lot of these horseshit fans who will claim (and accurately) that they have never left the side of that team since they picked them. Use "illegitimate" fans because that implies they lost all credibility from the instant they made their choice, that nothing they do or don't do during the course of their "fanship" can alter that.
