NCAA Basketball, geography, and ESPN

When the Green Bay Packers started winning a few years ago, I recall chatting with a few people who were all pumped up about the team and their quarterback, but had no idea about the location of Green Bay itself.  It simply did not matter to them.  This indifference to location, even while fanatical about the economic and recreational activity related to that location, fascinated me.  Since then, every once in a while I have quizzed students on the locational aspects of winning sports teams--football, baseball, and basketball.  The results were always the same: even the most interested and serious sports fan was geographically-challenged about the very team he (almost always a "he") was rooting for.

A couple of years ago, I wrote in an essay that:

It appears that only real estate agents and geographers understand the importance of location, location, and location. Otherwise, I suppose both within and outside academia, there are not many who develop a spatial understanding even of the issues that interest them or the cities where they live.

I wonder if we geographers might be partly at fault because we tend to equate maps with the “old school geography” that impressed upon people an (incorrect) idea of geography that it is only about memorizing facts about places. But in getting away from that atrocious caricature of geography, we might have gone to the other extreme where we, too, might be reinforcing the notion that it is not important to understand the actual location of a place, and its relationship with its surroundings.

Students in my introductory class were not completely off the hook though. Given the notoriety of the New England Patriots, I asked them at the final meeting of the term, as a way of wrapping up the course, where New England is and the name of the city where the Patriots play. I had hoped that at least five out of the forty students would know the correct answer.  Only one knew that the team’s home is in Foxborough, though four others had a good enough answer of Boston.  I suppose I did get that five out of forty I was shooting for.☺

Thus, you can then understand why I am excited about the online geography quiz that ESPN has about the NCAA men's basketball tournament teams.
So, hey you sports nuts out there, who filled out the brackets (including the President!) take that quiz and see how well you know the locations of those universities...

BTW, speaking of the President and his bracket, here is the Daily Show commenting on it towards the end of this hilarious segment :)

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