Ah, yes. The "A PR effort said so, so you have to be wrong" argument.
I work retail in Manhattan and see literally thousands of people everyday. I notice Michigan gear ALL OF THE TIME, while Syracuse gear is an exciting distraction.
I don't care what you say or what you think, just don't you dare tell me what I'm seeing with MY OWN EYES.
Personal observation can begin a hypothesis, it can't be the be all and end all. Let's begin with your personal observations.
You work retail. Is it 10 retail in which you work, 5, or 1?
Is it multiple brand retails or 1?
There are over 8 million people in New York and god knows how many visitors each and every day. So of the "literally thousands" of people you see everyday, how many are repeat customers? Is it a retail industry that draws a specific type of customer?
Let's say the answer is enough to test your hypothesis that there are plenty more Michigan alums in the area because I see way more Michigan sportswear.
Then the next step is to do research in how many alums in the NYC area? My research from a few years back says its 35K SU, 25K PSU and 15K Michigan.
Btw, it was to your specific remark about Michigan alums that I jumped into the fray, so to speak.
ND has about 5K alums in NYC, but that doesn't account for NYC residents who may root for a particular college who are not alum.
And none of the above is to assume that all alums are sports fans.
The following article has been discussed on this board previously. It attempted to discover number of college football fans (regardless of being an alum or not) a team may have in a specific area and one area they discussed was NYC.
http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/
Using first google search traffic they determined that there are close to 3 million college football fans in the NYC area.
Then they used the (shaky) CommonCensus Sports Map Project to determine which team has the most fans in the NYC area. The results, if one doesn't want to hit the link were:
Rutgers - 607,157
ND - 266,935
PSU - 186,410
UConn - 150,150
Michigan - 144,231
SU - 133,990
Miami - 77,497
Army - 75,345
Ohio St - 64,581
BC - 61,042
Lastly, there have been Siena type polls in the past from NYC universities that have tried to measure NYC's favorite college football team, but the last one I remember seeing was in 2007 or 2008.
It showed the top as being ND, PSU, and then a large drop-off, followed by RU, SU, then another drop-off to UConn, Michigan, and Miami.
Lastly, one can look at ESPN coverage maps for its ABC games and settle part of this dispute when virtually every time it's a choice between a PSU game or a Michigan game at the 3:30 time slot, which game do you think the NYC area gets?
Cheers,
Neil
