I'd venture this is more due to other demographics favoring CFB. First, the "power" teams are often located in red states. You've got the South, you've got the upper Midwest (rust belt that was formerly red although is more purple these days), and you've got the central swath from Nebraska down to Texas.
Out here on the Left coast, and in the mid-Atlantic to Northeast states, college football is not nearly as popular.
Couple that with the fact that college football fandom is more rural in general, whereas pro sports and the NFL are more aligned with big metro areas, and rural areas skew more to the right. Boston is all about the Pats, not BC. NYC is all about the Giants and Jets, not Rutger and Syracuse. DC is about the Redskins, not about UMD. Chicago is about the Bears, not the Wildcats. LA is a mess in general, but it's a Rams town now. SF is about the 49ers, and doesn't care about Stanford all that much. And while Seattle has UDub local, it's still all about the Seahawks. So the biggest metro areas that would skew things blue are more interested in the local NFL teams than the local-ish NCAA teams.
So if the biggest CFB programs and fan bases just tend to geographically align with the reddest [rural] parts of the reddest states, it makes perfect sense that CFB fandom would skew to the right.
I think this is a good point that I hadn't really thought about. I suppose that if you checked certain teams you would find a more leftward skew among their fans. Ie, BC fans, to the extent that they exist are probably generally from the greater Boston Metro area and they are probably pretty left leaning compared to CFB fans in general.
I strongly disagree with your parenthetical that I
bolded. Going W->E through the Great Lakes states:
- Minnesota barely voted for Clinton over Trump. This was previously a Democratic stronghold. It was the only state to vote for Mondale over Reagan in 1984 and hasn't voted for a Republican for President since Nixon's landslide in 1972. Even then, Nixon won the national popular vote 61-38 and carried 49 states but he only won Minnesota 52-46 so Minnesota was ~8% more Democratic than the US as a whole. The popular vote in the 2016 election Minnesota was slightly more Republican than the national popular vote. Minnesota was formerly deep blue and is possibly trending purple.
- Wisconsin went red in 2016, for the first time since 1984. There again, in 1984 Reagan won the national popular vote by about 18% but he only won Wisconsin by about 9%. Wisconsin is a formerly deep blue state possibly trending purple.
- Illinois is and remains deep blue, no trend either way.
- Indiana is a solidly red state in any race in which it matters. Obama did carry the Hoosier State in 2008 but only barely despite winning the national popular vote by 7%. Prior to that the last Democrat to carry Indiana was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Note that 2008 and 1964 were both Democratic landslides. This is the inverse of MN/WI where the last time (prior to 2016 in WI's case) that a Republican won there it was in a national Republican landslide (1972 and 1984).
- Michigan went red in 2016, for the first time since 1988. Like Minnesota and Wisconsin this is a formerly deep blue state that is possibly trending purple.
- Ohio (this is the one I know the most about) has voted for every winning Presidential candidate for the last 50+ years. The last candidate to win without Ohio was Kennedy in 1960. However, Ohio has been trending more red. In 2016 the state went Republican by ~8% while the national popular vote was 10% to the left of that.
- Pennsylvania went red in 2016 for the first time since 1988. Like MN, WI, and MI this is a formerly deep blue state that is possibly trending purple.
Note that with MN, WI, MI, and PA I stated that they are "possibly trending purple". All of them were more Republican than the national vote in the 2016 election but obviously one election does not make a trend and if you look at results from the last few elections (not who won, but how the vote compared to the national vote) it is a mixed bag. That said, I see nothing to support your assertion of formerly red and trending purple.
Back to Penn State, I'm not sure how that would apply. PA was formerly pretty solidly blue but it was trending more purplish even before 2016 and, of course, went red in 2016 for the first time since 1988. It probably depends largely on where the PSU fans in question are from. Looking at the 2016 PA election map there is a blue county in Western PA (Pittsburg), one in central PA (I think PSU), one a little SE of that (?) then a bunch around Philly and along the NJ border. The rest of the state ranges from light red to dark red.
I do think we've been walking a fine line around here.
For me, and I said this last week, there are topics that are politics-adjacent that are interesting to delve into but they're not really "political debate". However, there are certain political "third rail" issues--or perhaps discussion specifically about certain politicians--that can quickly destroy dialogue and turn it ugly.
A more academic discussion about why certain sports may skew certain directions politically is a different thing than having a political debate...
That is my theory. We definitely don't want this to become a political debate forum but at least in my opinion, discussing what happened in a more academic way should be fine.
