J. A. Cooper and Edward H. Davis. 2019. "Fandom on the Air: Assessing Regional Identity through College Football Radio Networks." Northeastern Geographer 11: 1-29.
I pulled a substantial part of my Honors Thesis out for further research and a specific publication. This article on the geography of collegiate radio football broadcasting is published in the Northeastern Geographer. I and my coauthor, Dr. Ed Davis (Emory & Henry College) argue that sports fandom represents a significant aspect of place identity in modern U.S. culture, as demonstrated by the colorful landscapes associated with team loyalty. We therefore update a 1988 article mapping spatial dispersions of college football radio patterns. Using GIS data on college football radio coverage as our proxy for fandom, I mapped college football fandom for the “Power 5” conferences. The results showed that state borders continue to have an important influence on the geography of college football fandom, and that place identity can be fruitfully examined using quantitative data.