Crossing Broad
This might be a dumb post, but we published the Taylor Swift column on Wednesday and some people pushed back on the idea that the Eagles could be the “hometown” team of someone who grew up south and later west of Reading. So we threw it out there on social for the final say:
That’s a pretty overwhelming split. At face value, the southern edge of Berks is only about an hour from Philadelphia proper, so most of the county is easily within the sphere of influence. The people who voted no are arguing that Berks turns into a hodge podge once you go past Reading, so while it’s still majority Eagles fans, they don’t believe it to be “Eagles Country.” Fair enough. One guy mentioned that route 222 is a dividing line of sorts, while others draw the Steelers/Eagles boundary further west, at the Susquehanna River.
As Miss Teen South Carolina once said, “not all Americans have maps,” so I drew one depicting what I think is Berks County football fandom:
Going counter clockwise, south and east you’ve got degenerate Birds fans. Boyertown, Douglassville, and everything up the route 422 corridor is Eagles territory. If you go northeast, you get to the Ku Klux Klan portion of Berks County, then up into the Oley Valley, where maybe 10 people live. That Fleetwood/Topton strip is a uniquely diehard baseball area, but filled with Eagles football fans. Beyond that you’ve got the hinterlands bumping into Hawk Mountain, where things start to get slightly blurry on the Skook border, then west of 61 and 222 is where the Steelers influence starts to come in. That’s not to say the Yinzers resemble any sort of significant population, because it’s still predominantly Eagles fans, but you do start to find some of Pittsburgh/Penn States/Pennsyltucky types and a whole lot of nothing in that general direction. Ravens fans come into play more to the south and west, down near Lancaster where the Philly television market ends.
Thoughts? This is just like, my opinion man.
The post Answering the Question of Whether or Not Berks County is “Eagles Country” appeared first on Crossing Broad.
