(Press-News.org) DURHAM, N.C. -- When March Madness kicks off this week, you might expect the bleachers to be filled with alumni and students from the competing colleges. In fact, only about a third of die-hard college sports fans are alumni of their teams' universities, and another third never attended college at all, according to a new Duke University study.
The new research by Charles Clotfelter, a professor of public policy, economics and law at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy, draws upon an unusual source for its conclusions: obituaries.
Clotfelter's article, "Die-Hard Fans and Ivory Tower's Ties That Bind," was published online by The Social Science Quarterly on Jan. 19.
"Accounts such as these, written to celebrate the life of a loved one, suggest that the decedent's interest in this college team was no casual thing, but rather a noteworthy source of identity," Clotfelter writes. "To refer to these individuals merely as fans of college football or basketball is surely inadequate. These were true believers."
To find these die-hard fans, Clotfelter picked 26 colleges with unusual team names, such as the Crimson Tide or the Jayhawks, and searched online obituaries for team references. His research group collected 1,300 obituaries, 50 for each team. They found testimonies to the fans' affection for their teams, including:
"Throughout his adult life, [he] was a dedicated Ohio State football fan. He owned a scarlet and grey 'Buckeye Van' which he drove to the home games. The license plate on [his] van read 'SACK MI'."
"She will be watching March Madness from the heavens, where she will be cheering on the Blue Devils of Duke and her beloved Coach K."
[He] was an independent thinker in all aspects of his life. This was no more evident than in his remaining the only Wolverine fan in a large family of Buckeyes."
"She enjoyed family traditions, knitting and Penn State football."
Clotfelter compared the fans' obituaries to a random sample of obituaries from the same states. Both sets contained information such as gender, age, occupation, military service, college attendance, religious affiliation, civic and volunteer activity and state of residence.
Die-hard fans were rare, representing only about 2 percent of published obituaries of adults. They included three times as many men as women. Compared to others featured in obituaries, they were more likely to be white, to be mainline Protestants and to participate in coaching.
In terms of their education and professions, the die-hard fans were a diverse group. Even though a sizeable minority of the ardent fans never attended college, as a group die-hard fans were twice as likely to have attended college as the general population. Many die-hard fans held blue-collar jobs, but 22 percent were in professional occupations such as law, medicine or engineering.
Most die-hard fans lived in the same state as the college they supported, but not all. Fans of UCLA, Connecticut and Texas A&M were tightly clustered near those campuses. Notre Dame and Nebraska fans tended to be widely distributed across the country, perhaps because of the winning histories of their football programs.
Clotfelter found no significant link between the academic reputation of a college and the size of its fan base.
Die-hard fans represent an authentic link between universities and everyday people, Clotfelter said. Fandom is "a sign of the people's affection, and a source of pride, even a kind of patriotism," he said.
Clotfelter also explored the fans' political party registration by looking at state voting records. The ardent fans were 5.5 percentage points likely to register as Republicans than similar adults, but there was no difference in the rate of registration as a Democrat between fans and the control group. All fans were more likely to be affiliated with some party than to have no affiliation.
Few scholars have studied big-time college sports' ultra-loyal fans, Clotfelter said. Fans are significant to universities as customers, followers and stakeholders. Fandom can offer social capital benefits similar to civic volunteerism and other engagement, he said. Being a fan can provide a sense of ownership of the university that can extend to financial and political support.
"It's my belief that commercial sports are a core function of universities such as these, even if it is not in their mission statements," Clotfelter said. "Being a fan represents an authentic cultural tie. To call big-time college sports commercial is accurate but incomplete. It's the truth, but not the whole truth."
INFORMATION:
CITATION: "Die-Hard Fans and the Ivory Tower's Ties That Bind," Charles T. Clotfelter. Social Science Quarterly, Jan. 19, 2015. DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12141.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ssqu.12141/abstract
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Subsistence farmers in Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean are learning how to construct raised planting beds and install drip irrigation systems to boost their agricultural productivity, conserve water and perhaps even halt the rapid advance of desertification in some drought-prone regions.
This educational effort, led in large part by nonprofit groups and private donors, is getting a boost from Scientific Animations Without Borders, an initiative that produces animated educational videos that can be played and shared on cellphones and other digital ...
Commitment to well being of others difficult to sustain over long run
Personal redemption narrative sustains motivation to engage in prosocial behavior
African-Americans more likely to be motivated by stories of personal redemption
Redemptive stories sustain hope that sacrifices today may produce future dividends
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Middle-aged Americans who show high levels of societal involvement and positive mental health are especially likely to construe their lives as stories of personal redemption, according to new Northwestern University research.
Previous ...
A review of clinical trial data suggests vitamin D supplementation was ineffective at lowering blood pressure (BP) and should not be used as an antihypertensive, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.
Intervention studies have produced conflicting evidence on the BP-lowering effect of vitamin D. An increasing number of clinical trials of have studied vitamin D and cardiovascular health, according to the study background.
Miles D. Witham, B.M., B.Ch., Ph.D., of the University of Dundee, Scotland, and coauthors analyzed clinical trial data ...
An analysis of publicly available outbreak data suggests that substandard vaccination compliance is likely to blame for the recent measles outbreak linked to Disneyland in California, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.
Without vaccination, measles is highly contagious. The recent outbreak started in December 2014, although the index case has not yet been identified. The rapid growth of cases indicates that a substantial percentage of the exposed population may be susceptible to measles infection due to lack of, or incomplete, vaccination, according ...
A study of brain aging finds that being male was associated with worse memory and lower hippocampal volume in individuals who were cognitively normal at baseline, while the gene APOE ?4, a risk factor for Alzheimer disease, was not, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology.
Typical cognitive aging may be defined as age-associated changes in cognitive performance in individuals free of dementia. To assess brain imaging findings associated with typical aging, the full adult age spectrum should be included, according to the study background.
Clifford ...
Inadequate vaccine coverage is likely a driving force behind the ongoing Disneyland measles outbreak, according to calculations by a research team at Boston Children's Hospital. Their report, based on epidemiological data and published online by JAMA Pediatrics, indicates that vaccine coverage among the exposed populations is far below that necessary to keep the virus in check, and is the first to positively link measles vaccination rates and the ongoing outbreak.
By examining case numbers reported by the California Department of Public Health and current and historical ...
There are only five bodies in our solar system that are known to bear rings. The most obvious is the planet Saturn; to a lesser extent, rings of gas and dust also encircle Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The fifth member of this haloed group is Chariklo, one of a class of minor planets called centaurs: small, rocky bodies that possess qualities of both asteroids and comets.
Scientists only recently detected Chariklo's ring system -- a surprising finding, as it had been thought that centaurs are relatively dormant. Now scientists at MIT and elsewhere have detected a possible ...
March 16, 2015 - As more women veterans seek health care in the Veterans Administration (VA) system, effective approaches are needed to ensure that their unique needs are recognized and met. A special April supplement to Medical Care collects new studies from an ongoing research initiative to inform health care policy for women veterans. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
"The goal of this supplement is to disseminate new research findings related to the planning, organization, financing, provision, evaluation and improvement of health services and/or outcomes ...
URBANA - University of Illinois scientists have engineered a "jailbreaking" yeast that could greatly increase the health benefits of wine while reducing the toxic byproducts that cause your morning-after headache.
"Fermented foods--such as beer, wine, and bread--are made with polyploid strains of yeast, which means they contain multiple copies of genes in the genome. Until now, it's been very difficult to do genetic engineering in polyploid strains because if you altered a gene in one copy of the genome, an unaltered copy would correct the one that had been changed," ...
NEW YORK, March 16, 2015 - Newer drug-coated stents that keep arteries open have similar long-term rates of death compared with traditional bypass surgery for patients with more than one diseased coronary artery.
The findings come from a clinical registry study, led by cardiologists at NYU Langone Medical Center, which appears in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
In the study, a sample of over 9,000 patients who received the latest stents were no more likely to die in the few years following the procedure, compared to a matched sample of over ...
