What's your state's sporting event of the year?

When I first moved down here, Talladega was a monster event, especially the spring race. If you weren't going to the race, you tried to rearrange your life so you wouldn't have to be on the interstate starting Thursday anywhere between Fort Payne and Montgomery.

 

In Arkansas, many students are absent from school on the opening day of deer season. It's probably a bigger deal than Razorback football.

 

They used to move high school football games to Thursday night on deer season opening weekend, and schools would schedule the following Monday off as deer day. They may still do.

 

Louisiana is tough to call, because the biggest events are in New Orleans and are generally more for tourists and out of town fans than locals. Thinking of the Super Bowl and Sugar Bowl there.
LSU is the big dog, but outside of LSU-Alabama every other year there's not a football game that's must-see on a regular basis. Tailgating and getting drunk is a bigger deal for more people than seeing the entire game is.
A big SEC baseball series or a regional/super regional will pack them in for a weekend, but those aren't sure things every year.
The Saints move the needle in South Louisiana, but I think a lot of North Louisiana (and even a lot of Mississippi going forward, because of Dak Prescott) leans toward the Cowboys.

 

I'd say the Bayou Classic for Louisiana. Southern U. and Grambling fans sell out the Superdome every year for that game, and it still gets national TV coverage on NBC, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Good call. Had thought about that one when thinking about Louisiana, and then somehow forgot it when I actually wrote it out.

 

Going back to Arkansas, the only thing that seemed to me bigger than Razorback games were ... Razorback games in Little Rock, which had a totally different vibe from the Fayetteville games. Fewer students, almost a pro atmosphere and a lot rowdier. In fact, back in the day they played more games in LR because the stadium in Fayetteville was rinky-dink up to the late 70s.

It became a big political pissing match about 15 years ago between the two parts of the state and now they only play 2 games in LR, and one of them is usually a Sun Belt patsy. The home stadium got expanded to 72K while War Memorial remains stuck at 54K today. So Little Rock games are rarer and NWA has almost caught up in population.

The only other thing I can think of that used to be big was the Arkansas Derby, which is a major Triple Crown prep. We know how the ponies have fared.

 

I think having a flagship sporting event is more the exception than rule in most states.

 

Obviously a few years ago in NJ, it was the Super Bowl. Few years before that it would be the Devils in the Stanley Cup Finals, or Eastern Conference Finals. Not sure what it would be the last couple years. Atlantic City doesn't get big-time boxing like it used to. Few years ago, would've been a title fight or any Arturo Gatti fight in AC. No Giants or Jets home playoff game the last few years. Maybe it's the high school wrestling championships. NJ is one of a very few states that has only one champ at each weight and Boardwalk Hall in AC is close to sold out for a weekend. Anyone think of anything else in NJ?

 

That's what makes it interesting to ponder for me. Not everyone has something as obvious as a Kentucky Derby, so what comes closest?

 

We hit that one a few pages back. I grew up there, and can't think of anything.
The pro teams are king, but the focus is on New York and Philly. The Devils, the state's one actual team, are a distant third behind the Rangers and Flyers. I think I met two Devils fans in 18 years living there, and that was when they were winning Stanley Cups on a regular basis.
The Giants are big, if you want to count them, but they're still as much a New York team as a New Jersey team.
College sports don't even register. There's a few high school events that might have a niche following (like wrestling), but it's little more than that.
I grew up in Trenton, and the Little League Baseball playoffs were a big deal there every summer. Not sure how it still is, but the state champion has gone on to Williamsport and won a couple of times, so maybe that's something. Or it might just have been that the Trentonian covered the hell out of the District 12 tournament during the dog days of summer.