As a native of Upstate New York who has lived in California and Texas for 40 years, I did indeed root for the Bills yesterday. And I find that over time I have become more committed to trying to help my home region -- especially now that, asi n Detroit, the news is not all bad and there is hope for the future.
As a Bills fan (and a Rust Belter), I found a lot to relate to here. Rust Belt cities are the underdogs of our country’s economy, and that dovetails nicely with sports fandom. Everyone loves to root for an underdog — whether in sports or more broadly.
As a native Californian, this reminds me of how expat Californians are now found all over the Western and Southern United States, as California has lost well over 4 million through internal migration to other states since 1990, even while growing untill recently.
I would also point out that Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (and portions of adjacent states) have long had a very rust belt like growth/decline dynamic in contrast to the majority of the South, and this subregion is sometimes referred to as the "rott belt" of the Southern US, named for how easily abandoned buildings tend to literally rott into the ground within the humid region.
Of related interest, the university of Wisconsin has a fascinating mapping project on internal migration per decade by US county. You can check them out at netmigration.wisc.edu This is an interactive mapping site with estimates for various subgroups as well as the overall population. I know the US Census Bureau website also has migration estimates by state for recent decades but I don't know if they have anything easily readable going back to 1970, -might have to acquire the raw data from them and then tabulate oneself.
Allow me to suggest that universities might be at least one of the answers. Big Ten universities are far superior academically to almost all SEC universities, but the SEC is booming. The Big Ten has to got to find a way to attract the out-of-state children of alumni back.
Amusingly, one way to do this is to focus on kids’ desire to be somewhere away from their parents. I have a college friend who lives in northern Virginia with a kid at OSU. He thought about James Madison or Maryland, but didn’t want to be so close to home. He had good memories of Ohio from his childhood before they moved, so OSU it was.
(And, because you’re a football guy, I’ll say that I came up with this theory first in regard to football recruiting, where the southeast has an even bigger advantage over the midwest. One thing OSU has done that I’m not aware of other schools doing is identifying southern recruits with ties to Ohio or OSU. Most notably the Bosa brothers - their mom’s an alumna - but also Garrett Wilson and Carlos Hyde, among others. With so many B1G alums in the Sun Belt now, you’d think B1G schools would spend more time finding their kids.)
Great post. How big was the Rust Belt diaspora? I am in awe of your mathematical analysis. I tried to address the same question in my 2016 book, Rust Belt Boy: Stories of an American Chilhood. At the time, my method helped be comfortable with estimating that roughly 6 million RB baby boomers left the region between 1975 and 1995. I’m one of them.
As a native of Upstate New York who has lived in California and Texas for 40 years, I did indeed root for the Bills yesterday. And I find that over time I have become more committed to trying to help my home region -- especially now that, asi n Detroit, the news is not all bad and there is hope for the future.
As a Bills fan (and a Rust Belter), I found a lot to relate to here. Rust Belt cities are the underdogs of our country’s economy, and that dovetails nicely with sports fandom. Everyone loves to root for an underdog — whether in sports or more broadly.
As a native Californian, this reminds me of how expat Californians are now found all over the Western and Southern United States, as California has lost well over 4 million through internal migration to other states since 1990, even while growing untill recently.
I would also point out that Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (and portions of adjacent states) have long had a very rust belt like growth/decline dynamic in contrast to the majority of the South, and this subregion is sometimes referred to as the "rott belt" of the Southern US, named for how easily abandoned buildings tend to literally rott into the ground within the humid region.
Of related interest, the university of Wisconsin has a fascinating mapping project on internal migration per decade by US county. You can check them out at netmigration.wisc.edu This is an interactive mapping site with estimates for various subgroups as well as the overall population. I know the US Census Bureau website also has migration estimates by state for recent decades but I don't know if they have anything easily readable going back to 1970, -might have to acquire the raw data from them and then tabulate oneself.
Allow me to suggest that universities might be at least one of the answers. Big Ten universities are far superior academically to almost all SEC universities, but the SEC is booming. The Big Ten has to got to find a way to attract the out-of-state children of alumni back.
Amusingly, one way to do this is to focus on kids’ desire to be somewhere away from their parents. I have a college friend who lives in northern Virginia with a kid at OSU. He thought about James Madison or Maryland, but didn’t want to be so close to home. He had good memories of Ohio from his childhood before they moved, so OSU it was.
(And, because you’re a football guy, I’ll say that I came up with this theory first in regard to football recruiting, where the southeast has an even bigger advantage over the midwest. One thing OSU has done that I’m not aware of other schools doing is identifying southern recruits with ties to Ohio or OSU. Most notably the Bosa brothers - their mom’s an alumna - but also Garrett Wilson and Carlos Hyde, among others. With so many B1G alums in the Sun Belt now, you’d think B1G schools would spend more time finding their kids.)
Great post. How big was the Rust Belt diaspora? I am in awe of your mathematical analysis. I tried to address the same question in my 2016 book, Rust Belt Boy: Stories of an American Chilhood. At the time, my method helped be comfortable with estimating that roughly 6 million RB baby boomers left the region between 1975 and 1995. I’m one of them.
Can we stop referring to it as the Rust Belt, and instead call it the Water Belt?
Hard to imagine folks in Bethlehem PA identifying with that.