Fishy. I cannot dispute what you said. I am a midwestern guy and cannot claim to have further insight about what moves the needle in the northeast. I would think he is going to have to go beyond talking about the region and take action and bring northeastern universities, such as UConn, into the Big Ten along with sponsoring Big Ten events in the region. Having said that, if you had the ear of Delany what do you tell him? "Jimbo here is what the Big Ten needs to do to move the needle in the northeast ..."
The northeast (for purposes of this statement, I'm grouping the tri-state area and New England into the "northeast"), for all intents and purposes, is a pro sports area. There is a TON of competition for sports entertainment dollars out here. I'd say that pro baseball and pro football dominate the sports pages year round with a bit of NBA and less NHL. But just about everyone in the northeast has pledged their allegiance, in one or the other, to the Yankees/Red Sox, Giants/Patriots, Knicks/Celtics, and Rangers/Bruins, but the coverage is mostly baseball and football.
As for college sports, the northeast is first and foremost a college basketball area. You won't see many bars packed to watch college football bowl games but you will see bars packed to watch the NCAA Tournament. There are plenty of folks who take those Thursdays and Fridays off during the first few weeks of the Tourney so that they can watch and there are also plenty of TVs found within corporate office break rooms that have the games on. Nobody in the northeast is going to take a weekday off to watch a bowl game. I don't know why that is - it might be because the northeast has never had a dominant college football program or because of a lack of quality high school football. Sure, there are a fair amount of B1G alums in the area who follow their teams but there is nothing around here that binds them to a game (ex - they can't go see their teams play at UCONN...although now they will be able to see their teams at Rutgers). And there is a fair amount of Notre Dame fans in the area that became ND fans because of Catholicism and because there was really nobody else around these parts to root for. I know that in my circle of friends who have UCONN season tickets, many of them used to be ND fans before UCONN came on the scene (they've since sworn off ND).
College basketball is the king college sport out here for a couple of reasons, in my opinion. First, we have a dominant program that people can rally around. When UCONN is playing in big games, they are covered by Boston media, New York media and of course, Connecticut media. Because UCONN has been a very good program for decades, there is now that generation ladder of fandom - parents passing their passion down to their kids and down the line. To be fair, Syracuse is also a popular team in New York and various members of the northeast media for those who enjoy to root for a paper tiger (or would that be a paper orange?). Second, the weather out here is better suited for youth basketball than football (or other outdoor sports). Unlike football, high school basketball produces quite a bit of college talent every year. For example, UCONN used its northeast roots to recruit under-recruited (probably because of size) PGs Kemba Walker from NY and Shabazz Napier from MA. A northeast college program can very easily focus its recruiting eyes on the northeastern areas and find talented prospects every year.
This isn't to say college football can't work in the northeast. Before Pasqualoni crushed our football program, UCONN enjoyed full or nearly full crowds on the majority of weeks. I think the key to college football working out here is for northeast teams to play against teams that they grew up watching. The average northeast fan doesn't get excited to go watch Wake Forrest or Cincinnati, regardless of if those teams are good or not. But the second that a Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State type of team comes out here, well everyone loses their minds to get tickets. That's why I think Rutgers will do fairly well in the B1G. That area will get excited to see the new home slate of games that replaces AAC/Big East teams with B1G teams and could result in a recruiting boom for that program. The same would happen with UCONN fans if we ever played against a B1G schedule instead of an AAC schedule although we don't have the fertile high school football grounds that are in New Jersey. UCONN fans are, essentially, fan transplants from other teams that they rooted for before UCONN upgraded to D-1A. Me? I always rooted for Michigan and enjoyed watching SEC games (usually siding with Tennessee) even as I rooted for UCONN basketball.
So, you asked what the needle movers in the northeast. The long answer can be found above. The short answer: pro sports, college basketball (namely UCONN and Syracuse), and big-name college football. Football season tickets would explode for UCONN in the days and weeks following a B1G invite because fans around here grew up watching B1G football and the names/programs are familiar.
