What is New England?

I was listening to a sports podcast, youngish men, discussing team names and mascots.  One always listens to references to one's own area, to see how it is viewed by the rest of the country.  When I went to college in Virginia I learned that no one really knows where New Hampshire is.  My son came up with what I think is the best description while he was going to school in KY. "You know those two little states way up in the northeast that are like a square fit together? Well New Hampshire is the one that's right-side up."

Anyway, transcript from The Ringer.

I was wondering, you guys are from the West Coast, could you tell me what New England is? 

No. 

It's a region, a number of states in that region. I'm guessing. It's kind of like four or five of these. Massachusetts, Connecticut. 

Yeah, it's like kind of four of the five of the 13 original colonies vibes. Is New York in New England, technically? 

No! 

I feel like it's. So it's like Massachusetts. 

Massachusetts. 

Connecticut. 

Connecticut, like is Delaware in there? 

I don't know what Delaware's up to, but no, I don't think so. 

Is Rhode Island? I'm in Delaware. Rhode Island. 

No one wants Rhode Island, is the dirty truth. 

I feel like Rhode Island's very pretty. People like Providence and. Yeah, people like going to... Rhode Island is like... Connecticut is to New York, like to New York, what I think Rhode Island is to Massachusetts, which is it's like an extension of the state, but it's also not. 

And Connecticut people might feel mad at what I just said, but Connecticut's weird, cause it's kind of split in half. It's like a suburb of New York, but also part of like Massachusetts but it's also not like either of those things.

Why do you guys think that like some team names are based on a city like Buffalo, then you have New England, which is an area, or like the Golden State Warriors, whatever the golden state is, just California. And then you have like- What's with that? 

And then you have like the Tennessee Titans, which is just a whole state. Like how do they decide what the first name is? 

That's a great question. 

I don't know, cause New England's like a wild thing. I think they were just kind of going for it. 

Well, cause is it like Tennessee's like, look, we're only gonna have one team in a state, so we're just gonna give it the whole state name. But if there's gonna be multiple teams in a state, we gotta go city? Is that how they think about it? 

...I feel like the sports team said to say it like they're just looking at a map and they're like, hey, we'll just take all this. And like, they're just carving stuff up. 

Yeah, because look, I'm looking now the the other states that are included in New England are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont. I think we got all of them. But anyways, it's like there's never going to be a pro NFL team in Maine. So maybe they just were trying to be really, you know, a power broker in that entire area. 

Inclusive.

Do people from Maine root for the Patriots? That's a question. 

Yes, for sure!

Also, Fox, Foxboro is not close to Boston, right? How many miles is Foxboro from Boston? 

 

Their boss, Bill Simmons, is from Massachusetts, they may want to read up on this a bit.