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Philadelphia's Sports Fans Really Should Be More Like Atlanta's: Bonus Material

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My Philly sports fans fail at college football thing started out as a stupid satire of that dumb thing Phillies fans always say about Turner Field attendance, but digging through the numbers made me realize Philadelphia isn't anywhere near the sports utopia we've been repeatedly told it is.

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In addition to Atlanta's college football dominance:

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  • The Hawks have beaten the Sixers in attendance four years in a row.
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  • The Falcons have topped the Eagles twice in the past five years, finishing within a thousand per game another time.
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  • Did you know the Braves haven't dipped below 16th in attendance in two decades, but the Phillies averaged 21,000 over their last seven years in cavernous Veterans Stadium? (And it will absolutely make my afternoon once someone comments that those years can be excused as aberrations because the Phillies weren't very good then.)
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  • Yes, that means the Braves have beaten the Phillies in attendance quite a few times in the past decade, and the previous one too. In fact, Atlanta had a run of eight straight years over Philly, ending in the early '00s. Please please please tell me this is because the Braves were good and the Phillies were bad, because we're supposed to be the fairweather town here.
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Philadelphia: great hockey and college hoops town!

Photographs by coka_koehler used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.