When meeting someone new in Connecticut in a social context, it is not unusual to be hit immediately with the question “Yankees or Red Sox?”. Give the wrong answer and your conversation is over. Say you don’t follow baseball at all and the conversation is really over and they move to the other side of the room.
In about a week, the football team from New England will meet the football team from New York in the really important football game whose name can never be mentioned unless you pay money(tm) They will be meeting in the middle of winter in Indianapolis, Indiana in a stadium with a retractable roof.
Probably very much related, Clear Channel’s WPKX-FM in Springfield, Massachusetts suddenly has changed formats from Country Music to ESPN. The existing country music is moving to a station in Amherst, replacing a rock station.