In a recent article in ESPN magazine a writer noted that the favorite sports of high school students throughout the country vary widely from state to state and suggested that the popularity of a given sport may just be a function of which professional teams in the state are most successful. A quick tally of some of each states’ best teams show that the success of professional sports teams is actually pretty well correlated to the popularity of those sports in the teams’ home states. One stellar example is Colorado.Few would argue that if there is one team that has defined Colorado’s sports history it is the Denver Broncos. The Broncos’ success with John Elway in the shotgun is practically unrivalled by any other team in any other sport at any other time. Interestingly enough, before their Denver teams’ great success, the World Series ranked above the Super Bowl among Coloradoans in terms of popular. In 2003, however, at the nadir of Denver’s success, the Super Bowl was preferred to the World Series by a margin of 2-to-1. That statistic isn’t surprising, since clearly fans would support their best team. But when you consider that the average Colorado high school football team grew by 15% over a six-year period, and that high school football teams almost outnumbered by high school baseball teams for the first time in any state’s history, it becomes hard not to believe that the success of the professional sports teams and the longer-term popularity of the sport are interconnected. Since the decline of the Broncos, football still remains the favorite sport of high school students, according to a survey done in 2008 that asked students to name their favorite sports to watch on TV and in person, regardless of which team was playing. At any given Colorado high school, football remained the sport of choice by an even larger margin than it had been during the Elway dynasty. Perhaps this phenomenon can be explained by some kind of cultural lag – dynasties casting their shadows – or is the popularity of a high school sport really just the product of chance? It is intuitive that a sport would be more popular among people if their own home team was great at it, but how long should that success inform their cultural sensibilities? Is there a multiplying effect if the team is a dynasty? To answer these questions, I have begun keeping data and taking regular surveys so that we will someday – hopefully soon – understand the mass psychology behind the popularity of sports.