Yes we are the Walmart capitol of the world, the first to introduce "Fried Fat" and "Fried Butter" but all that is the out in the country.Little Rock, where I pay homeage to, is one of the best places in the U.S if you ask me (and I lived in NY for 10 years).
Were really liberal, weve got a awesome music scene, and the Hipster:Redneck population here is ATLEAST 2:1.
Haha. If you think that frying fat and butter makes you bad, you should see the Scottish deep-fat frying Mars Bars (caramel-filled chocolate bars)...
And you've got me again...what is a hipster?
I maybe completely wrong here, but looking at sports in OTL Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India cricket is popular in all four plus other former British colonies like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the Windies, rugby's big in the first three and football (soccer) hasn't had as much of an impact in those countries. Perhaps someone else could shed some light on the reasons behind this. Assuming that these same reasons apply ITTL I think cricket (there's a lot of standing around and breaks so the hot, humid BSA climate shouldn't be a problem), rugby and some USAmerican sports perhaps more popular among ordinary BSAmericans due to US cultural influence would be the most popular sports. I think Latin American influence (particularly if the BSA expands southwards) might be the main avenue which popularises soccer in the BSA. Just my (uninformed) thoughts on the matter.
You are, of course, right. The answer to your question, though I'm no expert so my analysis will probably be slightly off, but I believe it is in the origins of the sports. You have cricket, then you have football and rugby. Cricket originated - or rather, finally evolved in the 19th century - as a sport for gentleman of quality, and was particularly popular among British officers and the English elite. Thus, it spread to the colonies through these forms and was picked up by the countries which had particularly large numbers of well-to-do British upper classes - places like India, South Africa, eventually Australia, and the West Indies etc. I suspect Canada failed to get into it largely down to their evolution of ice hockey and from their strong US influence. This didn't tend to spread to countries of other nationalities as it was always an elite sport, not widely played until later on and not the kind of thing to be played much abroad - British officers and the landed classes weren't likely to congregate in large enough numbers to play regularly outside of a war abroad, and who is going to concentrate on cricket when there's a war to be fought? From there, the sport filtered down to the rest of the population and became widely popular in those countries.
Then there's football. Football evolved as a public school game, and that's where the Laws of the Game were formed, but I believe as the public school students left school they were in large enough numbers to continue playing the game, the game also spread like a virus across the public school of the north of England, and football players were then present in large enough numbers to keep playing the game frequently but tended to stay at home rather than spreading the game abroad to the colonies, not being of the upper classes so much. Eventually the game filtered down to the lower rungs of society so that in the 1870s and 1880s, when the first great clubs were forming, football had become the working man's game. Teams were regularly formed as teams representing the communities they came from and to this day even the biggest football teams in the UK are expected to represent their local communities and run charities and local development programs for children etc etc. This is also the reason why the American franchise model is so unpopular in the UK and Europe - because teams are seen as supposed to be representing their locales, not their owners. Anyway, because football became so widespread, because it was so easy to play, and because it was a common man's game, the sport spread to Europe rather than to the colonies, and from there spread to South America largely through British businessmen teaching the game to locals, and then spread to Africa and Asia later on.
Finally, there's rugby, which is the hardest game to decipher. Its origin comes from football, where a disagreement over the idea of holding the ball with your hands formed an irreversible split, but it developed much the same. However, it never seemed to be so popular, probably because for a sport less played amongst the elite, it was harder to play on limited resources - i.e. you needed goalposts with a high bar between them, as in American Football, and a more irregular ball. I think, as a more aggressive and forceful game, it was probably more popular amongst the hardier communities - it was very big early on among Welsh mining communities, for instance - I guess it didn't spread to Europe largely because football was easier and got there first, though I'm really not sure. I guess from there it spread to the colonies because as the game became professional around the tour of the century, players tended to tour the British colonies and spread the game there, whereas they had less interest in going to foreign countries in less exotic locations, and where they were more likely to be treated as outsiders. Notably France did pick up rugby (note France's location to the UK), and Italy though I can't explain that so well. Honestly, I'm really hazy on why rugby spread to the colonies better than football, but that's my best guess. In particular, note that Australia developed its own version of football/rugby which explains further the lack of interest in football there, though not the popularity of rugby.
