Anyone in New England who has spent any time on social media in the last few days has undoubtedly seen the pictures. Connecticut put up signs in Enfield near the Massachusetts border that read:
“Welcome to Connecticut – Home of the Basketball Capital of the World.”
They’ve had the presumed desired effect of getting attention. Connecticut folks are getting chesty and Massachusetts residents are rolling their eyes.
Bay State folks aren’t alone. This is a rare time when Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey can come together to combat a common enemy. New York and New Jersey folks are similarly irritated by signs entering the state from the south on routes 95 and 84 that declare Connecticut the “Home of the Pizza Capital of the United States.”
There are a couple of good pizza joints in New Haven, but nothing worth actually going to New Haven for. And like the colleges there, there are better ones in Boston and New Jersey.
Presumably, Connecticut’s “Pothole Capital of the World” and “Never-Finished Road Construction Capital of the USA” signs aren’t up yet because the trucks carrying them are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic created by Nutmeg drivers rubbernecking at someone with a flat tire on the Merritt Parkway.
It makes sense that Connecticut, a state that’s largely known for insurance, would want to rebrand itself to something a little more exciting. But why they’re trolling their neighbors is unclear. Connecticut is the state equivalent of a middle child. It’s jealous of their older and younger siblings, and pulling stunts to get attention.
This feels a lot like when, after joining the American Athletic Conference, UConn tried to drum up an imaginary rivalry with Central Florida. They made a massive trophy and everything only to have UCF pretty much ignore them.
Storrs, Connecticut is the center of the basketball world … in March. The rest of the year? Not so much.
Connecticut IS a good college basketball state. And right now it’s a great college basketball state coming off back-to-back men’s titles. If their signs had said “College Basketball Capital of the World,” Massachusetts residents would step aside and let North Carolinians, Kansans and Kentuckians be the ones getting bent out of shape.
Connecticut deserves credit too for being way ahead of the curve for caring about and embracing the women’s college game decades before most of the rest of the country caught up.
But the truth is they’re really good at a level of basketball that the Bay State has rarely cared much about, which is too bad. Massachusetts is missing out. College basketball is fun, but if Connecticut had an NBA team it would take a backseat there too and the corporate sponsors who support UConn would rush to move their money to the professional team.
But they don’t. So they’ve hitched their sled to the Huskies.
Connecticut’s college hoops success stands out because it’s the only sports thing they’ve ever really been good at. They lost the Whalers to that hockey hotbed of North Carolina and got played for chumps by the Patriots, who used them for leverage to get a better deal to stay in Foxborough.
Massachusetts is the birthplace of basketball, the home of the Hall of Fame and the most successful basketball franchise in the history of the sport. The Celtics have 18 championships, which is more than the UConn women (11), Husky men (six) and Connecticut Sun (0) have combined. Everyone knows this, which is why Massachusetts doesn’t need to decorate its highways.
Trolling signs are the sort of thing that happens when politicians try to get cute. It’s like when Ted Kennedy referenced baseball sluggers Mike McGwire and Sammy Sooser and Ted Cruz called the hoop a “basketball ring” in Indiana.
Connecticut can be the “capital” but a capital like Harrisburg or Sacramento. Sure the legislature meets there, but like Connecticut they pale in comparison to more important places.
Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.
