Half the country down, half to go...

With the announcement of a May 23 friendly in Tennessee, the Volunteer state becomes the 25th out of 50 to host an official US national team match. 1 New York 11/8/1925 Canada 2 California 4/28/1957 Mexico 3 Missouri 7/6/1957 Canada 4 Pennsylvania 6/25/1968 Israel 5 Georgia 10/27/1968 Canada 6 Maryland 8/29/1972 Canada 7 Illinois 8/3/1973 Poland 8 Connecticut 8/12/1973 Poland 9 Texas 6/8/1974 Mexico 10 Washington 6/24/1975 Poland 11 D.C. 10/6/1977 China 12 New Jersey 5/2/1979 France 13 Florida 10/25/1980 Canada 14 Oregon 4/4/1985 Canada 15 New Mexico 6/7/1988 Ecuador 16 Wisconsin 7/28/1990 E.Germany 17 North Carolina 9/15/1990 Trinidad 18 Colorado 5/5/1991 Uruguay 19 Massachusetts 6/1/1991 Ireland 20 Michigan 2/2/1992 C.I.S. 21 Arizona 1/30/1993 Denmark 22 Virginia 11/10/1996 Trinidad 23 Alabama 3/12/2000 Tunisia 24 Ohio 10/11/2000 Costa Rica 25 Utah 6/3/2005 Costa Rica 26 Tennessee 5/23/2006 ??? I find it interesting that a state of Ohio's population didn't host a game until Crew Stadium was built. Also, why did Georgia get a game so early? You'll notice that the last six states are all red states (aka Republican) who voted for Bush in the previous two elections. Out of the 25 states on the list, only four don't rank in the top 25 population wise (Oregon-28, Connecticut-29, Utah-34, New Mexico-36). Tennessee was the second highest without a game until last week's announcement. The most populous state that hasn't hosted a game is Indiana, followed by Minnesota, Louisiana, and Kentucky. The following states are the ones who haven't hosted a game with population rank. Indiana 14 Minnesota 21 Louisiana 22 Kentucky 25 South Carolina 26 Oklahoma 27 Iowa 30 Mississippi 31 Kansas 32 Arkansas 33 Nevada 35 West Virginia 37 Nebraska 38 Idaho 39 Maine 40 New Hampshire 41 Hawaii 42 Rhode Island 43 Montana 44 Delaware 45 South Dakota 46 North Dakota 47 Alaska 48 Vermont 49 Wyoming 50 It will probably be a long time before we can cross off some of these states. But for others, it should happen in the next ten or twenty years. The quality of stadiums is an important factor as well as population. None of the states remaining have an MLS team, so future expansion to one of them would probably lead to a USA game. Minnesota and Oklahoma could fit that description. Hawaii should get a game eventually. The DC-LA friendly there got a decent number of fans IIRC, and it would be a nice post-MLS season friendly (probably against Japan). As the southern states start to get more into soccer, they could come into play because they have the population and infrastructure. The New England states are screwed because Foxborough gets all the games, so ME/NH/RI/VT all get left out. I would love to see a game in Alaska just to screw the opposition in World Cup qualifying, but we're actually getting to the point where we're too good to have to worry about it.