West Coast is smarter ... ?

I caught this quote from Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times. As usual, he makes an interesting point, but then takes the argument a bit to far.

Yeah, there's clearly an East Coast Bias. It manifests itself when perception is more important than reality, such as in college football.

It took 21 years for a West Coast player to win a Heisman Trophy, before last year when [USC's] Carson Palmer won. And when he had his first press conference in Cincinnati, Palmer did everything he could to distance himself from L.A. His agent or somebody must've told him that he would come across better in the East.

West Coast fans are far more sophisticated, and much smarter than East Coast fans. We see everything. Our newspapers have every box score.

This was a sidebar to one of those Page 2 rants on espn.com. It was a piece from Eric Neel that was part of an "east coast bias" series they did a few years back. Some interesting stuff, sort of.

I can't say the West Coast is smarter, but there may be something to the West having a different -- and perhaps more sophisticated -- view of sports that is less regionally biased. There certainly is something to perception versus reality.

Let's think about that for a little bit ...