Divided Loyalties

[woozy]

Yeah... the nudges were exactly what I thought I had to do. So, I'm never going to get this one.

[markhr]

Got it! Took me a while to get that final step.
Pretty clever puzzle.

[adamsimonlevine]

The answers are starting to roll in!

12. DJB
13. TerminatorX
14. Mg305
15. Schmeel
16. Anita and Steve
17. markhr
18. Carolyn
19. JM

[minimuggle]

Yeah... the nudges were exactly what I thought I had to do. So, I'm never going to get this one.

I'm in the same boat

[adamsimonlevine]

Here is a larger nudge:
7. It might help to look carefully at the lists of MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL teams.

[lbray53]

Never made it off the couch! Thankfully, the "give up and reveal" option was available in Crosshare or I would still be floundering. I got halfway there but am not sure that I would ever have solved it. In retrospect, the solution completely cleared up what I considered an inelegance while solving. That means it is on me, not the constructor.

[adamsimonlevine]

Solution time! This was a tough one.

The four geographic locations in the themers point to four US professional sports teams that occur as alternate answers to clues elsewhere in the puzzle:
1-Down: Carnivorous mammals = JACKALS, but also PANTHERS (Carolina - NFL)
10-Down: College members = ELECTORS, but also CARDINALS (St. Louis - MLB)
57-Across: They may help you get around national parks = TRAILS, but also RANGERS (Texas - MLB)
36-Down: Some noblemen = SIGNORI, but also KINGS (Los Angeles - NHL)
The first letters of the grid entries spell JETS, which is another team name.

Now, what do these teams have in common? Answer: they each have the same name as team in another league:
Florida Panthers (NHL)
Arizona Cardinals (NFL)
New York Rangers (NHL)
Sacramento Kings (NBA)
The first letters of those locations spell FANS, making our answer JETS FANS, in reference to either the NY Jets (NFL) or the Winnipeg Jets (NHL), as indicated by the instructions. Being a Jets fan of the NY variety, I really didn't have much to do in the run-up to the Super Bowl, hence this puzzle.

There were a couple of unintentional red herrings that made this a less smooth solve than I hoped. First, there were two other teams that could have been alternative answers:
1-Across: Zippy watercraft = JETSKI, but also (Los Angeles) CLIPPERS
52-Down: Moody genre = EMO, but also (St. Louis) BLUES
More importantly, I somehow failed to notice that half of the meta answer was sitting right in the upper-left corner! After jumping through many hoops to avoid having any other team names occur in the grid, I seriously don't know how I missed this. But I think many solvers may have viewed this as a feature, not a bug, so I guess it turned out OK.

Thanks for your perseverance in solving!

[Bird Lives]

The cat got halfway out of the bag. Then he must have seen his shadow or something and gone back in. Too bad. It's a neat puzzle, and I wish I had stuck with it, even if I didn't remember that the Chicago Cardinals had moved to somewhere else.

[ajk]

Even though I got bogged down by CLIPPERS I managed to backsolve to JETS, figuring that there was a match for SIGNORI that I was missing. So knew it was playing on the two JETS franchises. But then I thought I was supposed to infer from there (took a flyer on FOOTBALL JETS), so didn't go looking for an explicit second step. Fun one in retrospect, thanks.

[JeanneC]

Got part of the way through the puzzle but never scored the answer.
Brilliant construction. Matt Gaffney, watch out!