Football town, baseball town, etc.

Baseball towns
New York
Boston
St. Louis
Chicago
Cincinnati
Kansas City
Seattle???
Minneapolis???

Basketball towns
Los Angeles
Phoenix
Sacramento
Orlando
San Antonio
Oklahoma City
Portland

Hockey towns
Detroit

I might be forgetting one or two, but I would argue that every other market the NFL is the biggest show in town among the pro franchises.

 

D.C. is not a football town; it's a Redskins town. UMd draws flies unless contending for a BCS berth.

D.C. is a basketball town. Georgetown, Maryland, Mason more recently ...

If the Wizards ever compete for another title, the area would go nuts.

 

The Vikings for the Minneapolis / St. Paul market.

 

Definitely the NHL has failed in MSP, but the Wild have sold out every home game in their existence, so I'd say hockey is back no matter what the Wild do. I'd go Vikings, Twins, Wild, the main U, then Wolves.

Denver has had the Broncos for so long, and they're so ingrained in the culture there that Denver will always, first and foremost, be a Broncos town — no matter how many Stanley Cups the Avs win. No. 2 in that part of the world seems to be whoever's doing well, and the other three teams have each had that in recent years.

This (and Wicked's post) points out another discussion to have — team town vs. sports town.

 

Yeah, I wasn't counting the rest of the state.

 

Second those who say Chicago is a Bears town.

 

Agree, but is it a football town? Don't you have to measure the Cubs & White Sox suport vs. that of the Bears to make that determination?

I think if you do that, it's close.

As someone said earlier, the wide support of various college football programs across Chicago might be what puts it over the line as a football town.

 

The easiest way to determine what a town "is" is to figure out who gets the most pub/interest/outrage if all the teams suck.

 

That's probably why the Journal-Sentinel has five Packers writers and two Brewers writers.

 

I'd still call Charlotte a college basketball town first, and a NASCAR town second. The Panthers are third, and the Bobcats are a distant fourth.

 

Funny you say that, because as a kid I remember the Eagles going several years without a home sellout, except maybe against the Giants and Cowboys. This was during the Marion Campbell years, mid-80s or so. I remember an Eagles home game being on TV as a special treat because it was so rare.
If the Eagles have a three- or four-year stretch of genuine suckitude, don't be so sure the fans will keep filling the stadium.

As for the Nats, that might also have more to do with the team being bad than no one supporting baseball. The Orioles are in the same boat. You can hop the train from New York or Philly to Baltimore or Washington, see a game for half the price it costs in your home park, and be back home that night.
Look at the Strasburg starts. If there's something to get excited about, the fans might support baseball in D.C. They just haven't had much to get excited about since the Nats came to town, so it's hard to tell.

 

RFK was a mostly filled when the Nats first came to town and they were in the playoff race for two-thirds of the season. Camden Yards, a sizable stadium, regularly filled up for the first few years of the Orioles' slide. Can't blame the fans for staying away for the past 10 years, some of those teams have been downright dreadful.