Is D.C. the Worst Major League City?
I wrote something on this topic about two months ago for the paper, but I never followed up, so here is the follow-up.
I wanted to find a way to measure which Major League City, defined by having at least one franchise in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, had the worst year in 2005-2006. I chose to do this by ranking each franchise, 1-30, on their regular season finishes within their league. I chose to do this in 2006, because this was the first calendar year we've had D.C. teams in all those four sports. (In 2005, we had baseball but no hockey.) And what I found, in late July, was that we weren't quite the worst. We were second-to-worst, 11th out of the 12 metropolitan areas which have at least one team in each of those four leagues.
Some blogger friends of mine, such as CapsNut, were none too pleased with my methodology, pointing out that regular season finishes are kind of bunk. To which I'd say, true, but for months upon months of local misery, regular season loserness is probably as apt a measure as any. I also heard from a statistician from a local university, who pointed out that, statistically speaking, my plan was stupid. To which I'd say, that's probably true.
(Strangely, I didn't hear from any DCU fans, pointing out that their club could raise our civic pride, but if I had, I'd have responded that a 12-team league can't fairly be compared to four leagues that each have about 30 teams.)
(I also didn't deal with colleges, because that's too bloody complicated. Although it's our salvation lately, eh? Your defending national champion Maryland field hockey team is ranked first in the nation.)
Anyhow, when I did the math after the MLB season ended, I came up with some depressing news: we're still not No. 12. Despite a late run by the Atlanta Braves, our Southern peers still play in the all-around worst Major League City.
Thing is, I realized that maybe I'm counting the wrong NFL season. This year's NFL season ends on Dec. 31, 2006, so maybe the way to do this is to count the 2006 NFL regular season, in which case, barring a miracle finish by the 'Skins or a collapse by the Falcons, we would likely finish 12th out of 12, with only one playoff team in the four pro leagues. Which, I think, would be fine; you have to reach the bottom before you can start climbing toward the top, or something like that.
For the record, Kids Post columnist Fred Bowen did something similar a few years back, but if I'm reading his methodology right, it was even dumber than mine. He essentially penalized cities that had fewer pro franchises, which hurt our at-the-time Nat-less city. But I won't be too hard on Fred, since it was just after Gibbs returned and he had some stars in his eyes. Like so:
"Everyone expects the Hall of Fame football coach to lead the Skins back to their winning ways and maybe even to the Super Bowl before long," he wrote.
Right.
Anyhow, college basketball, people. It's all about college basketball. Plus the ABA. We're gonna rule the ABA. The NightHawks are gonna totally crush those Wootton High students and teachers this week.
(Speaking of the ABA, the Minnesota Ripknees just signed the son of Ted Cottrell, who played tight end for the Vikings last year. Sort of the reverse Antonio Gates phenomenon.)
By Dan Steinberg |
October 23, 2006; 6:27 PM ET
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Posted by: Gary Digital Williams | October 23, 2006 5:47 PM
Well, "Worst Major League City" based purely on results is a bit misleading. First of all, there's only 12 "Major League" cities. There's 30 teams in each sport, yet there's only complete overlap in 12 of them? That's got to count for something.
And yes, you can't really include (soon to be) 13 team MLS as a major category, but some sort of bonus points should be given to any city that has the Big Four AND MLS. (the Big Four + ?). That narrows the field more, to LA, Chicago, Boston/NE, NY (if you call the Red Bulls*** an MLS team), and DC.
Posted by: Kim | October 23, 2006 8:07 PM
Dan -- here's is one question I've been wondering, do we have more people who root for teams other than the DC home team than any other city?
I mean they say this area is Redskins crazy, OK, I buy that. To fill up a stadium with 90,000 plus people consistently and have a waiting list there are a lot of people rooting for the home football team.
But are these then the same people who root for teams against the Caps, Nats, and Wiz? Or is there just complete apathy to all other sports by the majority of people who root for the Redskins. I don't know, it would sure be interesting to find out though.
To me a measure of a "major league" city is the percentage of the population who vigourously support all of the professional sports franchises in a particular city, not just one.
Posted by: kthhken | October 23, 2006 9:52 PM
kthhken,
I would say Atlanta and possibly Phoenix come close to DC in that regard.
To me the interesting thing isn't the worst major league city by performance, but the worst major league city by fan support. A better study would be to measure percentage of seating capacity sold. You can't really blame the citizens of a city for the performance of their teams, but you can blame them for lack of support. My guess is that Atlanta would blow everyone away in terms of the worst city then.
Posted by: Chris | October 24, 2006 7:56 AM
I used to work for Turner Sports teams. Trust me it's way worse there. Not even close. Did you even see the game the other day? There seemed to be more Steelers Fans than Falcons fans. That's post Vick too. You should have seen it pre-vick.
Posted by: Azzurins | October 24, 2006 9:33 AM
Chris -- I agree with you. I was thinking that last night after I posted. It would be an interesting and relatively easy study to measure attendance at all sporting venues in a particular city combined. Then rank the city's. Make the city have to have at least two sports franchises (NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, MLS) to qualify. I may even do this on my own if the data is on the internet. Oh and I would say try to use data going back at lest 5-6 years.
Posted by: kthhken | October 24, 2006 1:03 PM
Some of the "other fans" is also due to our lack of teams for several years. We lost an entire generation of baseball fans and both the Caps and Le Boulez are relatively new (and historically lousy) teams.
I think sports "bigamy" generally is on the rise all over. If you aren't passionate about a particular sport, you tend to be a bandwagon fan in that sport.
Posted by: tallbear | October 24, 2006 1:07 PM
Come one Steinberg, you've got a groundswell of support to do a new ranking based on fan support rather than just performance, let's see what you come up with. If I didn't get an e-mail from work last week telling me that if I went on any sites that weren't news or work related, I'd be all over this.
Posted by: Chris | October 24, 2006 4:12 PM
"That narrows the field more, to LA, Chicago, Boston/NE, NY (if you call the Red Bulls*** an MLS team), and DC."
You forgot Dallas.
Posted by: dallasite | October 25, 2006 9:45 AM
How many markets have teams in all six "major" pro leagues: MLB, NFL, NBA, WNBA, NHL and MLS? I can think of only three: Washington, New York and Chicago. And if you add college sports to the mix, metro D.C. has far more to offer (among colleges with I-A football, Maryland has a stronger all-around program than Rutgers or Northwestern).
Posted by: Vincent | October 25, 2006 12:19 PM
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Lets not overlook the fact that we had a world boxing champion come out of the DC area this year. Eric "Mighty Mouse" Aiken of Forestville won the IBF Featherweight championship earlier this year. He did not hold it long, however.