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What's the Best Sports City in North America?

Think you know? Is your first thought Boston, now enjoying a nirvana of professional sports success probably unequaled in the city's sporting history? Well, according to this study by the folks at the Toronto Star, limited to the cities in North America north of the Rio Grande (I guess success in the Mexican Football League was too hard to track, you know with all those Latin American tournaments they play in), Boston is only second best; the winner is probably the least likeliest city you would imagine. Oh, and did I mention that it has exactly one championship in the last two decades to its credit? One more thing before we get to the winner that makes this little study a bit suspect. The third place team, and highest ranking Canadian city is Vancouver. A gorgeous city and one of my favorite cities in the world, but didn't it lose a NBA team, okay, it was the Grizzlies, but still...

Enough suspense, according to the Toronto Star, the best sports city in North America is Indianapolis?!? Yes, the Colts finally won a Super Bowl and the NCAA is headquartered there which brings the city the Final Four on a regular basis as well as numerous other NCAA championship events, and once a year there is the Indy 500, but don't you have to have winning teams to be the sports city? Has anybody at the Toronto Star actually watched a Pacers game lately? Does anybody know where the Indianapolis Racers hockey team went?

The city does have a decent AAA baseball team in the Indians, the AAA affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who have a very nice relatively new ballpark near downtown. Still, I'm not sure AAA baseball, even if successful qualifies you for this award.

To measure the relative sporting success of major North American cities, the Toronto Star ranked 37 cities with at least two professional sports teams based on their winning percentages since 2000. Teams ? which were drawn from baseball, hockey, football and basketball ? were awarded bonus points for making the playoffs or winning a championship. The results above rank the winningest ? and losingest ? across the continent.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on May 25, 2009 (boomark / email).