The Sportz Guru Report

Every city in the NFL claims to have the "Best Fans" and to be the best "Football Town".  While some would think it is arbitrary and too difficult to measure for sure, USA Today came out today with one way to do so.  By using TV ratings, USA Today released it's list of the Top 10 Football Towns in the NFL.  Basically they looked at TV ratings when that city's team was on television.  While who is on the list may not be a surprise, what was more surprising to me was who WASN'T on the list.

Teams not in the Top 10 include:
Atlanta, Dallas, Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Jacksonville, Carolina, Cleveland and even the winner of the last 2 Super Bowl's, New England.  While some of these are surprising, it seems large cities with alot going on have better things to do than watch football on Sundays.  Some appear to just be sick of losing(see Cleveland). 

But the Top 10 has its share of surprises as well.

Top 10 -
10.  Minnesota
 9.  Tampa Bay  -  Only truly warm weather city in the list
 8.  Cincinnati  -  This was a surprise since the team has been a loser for the last 15 years.
 7.  Denver  -  Not a surprise, one of the largest citys in the list.
 6.  Philadelphia - Passionate fans
 5.  Indianapolis - Traditional basketball state has been won over by winning
 4.  Kansas City - KC loves their Chiefs
 3.  Buffalo - Makes sense since they don't see the sun 8 months out of the year
 2.  Green Bay - Pretty Obvious
 1.  Pittsburgh - I was not surprised by this at all.  This city LIVES for it's football team.  70% of all TVs on are tuned in to the Steelers game every Sunday.

As a Clevelander, I am ashamed.  I am not a Browns fan, despise them in fact(I am a huge Broncos fans as I have mentioned before), but I listen to Clevelanders bash Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Buffalo fans and ALL 3 are in the Top 10, and Cleveland is no where to be found.  As a core, Browns fans are extremely passionate, but as a home fan base, AWFUL.

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this