Power Ranking The Top 200 U.S. Metro Areas

 

A thousand apologies for the mouthwatering clickbait, but I’m not actually gonna power rank the United States metro areas in any particular subjective order. Matter of fact, I'm not even quite sure what the difference is between “power ranking” and just straight up "ranking" things. Honestly though, I think that US metros should be talked and thought about wayy more, especially in the world of sports. 

For example, the Riverside-San Bernardino metro area has a population of about 4.1 million people, but doesn't have a single Big 4 professional sports team. Meanwhile, the Buffalo-Niagara (1.1 million) and New Orleans (1.3 million) metro areas each have multiple pro teams, with less than a third of the population. I know this data isn't nearly as significant as it is interesting, because the last thing Southern California needs is another pro team with minimum attendance and fanfare. But take a look at this map of MLB markets. 

 

 

The Atlanta Braves' reach is the craziest thing about it to me. Their fanbase essentially encompasses the entire state of Georgia (10.6 million), South Carolina (5.1 million), and Alabama (4.9 million), on top of the majority of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Western North Carolina. That's an insane amount of people across a gigantic amount of land for just a single team. That's why if I had to propose one new professional sports club in America — in a metro area that doesn't have any yet — it'd be an MLB team in Louisville or Virginia Beach-Norfolk. Even though I think Nashville would be the most suitable and profitable bet. 

So now that I've attempted to pretend to link sports with geography in a semi meaningful way, here's a video of me trying to name the top 200 most populous U.S. metro areas.