The Ultimate Sporting City Round 2: Detroit vs. Los Angeles

L.A. can support so many teams because it’s huge. The reason the area can hold two hockey teams is not that a majority of the population likes hockey, but that there are so many people there that the small percentage that does like hockey can support two franchises.

That’s what makes it hard to qualify these kinds of debates — there are fewer hockey fans in Calgary as there are in Los Angeles County, but those hockey fans make up 80 percent of Calgary’s population, whereas it’s about 5 percent of L.A.’s. Which is really the better hockey city? Michigan has more wins, a better winning percentage, and greater long-term consistency at the top of NCAA football, but USC is coming off of a dynasty.

I don’t think a city’s large population can count for it. There are large cities all over the world who get a large amount of interest in all or most of their major sports — Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago. L.A. doesn’t have that level of sports interest, except for the Lakers (and it’s telling that in such an NBA town, the Clippers get very little support). The only reason L.A. is a big sports market is that it’s simply a humongous market, and therefore can support so many teams, and therefore at any given time it’s likely that several of those teams will be very good.

Detroit is the antithesis to that: The market has gone in the last 30 years from about 5.5 million (counting metro area) to about 2.5 million, or from a really good market to medium. Furthermore, the financial base that’s really the meat and potatoes of a sports franchise’s financial success (in sale of apparel, suites, high-priced tickets) has taken an even bigger hit. Yet Detroit sports have continued on unabated, with ridiculously long consecutive sellout streaks for hockey, basketball, and college and pro football, and a baseball team that is among the best-financed in the game.

I agree with you that winning should play a role. As Brian Cook noted in the Detroit/Tampa Bay Round 1 writeup, there should be a balance between success (or the fanbase ends up as depressing as Cleveland) and failure (or else you start saying “unacceptable” as often Boston). I think a winning tradition is probably a good attribute that L.A. has in a best-sports-town debate, but you’ve inflated it by focusing only on a few hand-picked examples. Carroll-era USC football, Wooden-era UCLA basketball, Laker basketball — these are great. What about the Clippers, who are terrible. Or the Rams, who when they were in L.A. were terrible. The Angels have been mediocre to decent in their short history. The Dodgers’ best years were in Brooklyn, but as a franchise they’re up there with the Tigers.UCLA football (though I think they’re quietly getting better) is nothing to write home about. The ‘Queens and Quacks,’ except for a now-ended Duck run with some of the least likable players in hockey, have been historically bad or mediocre. L.A. has had success because it has a lot of teams, but if you put them all together, it’s a pretty average success rate for a city. Hey, you don’t lose as much as Cleveland. But you don’t really win as consistently as Boston, or even Detroit for that matter.

The problem is, that’s the only attribute that L.A. excels in, but not the only attribute that’s considered. It’s well to note that Detroit excels in that too: the NHL team is dynastic, the local college football team is the best, historically, in the game. The baseball team and the basketball team are both up there as among the top percentile of success. Only the NFL team is consistently bad — yet that team is so epically bad, whatever we lose on winning percentage is made up in the profound statement it says about the fans that they’re still supported.

If you read the case for L.A. above, winning really isn’t the best thing you’ve got going for you — it’s the rivalries. For one, Giants/Dodgers is a great rivalry, except it’s hard to give L.A. much credit for it since the move to California kind of lessened the thing’s intensity. Lakers/Celtics is simply classic, and you get mad points for that. Intra-city rivalries are frikkin cool, and the UCLA/USC one is maybe the coolest of all of those (the messing-with-USC’s-statue thing just oozes awesome). However, Kings/Ducks doesn’t even register beside Rangers/Isles; Lakers/Clippers is more rape than rivalry; and Dodgers/Angels isn’t exactly talking North Side/South Side. USC’s rivalry with Notre Dame trumps Michigan’s rivalry with Notre Dame — I’ll give you that. Still, you’ve ultimately got three great rivalries, and then a bunch of meh ones. Detroit comes back with the ultimate rivalry, Michigan-Ohio State, and then that epic Red Wings/Avalanche rivalry. Then you throw in the Pistons’ third wheel presence in the Lakers/Celtics thing, and the Lions’ contra-fans thing, and.. yeah, L.A. wins on rivalries. One thing.

As far as hockey is concerned, I don’t think that it should count less, just count less for certain teams. It’s not “minor” sport, but a regional one. You wouldn’t hold it against New York for not caring about NASCAR, because that’s a Southern sport. Likewise, I think holding bad NHL support against L.A. or Phoenix is unfair, though I give some bonus points to the Bay Area for its support of the San Jose Sharks. Conversely, a northern town that doesn’t support its NHL team(s) very well (examples: Pittsburgh until they were gifted a team to root for, New York) should very much be downgraded for it. If you grew up in a desert and never owned a pair of Bauers, that’s not your fault, but if you were born surrounded by lots of frozen lakes, and you never skated on them, that says something about your commitment to sports.

The place where L.A. lost this one wasn’t in winning. It was the fans. Nobody thinks L.A. fans are bad people (Philadelphia fans OTOH…), but if you compare them against fans of most sports cities in the country, they are absolutely bad at being fans. The things we judge fans on: strong, widespread support for their teams through thick and thin, quirky and cool traditions, rationality, etc., are not strong suits for the Los Angeles fanbase. It’s a result of transplantism, and the self-centered egoism of the entertainment. In other words, L.A.’s fanbase suffers because we Midwestern towns sent a large bulk of our would-be actors and musicians to you.

One thing that’s special about Detroit — in fact we use this as a selling point for free agents all the time — is that the fans here are more likely to have a beer with our rare celebrities than crucify them. L.A. is very experienced at dealing with celebrities, and the athletes ease into that same role. Conversely, Detroiters, Minnesotans, et al. rarely see celebs, thus there’s very few paparazzi, and maybe like one correspondent for the gossip magazines. Nor do we really have anywhere special to put them (most athletes here get homes in the northwestern suburbs, which is where a majority of metro-Detroiters live as well), the result being that the athletes get to actually be functioning members of the community (When Kris Draper’s not digging for pucks along the boards, he’s on the housing board). I think this creates kind of a throwback effect, where the fanbase is more apt to empathize with an athlete than to judge him. It’s attractive for athletes, who get to live like normal human beings, and also beneficial to fanbase clarity (you’re less likely to call for a guy’s job when his daughter is your daughter’s class).

In conclusion, nobody here thinks that L.A. is a bad sports town, just that Detroit is, all things considered, an exceptional one.