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Sports Criteria

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  • I would like to direct you all over to the Barbershop Talk forum to take a look at my extensive....rant...you could call it, I prefer to say "in depth analysis" in which I rebuke and debunk Forbe's magazines listing of Cleveland as the most miserable city in America. I take point by point each of the criteria that Forbes laid out. So, please take a look over there.

    For here, I simply wanted to reproduce the "Sports" portion of the criteria to give you a bit of a flavor for what I did there:

    OK, I see that Forbes final, newly added criteria is "Sports team success".

    Now, we know that Cleveland has had poor luck with the success of its sports teams, but what constitutes "success"?

    I mean, let's ask this: Is it better to have a team and have it disappoint? Or to not have a team at all?

    Let's look at a couple of factors:

    1. Yes Cleveland has not had a major team title since 1964...Browns NFL. So, let's compare "misery" along that lines with another city:

    Let's take: San Diego!! And compare on all fronts with Cleveland: San Diego has not had a major team title since 1963, when the Chargers last won an AFL title. And San Diego LOST the Clippers to LA. Cleveland kept our team when it tried to move. The San Diego area is quite a bit larger now than the Cleveland, almost twice the size, yet it has only 2 major sports franchises compared to Cleveland's 3.

    And how about the others: A. On the Superfund map, San Diego seems to have a couple of major sites. Cleveland has none. B. San Diego has the 10th worst crime rate in the US, Cleveland 33rd. C. San Diego has the 12th worst commute time, Cleveland is not even in the top 30. D. San Diego has a higher unemployment rate than Cleveland. E.On the report that noted that Ohio's tax rate ranked 38th, it also noted that California's effective tax rate was like third highest in the country.

    On every criteria...San Diego is worse than Cleveland: pollution, crime, congestion, unemployment, sports team failure, tax rate....every criteria but one: Winter weather.

    Does San Diego's nice weather trump ALL the advantages that Cleveland has over it? (Well, maybe...but really?)

    On the sports team failure criteria also consider: Is Cleveland's failure to win a title as bad as losing two NFL teams like LA has? I have talked about San Diego which is double the size of Cleveland having only 2 team, and I mentioned LA having no NFL teams, but also consider these:

    1. The Seattle area, which is larger than the Cleveland area by far also has only 2 teams, having lost their NBA team (and that city has had no title since 1979).

    2. St. Louis..larger than Cleveland... lost their NBA and NFL teams before getting one back.

    3. Baltimore...larger than Cleveland has only 2 teams and now has to glom off DC for hockey and NBA.

    4. Portland, Oregon, a metro area only about 200,000 people less than Cleve. is a one horse town with only an NBA team

    5. The same is true for Sacramento, only about 400K less people than Cleveland.

    6. The same is true for San Antonio. If you include the Austin area it is bigger than the Cleveland area...has only 1 horse, the Spurs.

    7. Las Vegas, a no horse town is now only about 400K less in population than Cleveland.

    8. The same is true for the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area. No teams at all.

    Is it better to have a team and lose or to have no team at all?

    And, again, what happens if the Cavs win?

    Then Forbes will having nothing to fall back on except that we are a town that gets some snow in winter, but less than Denver or Salt Lake.

    So much for this analysis.

    ❤
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