Sorry ER, but the vote is in....
Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 12:40 pm
The Sporting News ranked the best sports cities for the different sports (as well as overall).....
Best Overall Sports City : Boston
Best Baseball : Bay Area
Best College Football : Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baseball Quote :
"Two teams, 162 home games, 114 home victories (57 each) in the 2003 season. That's a combined .704 home winning percentage for San Francisco and Oakland, which means if you saw the home team(s) lose more than a handful of times last season, you're either a season-ticket holder or a jinx. Though neither the Giants nor the A's parlayed regular-season dominance at home into a World Series appearance, they gave the home crowds plenty to cheer and outdistanced the other multi-team metropolitan areas in the home-record standings"
The Angels-Dodgers were third on the list behind the ChiSox and Cubs, and ahead of the Yankees-Mets.
College Football Quote :
"No, no, no, you misunderstood. When the Sporting News crowned Southern California as it's national champion after the 2003 college football season, it was a mistake. OK, actually the mistake was when we inadvertently sent a USC-based cover into parts of Louisiana. If we needed proof of an entire state's passion, it's energies focused on one team in one city, then the LSU fans gave it to us. Boy, did they give it to us. E-mail. Phone calls. Letters. We got an idea of what opponents feel like when stadium public-address announcer Dan Borne says, "It's Saturday Night in Death Valley, and here come your Fighting Tigers of LSU". Sellout (91,600 plus) after raucous sellout, and a BCS championship victory down the road in New Orleans, too, mean one thing in our Best Sports City rankings: Baton Rouge is No. 1. Really"
*Note on the sellouts in BR....1964...last time LSU didn't sell out a game.
Cool facts about Tiger Stadium :
-- #6 On-Campus Stadium Capacities in the Nation
-- Sport Magazine named Tiger Stadium "the most feared road playing site in America."
-- ESPN named LSU's pre-game party the best in all of America
-- Data compiled by the Sporting News and the College Football Associationt show Tiger Stadium to be the most difficult place for a visiting team to play
-- Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly, in a column debating college football vs. pro football, penned that "College football is LSU's Tiger Stadium at night."
-- When Tiger quarterback Tommy Hodson threw to Eddie Fuller for a winning touchdown against Auburn, the explosion of the crowd was so thunderous that it caused an earth tremor that registered on a seismograph meter in LSU's Geology Department across campus.
Quotes about Tiger Statium :
"I stood in Tiger Stadium and I thought, 'This is what the Colosseum in Rome must have been like.'" -- Ed Simonini, Texas A&M linebacker.
"It was like the Colosseum in Rome and we were the Christians." -- The late Bobby Dodd of Georgia Tech.
"Unbelievable, crazy. That place makes Notre Dame seem like Romper Room." -- Brad Budde, USC lineman.
"It makes a body tingle. These folks go berserk when the band marches on the field. A huge roar is heard for the invocation, for heaven's sake. They not only know the words to the national anthem, they sing them, loudly. And when the Tigers win the toss...there are tears of ecstasy." -- Douglas Looney, Sports Illustrated describing a Saturday night in Death Valley.
"Baton Rouge happens to be the worst place in the world to be a visiting team." -- The Late Paul "Bear" Bryant, head coach of Kentucky, Texas A&M and Alabama.
Miami coach Terry Hoeppener said of Tiger Stadium, "that's an exciting as an environment as you can have. I thought the crowd was a factor for us because we had communication problems we haven't had at Michigan and Ohio State."
Best Overall Sports City : Boston
Best Baseball : Bay Area
Best College Football : Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baseball Quote :
"Two teams, 162 home games, 114 home victories (57 each) in the 2003 season. That's a combined .704 home winning percentage for San Francisco and Oakland, which means if you saw the home team(s) lose more than a handful of times last season, you're either a season-ticket holder or a jinx. Though neither the Giants nor the A's parlayed regular-season dominance at home into a World Series appearance, they gave the home crowds plenty to cheer and outdistanced the other multi-team metropolitan areas in the home-record standings"
The Angels-Dodgers were third on the list behind the ChiSox and Cubs, and ahead of the Yankees-Mets.
College Football Quote :
"No, no, no, you misunderstood. When the Sporting News crowned Southern California as it's national champion after the 2003 college football season, it was a mistake. OK, actually the mistake was when we inadvertently sent a USC-based cover into parts of Louisiana. If we needed proof of an entire state's passion, it's energies focused on one team in one city, then the LSU fans gave it to us. Boy, did they give it to us. E-mail. Phone calls. Letters. We got an idea of what opponents feel like when stadium public-address announcer Dan Borne says, "It's Saturday Night in Death Valley, and here come your Fighting Tigers of LSU". Sellout (91,600 plus) after raucous sellout, and a BCS championship victory down the road in New Orleans, too, mean one thing in our Best Sports City rankings: Baton Rouge is No. 1. Really"
*Note on the sellouts in BR....1964...last time LSU didn't sell out a game.
Cool facts about Tiger Stadium :
-- #6 On-Campus Stadium Capacities in the Nation
-- Sport Magazine named Tiger Stadium "the most feared road playing site in America."
-- ESPN named LSU's pre-game party the best in all of America
-- Data compiled by the Sporting News and the College Football Associationt show Tiger Stadium to be the most difficult place for a visiting team to play
-- Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly, in a column debating college football vs. pro football, penned that "College football is LSU's Tiger Stadium at night."
-- When Tiger quarterback Tommy Hodson threw to Eddie Fuller for a winning touchdown against Auburn, the explosion of the crowd was so thunderous that it caused an earth tremor that registered on a seismograph meter in LSU's Geology Department across campus.
Quotes about Tiger Statium :
"I stood in Tiger Stadium and I thought, 'This is what the Colosseum in Rome must have been like.'" -- Ed Simonini, Texas A&M linebacker.
"It was like the Colosseum in Rome and we were the Christians." -- The late Bobby Dodd of Georgia Tech.
"Unbelievable, crazy. That place makes Notre Dame seem like Romper Room." -- Brad Budde, USC lineman.
"It makes a body tingle. These folks go berserk when the band marches on the field. A huge roar is heard for the invocation, for heaven's sake. They not only know the words to the national anthem, they sing them, loudly. And when the Tigers win the toss...there are tears of ecstasy." -- Douglas Looney, Sports Illustrated describing a Saturday night in Death Valley.
"Baton Rouge happens to be the worst place in the world to be a visiting team." -- The Late Paul "Bear" Bryant, head coach of Kentucky, Texas A&M and Alabama.
Miami coach Terry Hoeppener said of Tiger Stadium, "that's an exciting as an environment as you can have. I thought the crowd was a factor for us because we had communication problems we haven't had at Michigan and Ohio State."