Denver: tops by a mile

Sporting News, The, June 30, 1997 by Bob Hille

The best seat in the Best Sports City, the cathedra smack in the middle of the 48,000 who worship 81 times a season, unfolds for you and me each night.

Oh, there are seats closer to the action -- down there on the 100 level, down where the unfailingly polite ushers wearing green, purple and smiles that make my face hurt as they wipe, wipe, wipe the already immaculate plastic seats for any stray dust. You can get those seats if you play your cards right.

"I like it up here because you're right behind home plate, kind of high. Everything unfolds right in front of you." Up here, in Section 330, 21 rows below the 5,280-feet elevation mark signified by a ring of purple seats, my usher, Sean, his fresh-scrubbed face telegraphing his earnestness like a Jerry DiPoto fastball, is telling me why this is the best seat in the best house in the Best Sports City.

Let's get the messy part out of the way right here at the top (read this carefully; it might save you 32 cents on a stamp or the cost of a fax or e-mail): For a city to have made it to the final cut for No.1 in our fourth ranking of the best sports cities, it must have at least one team in each of the four major professional leagues, as well as a school that plays Division I-A football and Division I basketball.

Sorry, New York, we know you would like to claim Rutgers on proximity as your Division I-A football team to qualify. Uhuh. Tough luck, LA No NFL team, no finalist. (Complain among yourselves.) To be ranked at all, a city must have at least a Division I basketball team, and that's how the Itta Benas and Coraopolises of this sporting realm land on the overall list, when a good-sized town like, say, Midland, Texas, doesn't.

Our rankings are based on the present sports climate, with the criteria including champions, contenders, overall fan fervor, sports atmosphere and knowledgeability, abundance of teams, stadium quality, accessibility and ambience, ticket availability, franchise ownership, marquee appeal of athletes and quality of competition.

In some cases, we included college towns in the area (for example, Michigan with Detroit, Stanford and Cal with the Bay Area) when those schools clearly are an important part of their markets' sports fabric. Tradition? The Browns are in Baltimore. Forget about it. This is a year-to-year thing. Detroit scores points for winning the Stanley Cup this year but isn't penalized for not having won it since we liked Ike.

Our top 10 best sports cities share some common characteristics:

* There are plenty of teams for which to root in plenty of sports, and in a couple of instances you can take your pick from a couple of teams in the same sport. Look at it this way: If you're served up the same food every day, even if it's your favorite, after a while you're going to get bored. The key to a wellrounded and fulfilling sports experience is being able to pick and choose at the buffet, sampling on a whim what you're interested in on a particular day.

* Though there are shifting tides of interest in each of the top 10 cities, there is in each a sizable hard-core knot of fans who, like we do, disdain the corporate suits who scoop the best seats and then talk on their cell phones during fourth-quarter comebacks. We salute the "macrofans," those who read, watch, listen and talk sports almost every waking hour. They want to know where their city ranks, and inevitably they will say it's ranked too low.

* The top cities are appealing away from the stadiums and arenas. Whether it's sailing on Lake Michigan, golf at Pebble Beach, fishing on Lake Ray Hubbard or, God forbid, visiting world-class museums and art galleries in L.A., New York and D.C., the non-spectating opportunities abound.

Understand, then, that the Best Sports City is not won by winning alone. A crown, indeed, is a jewel in our rankings, but it is not the determining force.

Motown and Chi-town. The Big Apple and Green Bay. Gainesville, Knoxville and Tucson, too. In the past 12 months, each has celebrated a championship in what we call "The Big Six."

Title towns, one and all, in the NHL, NBA, major league baseball, the NFL, college football and basketball. But not a one is the Best Sports City.

The Best Sports City in 1997 is Denver, where the sun shines 310 days a year and the sports possibilities are cloudless year-round.

The best view of the best house in the Best Sports City comes from 6,000 feet above sea level; that's where helicopter pilot Jim Dirker is fighting the winds that are the foreword to afternoon thunderstorms that are as much a part of summer along the Front Range of the Rockies as rush-hour jams on the Valley Highway.

As we hover west of Coors Field, high beyond centerfield, the stadium's brick is particularly red in the gathering dusk, the diamond's green especially bright. I squint and can see that the Padres have a man on third, two out. Dirker swings us to the south of the stadium and loops back northwest, putting us directly between the best house in the Best Sports City and a downtown that continues to grow at an unflaging rate, the bust of the early '80S but a distant memory.