ESPN The Magazine’s annual Best In Sports issue, which will hit the newsstands on Friday, has determined what we long knew to be true — the Green Bay Packers are the best franchise in sports.
That’s right, not the NFL, but all of sports.
How did they arrive at the obvious, you ask?
The rankings are determined by a multi-tiered analysis that examines a team’s efficiency in spending fan money as compared to its on-field performance. It also factors in feedback in 21 categories from more than 70,000 fans nationwide, both online at ESPN.com and in polling conducted by both independent third parties.
In all, 122 teams from the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball were ranked in order, based on a weighted average of scores in eight different categories ranging from the quantitative to the emotionally subjective: “bang for the buck” (24.3%), players (16.6%), fan relations (16.5%), affordability (14.1%), stadium experience (9.1%), ownership (9.0%), title track (6.7%), and coaching (3.9%).
The Packers placed first in two categories — stadium experience and title track, which tries to determine how many championships a franchise will win in a fan’s lifetime.
The organization also ranked fourth overall in “bang for the buck” and fifth in coaching and ownership.
Following the Packers in the top five were the Tampa Bay Lightning, [intlink id=”234″ type=”category”]New Orleans Saints[/intlink], Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and San Antonio Spurs.
Finishing dead last at No. 122 was the [intlink id=”86″ type=”category”]Cincinnati Bengals[/intlink], which makes me wonder if they even bothered to consider the [intlink id=”35″ type=”category”]Minnesota Vikings[/intlink].
I believe the key word is: Franchise…The queens doesnt even qualify for “sports club”. They would win the “Pants down and fu*% sheep” contest in a landslide though.
They may have gotten #1 right, but I have to seriously question any list where the Tampa Bay Lightning are #2 and the Detroit Red Wings are #17. Only in an alternate universe is a Florida hockey team a better franchise than the Red Wings.