Boston is no longer on the top of the sports world, slipping a few spots in the rankings with the rise of Pittsburgh over the last year. Boston finished third in the Sporting News' annual Best Sports Cities rankings, losing its title of "City of Champions" to the Steel City.
“Boston has had quite a ride in our rankings, finishing atop the list
three times in the last six years,” said Sporting News chief of correspondents Bob Hille. “And it’s a tribute to the kind of year that
Pittsburgh had that it dislodged Boston, which despite not winning a
major professional championship still had a great sports year with its
home teams.”
Philadelphia topped Boston to finish second in a pool a of nearly 400 cities and towns in the United States and Canada. The rankings are created by a system that assigns points to several categories, which include a city’s number of teams, their regular-season won-lost records, playoff berths, bowl appearances and tournament bids, championships, applicable power ratings, fan fervor, attendance and others.
Here are the winners since the rankings began in 1993:
2008 – Boston
2007 – Detroit
2006 – Chicago
2005 – Boston
2004 – Boston
2003 – Anaheim/Los Angeles
2002 – Boston
2001 – New York
2000 – St. Louis
1999 – New York
1998 – Detroit
1997 – Denver
1995 – Denver
1994 – Cleveland
1993 – Chicago
Note: There was no winner in 1996 as the ratings were expanded and refined.
