The Packers may not competing in Sunday's Super Bowl for the title of America's best football team, but at least Green Bay is America’s best football city for fans in 2017.
That's according to WalletHub’s unexpectedly quantitative analysis, comparing 244 U.S. cities with at least one college or professional football team across 17 key metrics. The number-crunchers at the personal finance and credit score website ranked Green Bay No. 1 overall, with a total score of 63.69, largely thanks to its high fan engagement, stadium accessibility and team success.
For comparison's sake, Madison, with its Wisconsin Badgers, finished No. 62 overall (18.75 total score) and 13th among "midsize" cities. Green Bay was first among small cities, as well as overall.
So even though the Packers were obliterated by the Falcons in the NFC Championship Game, ending our beloved table-runners’ season just short of the Super Bowl, cheeseheads can take heart – and make a mild case for superiority – knowing their team’s city is still the best for football fans. And remember, Lambeau Field was Wisconsin's most Instagrammed spot last year.
Green Bay finished first in "most engaged NFL fans" and first in "most accessible NFL stadiums," and it tied for third – with Kansas City and Pittsburgh – in "best-performing NFL teams," behind Boston and Denver. New England and Atlanta, the cities home to the two teams playing in the Super Bowl on Sunday, were fifth and 11th overall, respectively. So, there.
WalletHub’s weighted-metric-based methodology for the final rankings is actually fairly interesting, involving a blend of objective, subjective and social media information, and can be found here, along with the full rankings.
What do you think of Green Bay’s top-ranked recognition, Packers fans? Agree? Disagree?
Here is an interactive map showing where all the cities finished from 1 to 244.
Source: WalletHub
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
