King of Chicago

(This was originally supposed to go up last week, but got pushed back a bit.)

RedbirdNation, a highly enjoyable St. Louis Cardinals blog, tried to determine which sports teams were the Kings of the various MLB cities – what was the importance of the different teams to the people who lived there. I found it interesting, because they went through the effort of trying to get in touch with people in those different cities to get their takes on the situation, making it more authentic than just an outsider taking guesses. The order of teams were predictable in some place (NY’s #1 as the Yankees was the easiest call) but also unexpected in places (Tampa’s #5 as the Yankees).

Like I’m sure plenty of other people did, I read through the sections on other teams and patiently waited for my city to come up, so I could disagree. It’s a list, right, so that’s the point.

Luckily enough, when they got to Chicago, I wasn’t disappointed. I did have plenty of room to disagree. Here’s their list:

1. Chicago Bears
2. Chicago Cubs
3. Chicago White Sox
4. Chicago Bulls
5. Notre Dame football
6. Chicago Blackhawks
7. University of Illinois basketball / football
8. Chicago Fire
9. DePaul University basketball
10. Chicago Wolves

I mean, c’mon, no LOYOLA. Also #1 and #2 there, you might see how I could argue that. I had to come up with my own.

I broke the list a little diffinetly, but it’s still the same ranking as how the city (and surrounding area) at large respects the teams rather than the how I see them. How the media plays them up or down played a good part in my decision making – in most cases, it’s a reflection of how the city itself responds to the teams.

I don’t really agree with the “the true life-long Chicagoans are Bears fans and Cubs fans are just children of the suburbs who stop by” notion. Not just because I’m the latter, either. While I concede there’s plenty of people who are Cubs fans for the status only, and view Wrigley as a hangout rather than a place to watch a baseball game, I think there’s a healthy majority of people who grew up watching Harry on WGN when they got home from school in the warmer months, knowing the promise and failure of the innumerable Mike Harkey’s, and living and dying 162 games a year (and occasionally more than that.)

They’re just not able to show up at the box office and get tickets this year, and they’re being replaced by the trendy “I watched parts of 10 games last year, because I’m a HUGE fan” types. But it’s not much different on the lake. The hardworking salt of the earth goes to every Bears game fan myth kinda died with the old stadium. Seen the prices lately? It’s as much corporate tickets and seats for your favorite clients as the eye can see.

Ignoring the old-timer crankiness, my point is there’s not a real difference in size or level of the hardcore fan group. It takes a certain kind of fan to sit in the upper reaches of the docked space craft known as New Solider Field in yet another blustery and freezing day in yet another lost season and Bears fans do it, but it also takes a certain kind of fan to sit in the shadow of a mid-April game with the wind bearing in and the bats long gone home, and Cubs fans do that. Both creatures are out there, and if you switched the memorabilia, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

There does have to be a distance, because this is a list and not a wacky five way tie. And my difference is what I see on Sunday nights in the fall and the winter, and what I don’t see other times. Last year, there were at least four different Sunday night Bears recap shows on TV, including two on channels that had a grand total of zero Bears games to show over the course of the season. Until late last season, there were maybe one and a half baseball – not even just Cubs – recap shows.

Maybe it’s a baseball vs football thing, one game a week vs seven, but until it gets close and late, the Cubs are treated as A story, while a Bears game is always THE story. Even now, when the Cubs are in, playoffs or not, a historic season, they’re no better than heads up against a Bears team that’s been mostly bad for a long time. If the Cubs can’t take the city at their best and at the Bears worst, than it’s not their city.

I have the Bulls ahead of the White Sox. The White Sox have been an above average team over the last five seasons; while the Bulls have been a horrid team alternating few glimpses of hope with tremendous amounts of mind numbing loses. Yet, if you ran their seasons simultaneously, there would be nights where the smaller United Center would outdraw the Cell.

Maybe the team is too colorless. That’s why they brought in Ozzie, right? Maybe the Bulls will forever have a halo effect from the Jordan years. Maybe fans are feeling too burned, by ownership making the wrong deals or the team getting close but failing many times, like lesser Braves. Maybe the horrible TV announcing drives people away. Well, I know that part has gotta be true. Whatever the case, people don’t support the fledgling winner as much as they do the no hoper, so I can’t put the Sox number 3.

Everything else is just in a different stratum. If they’re going go, they’ll get people to rally to them. If they’re not, they’re lucky to get a tossed off line at the end of the local sports report.

RedbirdNation collects Illini football and basketball and places them together around this spot, but my experiences in Chicagoland lead me to believe there’s not one definitive college dominating the landscape. Each individual school has its own limitations.

– U of I has rights because it is the big state University. Perhaps it’s one thing only derived from living here, but there’s a tremendous amount of disconnect between Chicago and the collar counties and the rest of Illinois. They’re more than two different psuedo-states, they’re two different worlds and so U of I might as well be a foreign university to many. There are those who go to Champaign and travel back north, of course.
– Northwestern is seen by outsiders as the city school. NU’s main campus is in Evanston, not Chicago, which people on both sides will be happy to point out. Evanston is a very well to do suburb directly north of the city, so what you have is an elite community with an elite student body, which doesn’t endear them to people who aren’t part of those groups. Also, Northwestern’s private school status with tough admissions in a public school league with not-so-tough admissions has led to a long history of being doormats. If they weren’t in the Big 10, they’d have the same athletic following as University of Chicago (which may or may not actually have an athletic program) and outside of those connected to the school; they only draw any more than that based on their location.
– Notre Dame is also private (and religious!) but they actually win, so people get over it. Despite being in another state, they’re treated as a Chicago team in a lot of ways, with radio coverage (which U of I doesn’t get and NU does) and hype leading up to the games. They’re potentially the biggest Chicago-area university, but they’re still an Indiana one.
– DePaul was a powerhouse in basketball in the past, so even though they’re not now, local media often treats them with an undeserved extra importance. This year (and the QRich year), they proved they deserved, but many recent seasons (and likely future ones with their move to the Big East) have featured an average or lesser team being trumpeted as something that needs to be watched. People will come around to DePaul if/when they win, but you can say that about just any team.
– There’s minor support for other area Big 10 school as well; plenty of people who go to college in Wisconsin, Purdue, Iowa or in Michigan end up in the Chicago area. While none are dominate, it does create more interest in the conference as a whole.
– And the lesser schools in the area – NIU out in DeKalb, the Horizon schools in the city, even SIU in Carbondale (the other side of the state/world) will get some mentions around NCAA tournament time.

Individually, I don’t think any of these schools measure up to the one-time great, long-time despised Blackhawks, but I don’t think that’s how they’re perceived. When Big Ten football is discussed in the fall in Chicago, it’s not one team or one school; it’s a look at the whole slate of Big Ten games. The fractured support comes strongest together behind the identity of the conference itself, and so I think that’s the best way to picture it.

One on one, Notre Dame Football is more important locally than any other football program, but since it’s seen as one on group, Big Ten Football is ahead. Maybe it’s even better if I throw them together as “Big Time College Football”, but I think there needs to be a distinction.

Strike or no strike, season or no season, it’s going to take years for the Blackhawks to rebuild their support in Chicago. There’s a hard core group of fans who have and will continue to support them through whatever misstep and payroll slash is next, but for the majority, they exist only as a three second mention of the score tacked on to the end of a sports report. Even if they didn’t do another roster purge, 95% of Chicago would be hard pressed to name three players on their team. Heck, 95% of Chicago would be hard pressed to name one player on their team. They’re only up this high on the list because as a team in the NHL and a team that won a championship in its history, you’re required to take them semi-seriously.

DePaul, at least temporarily till it gets it’s brains knocked in the Big East, and everyone jumps off the bandwagon again, is next. Again, they’re a school with a tradition, but it’s more a tradition of being overhyped in the quest for a city school to do well than something they’ve always earned. While having no single school in college football may actually help, having no single school in college basketball hurts, as fans grasp around for this year’s school to be interested and don’t settle on one till the brackets are announced. You could make the case that as an individual, Illinois beats DePaul in the battle of teams who support grows exponentially as their wins do, but if I’m grouping the Big Ten football teams as one, I might as well do the same with basketball.

Big Ten Basketball is slotted here. While there are always a number of teams that make the NCAA tournament, of late they haven’t been high quality teams. That sorta thing seems to be a non-ending cycle – you don’t have great teams so you can’t get great players so you don’t have great teams and on. Head to head, Illinois basketball team is of far more interest than it’s football one is, but that’s simply because one is winning lately and the other isn’t.

Tenth, but probably surging up a spot or maybe more, are the AHL Chicago Wolves. If anyone has benefited from the labor strife in the NHL over the past decades, its definitely this team. They got going during the lockout, bringing in big crowd to (not yet) Allstate Arena of people who just want their hockey, and were helped even more when the Blackhawks desire to have the cheapest and less effective roster turned them into effective minor league team. Even with the advantage of playing actual NHL teams, the Wolves actually out drew the Blackhawks on a couple dates this season. All of the anger and annoyance of the Blackhawks has translated into support for the Wolves, and the NHL possibly skipping more games will only cement that. The only thing stopping them is the media, taking its cue from Blackhawk management, abandoning hockey, but as the only game in town next year, even that may turn around for the Wolves.

Speeding up as I get farther from the center, there’s a hockey-like core group of people who go to Fire games, but no one outside of that group seems to know they exist. (Well, I actually watch a game or two when I know it’s on, but it’s a well kept secret.) More football follows, as I’d group Minor Football (Rush, NIU) around here, as stuff people will watch if it’s on and not much is, but won’t follow unless it turns into a story. People will keep an eye on the usual NCAA Entrants from lesser conferences, but only care about the UICs and SIUs of the landscape when/if they get in. And those schools that don’t have a recent history of success won’t be noticed until they do, only existing on the outer most orbit of the local sports solar system.

In far less words, the list of Chicago Sports Fandom looks something like this:

1) Bears
2) Cubs
3) Bulls
4) Sox

space here for effect

5) Big Ten Football
6) Notre Dame Football
6) Blackhawks
7) DePaul Basketball
8) Big Ten Basketball (and Notre Dame)
9) Wolves
10) Fire
11) “Minor Football” (Rush, NIU)
12) “NCAA Usual Suspects” (SIU, UIC)
13) Other Division 1 College Basketball
14) Everything else

Your experiences may differ.