Major League Sports: Minor League Cities

Hartford had a professional hockey club once. By the amount of Whalers paraphernalia still circulating around Connecticut, you might think that they still did. They worship in whispers: there's no major talk. The team has been dead for a while and thus there's no news to report. All a Hartfordian (Hartfordite? Hartfordiate?) can do is dream of the remains of this long sunk team, and chant their name to the dusky air. The cult of the Whalers is still very much around. Y'know, it kinda reminds me of something...

"Did somebody say whalers? I frickin' LOVE whalers!"

 Oh god! Run, Hartford!

Could the UFL be the seed of a return of professional sports to Hartford? Maybe. Probably not. There's no denying that the entire state still laments the loss of the team. There's enough demand for Whaler merchandise that websites are willing to carry said gear, and even groups dedicated to bringing the team back. The states two minor league hockey teams are the Danbury Whalers and the Connecticut Whale.

Pic courtesy of Totalprosports.com... you even reading this?

If that's not enough to convince you, have a picture of Transformers star and hot chick Megan Fox in a Whalers t-shirt.

Really though, Megan, Transformers 2 was just awful. Maybe you're not the right person to make a case for things I like.

Maybe a better case for Connecticut's hunger for professional sports franchises could be made by Hobson Lopes in this Yahoo Sports article. Lopes is looking for a Major League Soccer team however, not an NHL one. He asks the question "If the UFL can bring a team to Connecticut, why not MLS?"

Why not indeed?

Hartford is sort of an odd duck as far as cities go. Its population is about 125,000, yet its metro area holds well over a million residents. This is roughly equal to Buffalo, NY, a city twice Hartford's size. A comparable city like Spokane Washington (200k) has a metro population half the size, and Oklahoma city, a town with four times Hartford's population has only slightly more residents in its metro area than Hartford.

In short, the city doesn't have the population any major league team would look for. The state does. There are five cities in Connecticut with populations of 100,000 or more: Waterbury (110k), Stamford (120k), Hartford (125k), New Haven (130k), and Bridgeport (145k). This is absurd for the third-smallest state in the union. By comparison, the second smallest, Delaware, has nothing in the 100,000-200,000 range. Neither does Vermont. New Hampshire (4th smallest) has one. Rhode Island has only one.

And there's the rub. There's no one city that really sums up the state's identity. No community that we truly feel proud of. Hartford gets that little extra edge because it's the capitol, and because it has history. Mark Twain said of it "Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, this is the chief... You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here." Connecticut has become a state full of third-tier cities. There are plenty of people here to support major league teams, but we lack a great big metropolis that would attract these organizations. I'm not sure that there's a cure for that, but I hope that some will see the UFL in Connecticut and think to themselves "Hey, maybe this can work."

One last thing: last year at a party I overheard a guy talking about the possibility that the struggling Tampa Bay Rays might relocate to Hartford. I don't see it happening due to the lack of a usable baseball stadium, but can you imagine that? The potential for a rivalry with Boston would be amazing. In fact, I think it would go something like this.

2008: Sox/Rays battle royale. Wish I'd been there.