Kansas City Ranked The 51st Sports City From '09-'10

The Sporting News ranked the top 402 sports cities in America.

Yes, 402. Yakima, Wash is the 402nd ranked sports city in the world.

Kansas City is the 51st ranked city in the world from summer 2009 to summer to 2010. Here's what they say about the criteria:

It takes more than championships. Sporting News’ Best Sports Cities rankings, which look at the 12 months from summer 2009 to summer 2010, are based on point values assigned to various categories, including but not limited to won-lost records, postseason appearances, applicable power ratings, number of teams and attendance.

If it's based on results on the field, I can see how things went south for Kansas City from 2009-2010. The play on the field for the pro teams wasn't very good and fan base morale was low. The college teams did better for the most part.

The Chiefs were not very good winning just four games. A new regime was in town and I think any time you combine new leadership and losses, things can get ugly. They did in Kansas City with the blackout coming at Arrowhead Stadium for the first time in nearly 20 years. As a long-time Chiefs fan, I can tell you last year (and the last three years) were depressing.

In both the summers of 2009 and 2010 the Royals were on their way to last place season but, to be fair, they did improve from 65 to 67 wins. There's optimism for the future, depending on how you look at it. They say the Royals have the best, or near the best minor league system in the game right now. This has prompted some to look to Mission 2012, which is when these guys are expected to be called up. Or fans can look at it what it also is: Another GM, with another five year plan, and saying the Royals are this close to competing....fans in KC have heard that before. I'm not discounting GM Dayton Moore and what he's doing. I'm just saying that there's a large segment of the fan base that feels the latter.

The Kansas Jayhawks basketball team was good, as usual. The football team was not and it was the source of much controversy over the last year. In fact, as sharp as the entire KU athletic program was, they caused a few black eye moments for the University over the last year. I'm not sure how that would affect this ranking of Best Sports City if we're talking about on-field performance (although the football team was very bad).

Though they're both two hours from Kansas City, we've got plenty of K-State and Mizzou fans that help make Kansas City a solid sports city. All three of the area college basketball teams are expected to be very good.

I suppose I can understand Kansas City's low rankings once you limit it to on-field performance.