If you like sports, don't move to Phoenix

Growing up in Denver, I came under the impression that the local sports teams were respected and cheered for no matter what. No matter what kind of season the Broncos had, people would be at the games. Lose by the biggest margin in Super Bowl history, and there is still a parade thrown in your honor. One of the worst teams in baseball still holds the single-season attendance record, and Coors Field continues to draw one of the biggest crowds league wide. A Nuggets team, who only made the playoffs once in the 10 years before Carmello arrived, has one of the biggest fan-bases in professional sports. And then there are the Avalanche, who have sold out a record 472 consecutive games. November 9^th, 1995, was the last time an Avs game was not sold out. That means all-time, there were less than a dozen Avs games that weren’t sold out.

Yeah, that's the number of people present during the game.

Then I moved down to Phoenix for school, and one of the first events I attended was an Avalanche vs. Coyotes game at Glendale Arena. Pathetic is the only way to describe the atmosphere. Only about 40% of the stadium was full, and of those 7,000 or so fans, I would estimate about 5,000 were rooting for the Avalanche. How is a team supposed to thrive when the only fans that attend their games are the away teams fans? The Arizona Cardinals play at our football stadium, Sun Devil Stadium. While living in the dorms, every Sunday I would see the crowd rush in and out of the stadium. Again, less than half (only about 25%) of the stadium was full, and well over half of those fans were rooting for the opposing team. A Diamondbacks game had the same statistics. A pathetically filled stadium, with most of the fans against the home team. The only team that has any real fans is the Suns, and that is only because they were good last year.

It’s no wonder that the only championship brought to the Valley was the Diamondbacks in 2001. The only reason they had any fans was because they were still essentially an expansion team, and the fans hadn’t yet lost their interest. Phoenix is one of the youngest big cities in America. We just overtook Philadelphia as the 5^th largest metro area in the country, with over 3 million people in the city. With that kind of number, you would assume that a stadium of 20,000 (Suns, Coyotes), 50,000 (Diamondbacks), even 80,000 (Cardianls) would fill up. In any other city of 3 million people, you could find 1/40 of those people to attend games. In Phoenix, it just isn’t happening. That’s why my only advice is, if you love sports, don’t move here.