Where to Find Champs & MVPs.

• Author: Lafirenza, Michael
• Position: Most Valuable Player

A SELECT FEW U.S. metro areas have enjoyed bursts of success across multiple sports in recent years. In 2020, Tampa Bay's Rays reached the World Series for only the second time in franchise history. The following year, the NHL's Lightning captured their second straight Stanley Cup while the NFL's Buccaneers won the Super Bowl. Los Angeles has had recent titles from the NFL's Rams (2022), MLB's Dodgers (2020), and NBA's Lakers (2020)--and the 2010s saw strong runs in the Bay Area, with MLB's San Francisco Giants and the NBA's Golden State Warriors each capturing three tides (the Warriors added another last month), and in Boston, which has enjoyed three tides for the NFL's Patriots, two for MLB's Red Sox, and one for the NHL's Bruins since 2010. (The Celtics also reached this year's NBA final, but fell to the Warriors.)

Geographic dominance in the major sports in the U.S. is nodiing new. Of the more man 420 championships that have been awarded across the MLB, MLS, NBA, NFL, and NHL, nearly half have been won by teams from just six metropolitan areas: New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco. These metros are among the nation's largest and most historic and, in some cases, have multiple teams competing in the same sport, which increases me chances of bringing home a title, but each of these locations also has enjoyed sustained excellence over time from one or more of their hometown teams.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the New York metro. Behind 27 championships from me New York Yankees and another two from the New York Mets after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants combined for six World Series wins (and 23 Fall Classic appearances) before both franchises relocated to California, baseball has helped power the New York metropolitan area to the top of the list of metros with the most titles. In fact, only Boston (39) has more total championships than New York has MLB championships--and only Montreal, with 24 Stanley Cup titles for the Canadiens, comes close to New York's single-sport dominance in baseball.

Some other sports markets have been less fortunate. For example, Tennessee has four professional sports teams but zero championships from mat quartet, although at me amateur level, the University of Tennessee Volunteers did win the National Championship in football in 1998, their sixth in school history. Meanwhile, North Carolina is home to four pro teams who have combined for a single tide (me Carolina...