Words from my favorite writer, Peter King, on the fate of my hometown Cleveland and other rustbelt cities:
The 2007 census data came out last week, and there was continuing ominous news for three Rust Belt cities with NFL franchises.
Pittsburgh, the nation’s 59th-largest city with 311,218 people, is now smaller than Aurora, Colo. (311,794). Pittsburgh has lost 7 percent of its population since 2000. I’ve noticed in recent visits the stark downturn in several city neighborhoods.
Buffalo (272,632) has dropped from 59th to 68th in the city-population standings and now is less than half the size of Oklahoma City. Meanwhile, Long Beach, Fresno, Mesa (Ariz.), and El Paso all outsize Cleveland (438,032), which has dropped from 34th to 40th. Worse news for Cleveland: No city has lost a bigger chunk of its people since 2000 than Cleveland — 8.3 percent. Cleveland … the nation’s 40th-largest city. Shocking. Just doesn’t seem possible. I should note that all of these figures are city populations only and don’t include suburbs. Cleveland’s are sprawling.
I’m not playing Taps for these towns, but that news underscores the importance of an NFL team for civic pride. When people look around their hometowns and find not a lot to get fired up about, they turn toward their civic institutions and say, “Give us something to make us feel good about our future. Please.”
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It’s not easy to hear about Cleveland going through hard times (which has been the last decade-plus, no doubt). For as much as I was ready to leave the area five years ago, living in two very different regions of the country shows me what a big role Cleveland has played in the person I’ve become. (Part of me wonders – some days with fingers crossed – if I’ll ever live in the rustbelt again.)
And I understand Peter King’s emphasis on the importance of sports franchises in those cities. By sports franchises, it’s really football teams that he’s talking about. These are rust belt cities. Rust belt cities believe in football.
For a city in a fragile economic state, having a sports team drawing 40,000 (70,000 in the case of football) to a stadium (let alone the thousands who occupy restaurants and bars to watch the game) does in fact make a difference. When the old Browns left Cleveland, a number of businesses had to close down.
I understand that sports aren’t very important, even if they are interesting to me. But in a town that’s suffering the way Cleveland is, the issue stretches beyond entertainment purposes to economic concerns and something as intangible as city pride. There’s not a lot to be excited about in Cleveland, but when the Browns win, everyone in town is proud to be from Cleveland.
