In roughly 21 hours, ESPN Chicago, ESPN’s first locally oriented site, will launch.  When I first heard about it, I was ecstatic.  It was no surprise to me that ESPN chose Chicago as its first market.  It is quite simple in my mind: Chicago is the greatest sports city in the world. Not a surprising statement coming from me, but I have some backing (ESPN’s Scoop Jackson, a Chicago native, offers his thoughts).

The size and population of Chicago is only beaten by Los Angeles and New York City.  LA, although a great town, is a complete joke of a sports city.  They have no NFL team.  Need I say more?  New York City is a great sports town, but they have too many teams to have any sort of spirit amongst its citizens.  That may sound like a hypocritical statement coming from a city that has two baseball teams in the Cubs and the Sox, but bear with me.  The Cubs and the Sox have a natural rivalry bred from part hatred, part envy, part fun.  The Giants/Jets, Yankees/Mets, Knicks/Nets, Islanders/Rangers all have pitiful rivalrys, if any at all.  Individually, they are all great franchises, but they have no connection to each other.

Chicago, on the other hand, has that connection.  It is safe for me to assume that the person sitting across from me on the EL is a Cubs/Sox fan in the summer, a Bears fan in the fall, and a Bulls and Blackhawks fan in the winter.  During that given season, the team is the common thread among us all, something we can all complain about together.  Add in the Jordan years, the grit of Bears D, the tradition of the Cubs and Sox, the resurgence of the Blackhawks, and Chicago is a tough town to beat.  If we do get the 2016 Olympics, the whole world will see what we have to offer.  I can’t wait.