We’ve already seen an undefeated team dominate the league, a dunk to win the game at the buzzer, and the debut of a 7-foot-5 Chinese superstar.

And, since you’ve decided to attend school in this wonderful city of St. Louis, there’s a good chance these events have slipped under your radar.

The NBA season is now in full-gear, as teams and players alike have worked all the kinks out of their games. St. Louis, on the other hand, remains oblivious to this because (duhh!) it doesn’t have a professional basketball team.

How does this affect a city’s exposure to the sport? First of all, if any of you out there ever read the Post-Dispatch (and you thought Student Life was the official newspaper of this city), you’ll likely find your NBA stories buried on the back pages, behind blurbs about Albert Pujols’ off-season cooking classes and 327 different takes about who should start at QB for the Rams.

Additionally, the local television networks are a culprit, although they at least show a couple of highlights each night. Unfortunately, I fear that their sportscasters (guys who are supposed to like all sports) don’t really follow the NBA either, due to their constant consternation as to why local products Larry Hughes and Kareem Rush aren’t the superstars they were at Missouri.

Which brings us to the obvious question. why doesn’t the STL have a team to call its own?

When the Grizzlies and Hornets were up for re-location, St. Louis was naturally tossed around as a viable candidate. However, there was probably less than a one percent chance of them actually coming here since their owners wouldn’t have control of the Savvis Center.

Secondly, there’s the argument that St. Louis doesn’t have the economic capacity to support four professional sports franchises. The NHL Blues sell-out regularly, and I’m sure many of their season-ticket holders are patrons for the always sold-out Rams, and the perennial three-million-a-year-attendance Cardinals. In a city that has lost Trans World Airlines to bankruptcy, and has seen Boeing crumble with economic woes, perhaps there aren’t that many business-backers to go around. (I guess Anheuser-Busch can’t solve all of life’s problems, but they do a decent job trying. happy hour is definitely fun.)

But, how can you explain why the previously mentioned NBA teams moved to such bustling economies of Memphis and New Orleans? Memphis’ biggest company is probably the Elvis memorabilia shop by Graceland, and New Orleans gets its cash from lowly tourists (such as myself) who get tanked up on eight-dollar Hurricanes.

While Memphis has no other sports teams, and New Orleans only has the NFL Saints, many pointed out that these markets aren’t saturated as St. Louis’ already is. Well, my argument to that would be that cities like Dallas and Phoenix thought the same thing when hockey franchises were talked about there. Now, they support bustling teams in areas where ice melts faster than you can say Tkachuk.

As long as a city has proven that it will get behind a pro team, as they have in St. Louis, there should be nothing that stands in the way of getting as many teams as possible. In fact, this city should look at its own history if it’s got doubts about fans supporting a new team.

When the NFL Cardinals used to be in St. Louis, they were horrendous. not only in the quality of the team on the field, but in the amount of fans in the seats. When they up and left to Arizona, a lot of fans gladly waved goodbye.touting that St. Louis will always be that small-market baseball town. Then the NFL inexplicably passed over St. Louis in their bid for an expansion franchise (and chose the vibrant cities of Charlotte and Jacksonville), almost putting the nail in the coffin for football here.

Ten years later, you know how things turned out. Having the Rams be a Super Bowl contender sure helps, but this city has turned the team into one of the surest things in sports, business-wise.

Throw-out all the economic jargon, forget about the arena issues, and just imagine a team here. This is a great sports city, it is a hot-bed for developing local basketball players, and history has shown its citizens will support a team which tries its hardest to win.

That being said, let’s hope that Commissioner Stern stops considering places like Alberquerque, NM and Little Rock, AK. for teams before considering this icon of the Midwest. At least you’d know what division to put them in.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 15th, 2002 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.