TitleTown

I realize it is that time of year that ESPN needs to find something interesting to engage fans or they will go absolutely crazy watching a continuous reel of baseball and Favre stories on SportsCenter. They seem to come up with something catching mid-summer to grab the attention of some of the biggest fan bases and stir up some activity on their website. This year's spectacle - TitleTown.

What a horrible idea. We're comparing apples to oranges to grapes to broccoli here. Trying to determine what city deserves the name TitleTown is utterly pointless because it's not a fair fight. Some cities are more inclined to rack up more "titles" simply because they have more opportunities. Boston, LA or NY will likely rise to the top of the contenders and everyone will say "duh" and that was a pointless exercise in statistics. They simply have more pro and college teams to earn more titles.

At the end of the day, what will the status of "TitleTown" even mean for one of these locations? We're not going to stop calling NY the Big Apple and start calling it TitleTown. Now, one of the small towns on the contenders list that doesn't already have a well established identity just might. I know Gainesville certainly would proudly boast it, right after the phrase "Home of the Florida Gators." Columbus, OH renamed a main street on the campus of OSU to "Champions Lane" after they won the 2002 Football National Championship. Notably, I volunteered to yank down the street sign the minute they lost to the Gators. I wouldn't be surprised if city officials didn't officially change the name of the city to "TitleTown," capital of the state of Ohio, should ESPN hand over the title.

Who knows, maybe this mid-summer ESPN attention grabber stunt will become interesting, you never know what fans are capable of - especially football fans.