Men's Health magazine has a feature called MetroGrades, where the Top 100 cities are ranked in various categories: Noisiest, Best For Men 2009, etc. They use empirical data to draw their conclusions, although at best the science is inexact. Still, it makes for good discussion fodder.

The July/August issue's MetroGrade is "America's Top Sports Towns."

Results in a bit, but first the criteria:

• How many people attend baseball, basketball and football games (college and pro) and those showing up at high school sporting events.

• NASCAR attendance and who's catching their sports on TV and the radio (source: SimplyMap).

• The number of people vying for tickets to any sport, who is buying the most team apparel, and how many people call themselves "foam-finger-waving fanatics" (source: Scarborough Sports Marketing).

Here are the Top 10:

This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2009.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...