Are the Pirates Really a "Small-Market" Team?

In today's posting on the Pittsburgh Baseball Club blog, Pirates Columnist Dejan Kovacevic takes issue with those who call Pittsburgh a "small-market" team.  He cites a list of US television markets ranked by size to show that there are a number of teams based in smaller markets than Pittsburgh.  Using that same list and simply dividing by two when a market has two teams, we end up with the table below of teams ranked by TV market size.  The Pirates rank 25th out of 30 teams.

It seems to me that ranking at the 17th percentile in terms of market size would merit the term "small-market".  To make matters worse, a number of teams below the Pirates have sizable fan bases in nearby large markets. The Orioles have a numbers of fans in the DC/Hagerstown and Norfolk/Portsmouth/Newport News areas and the Reds have fans in the Columbus and Nashville areas.  All four of these markets are made up around a million households or more.  What other large market contains a significant number of Pirates fans?  Harrisburg?  The closest team above the Pirates are the Cardinals, who have a number of fans in nearby Memphis.  In short, the only teams that I'm confident don't have more people within their area of influence (or "country of baseball") are San Diego, Kansas City, and Milwaukee.  Even if it's the case that these three teams are in smaller markets, that doesn't disprove the notion that Pittsburgh is a small market -- remember, it's small market; not smallest market.

In terms of his other points, I agree that market-size is not a huge issue for the Steelers and Penguins -- partially due to salary caps in their respective leagues and partially due to the immense popularity of the two teams -- and that a market, to some extent, is what a teams makes of it.  I guess the demarcation is between saying that the Pirates are hampered between being in a small market and saying that the Pirates can never compete because they're in a small market.  The former is demonstrably true, while the latter is demonstrably false.

Rank	Team	Designated Market Area (DMA)	TV Households
1	Yankees	New York, NY (/2)	3,746,765
2	Mets	New York, NY (/2)	3,746,765
3	Phillies	Philadelphia, PA	2,955,190
4	Dodgers	Los Angeles, CA (/2)	2,829,585
5	Angels	Los Angeles, CA (/2)	2,829,585
6	Rangers	Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX	2,544,410
7	Red Sox	Boston, MA (Manchester, NH)	2,410,180
8	Blue Jays	Toronto (est*)	2,400,000
9	Braves	Atlanta, GA	2,387,520
10	Nationals	Washington, DC (Hagerstown, MD)	2,335,040
11	Astros	Houston, TX	2,123,460
12	Tigers	Detroit, MI	1,890,220
13	Diamondbacks	Phoenix, AZ	1,873,930
14	Mariners	Seattle-Tacoma, WA	1,833,990
15	Rays	Tampa-St. Petersburg (Sarasota), FL	1,805,810
16	Cubs	Chicago, IL (/2)	1,750,505
17	White Sox	Chicago, IL (/2)	1,750,505
18	Twins	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN	1,732,050
19	Rockies	Denver, CO	1,539,380
20	Marlins	Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL	1,538,090
21	Indians	Cleveland-Akron (Canton), OH	1,520,750
22	Giants	San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA (/2)	1,251,700
23	A's	San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA (/2)	1,251,700
24	Cardinals	St. Louis, MO	1,249,450
25	Pirates	Pittsburgh, PA	1,154,950
26	Orioles	Baltimore, MD	1,093,170
27	Padres	San Diego, CA	1,073,390
28	Royals	Kansas City, MO	941,360
29	Reds	Cincinnati, OH	918,670
30	Brewers	Milwaukee, WI	901,790

notes: Dividing markets in half when that market has two teams results in misleading numbers, both because fan bases aren't split 50/50 and because most of those teams have geographic bases that cover other markets (e.g. the Yankees and Hartford, the Giants and Sacramento, and the Mariners and Portland (OR)). The figure for Toronto was estimated based on the fact that Toronto's metro area of 5.5 million people is slightly larger than the metro area for Atlanta.  I don't know what their actual Nielsen-equivalent number of households would be, but it's clearly much larger than the Pirates.

Top 25 Update

How this weekend played out:
(Teams that lost crossed out, teams with impressive wins in green)
update: actual rankings in parentheses -- I was within 1 for 19/30 teams

Previous			Projected			My Rankings
1.	Florida		1.	Alabama (1)		1.	Alabama
2.	Alabama		2.	Texas (2)		2.	Texas
3.	Texas		3.	TCU (3)		3.	Cincinnati
4.	TCU		4.	Cincinnati (4)		4.	TCU
5.	Cincinnati		5.	Florida (5)		5.	Florida
6.	Boise State		6.	Boise State (6)		6.	Boise State
7.	Oregon		7.	Oregon (7)		7.	Oregon
8.	Ohio State		8.	Ohio State (8)		8.	Ohio State
9.	Iowa		9.	Iowa (10)		9.	Iowa
10.	Penn State		10.	Penn State (11)		10.	Penn State
11.	Virginia Tech		11.	Virginia Tech (12)		11.	Virginia Tech
12.	Georgia Tech		12.	Georgia Tech (9)		12.	Georgia Tech
13.	Oregon State		13.	LSU (13)		13.	Oregon State
14.	Pitt		14.	Oregon St. (16)		14.	LSU
15.	LSU		15.	Pitt (17)		15.	Miami (Fla.)
16.	BYU		16.	BYU (15)		16.	West Virginia
17.	Miami (Fla.)		17.	Miami (Fla.) (14)		17.	Pitt
18.	Houston		18.	OK State (21)		18.	Stanford
19.	California		19.	Stanford (19)		19.	Nebraska
20.	USC		20.	West Virginia (18)		20.	Arizona
21.	Nebraska		21.	Nebraska (20)		21.	Wisconsin
22.	OK State		22.	Arizona (22)		22.	OK State
23.	Stanford		23.	Wisconsin (24)		23.	Clemson
24.	West Virginia		24.	Utah (23)		24.	Tex Tech
25.	Clemson		25.	Tex Tech (28)		25.	USC
26.	Utah		26.	USC (29)		26.	UNC
27.	Wisconsin		27.	Clemson (31)
28.	Tex Tech		28.	Ole Miss (33)
29.	Arizona		29.	Northwestern (30)
30.	Ole Miss		30.	C. Michigan (25)
31.	Northwestern
32.	C. Michigan

Other Random Thoughts

-Despite a number of exciting games, that was the least interesting second half of a season in recent memory -- zero (0) major upsets and virtually no BCS drama.  At least 'bama v. Texas should be an interesting match-up in the title game.

-Nebraska and Pitt both lost, in part, because of ultra-conservative play-calling late in the game.  Both have good defenses, but the coaches need to realize that good offense beats good defense right now in college football . . . and their teams were playing two of the best offenses in the country.  In Pitt's case, it marks the second time they've lost this year after being up 14 points in the 4th quarter.

-Worst play call by Pitt: an inside hand-off to their fullback on 3rd and 24 in the 3rd quarter.  2nd worst play call: a play-action pass (that resulted in a sack) on 4th down with 10 seconds left and 50+ yards away from FG range.

-It appeared that Pelini's decision to simply move the ball to the middle of the field on 3rd and 6 worked out well when they made a go ahead FG on the next play with 1:44 left.  But 1:44 is an awful lot of time for Colt McCoy to move his team into FG range.

-Speaking of McCoy, he almost made one of the dumbest plays of all time when he inexplicably let the game clock tick down to only 7 seconds remaining before snapping the ball.  Despite the initial controversy, there's absolutely no doubt that there was, in fact, 1 second left when his pass hit the ground.  But, still . . . what was he thinking?

-Somebody said there was an ACC title game today?  Did anybody else hear that rumor?

-Predicted Heisman voting:
1.) Ingram
2.) McCoy
3.) Suh
4.) Gerhart
5.) Tebow
6.) Spiller
7.) Tate

-My Heisman Ballot:
1.) Ingram
2.) Suh
3.) Spiller

update: I got the top 5 in the Heisman voting right, though time will tell how close I was on the order.  I think Suh might be higher and McCoy lower than I originally predicted.