But you ask a good question and one that I don't have quantitative evidence for (although I'm sure it exists) but just an anecdote to try and answer with.

You know the city of Detroit, right? Dirty. Smelly. Always on the brink of falling into complete chaos. Well, when the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in 1997, after a 42 year drought from a championship, I've never seen the city so 'happy'. People were cheering together. People were hugging each other. People were even acknowledging each other's existence. It was a monumental occasion. And through it all, not one thing burned and there were no arrests for violence. Contrast that with the Tigers winning the world series in 1994 and the front page of USA Today was 'merrymakers' atop a burning police car, or when MSU won the NCAA basketball championship and they practically destroyed Lansing, and you could tell that something had changed. The city was tired of being embarrassed and conducted itself with class. It wanted the press to be about its glorious Wings and their championship, not the city showing its worst.

That 'feeling' or esprit de corp, lasted a LONG time. Unfortunately, there was still tragedy , but another Cup in 1998 helped to heal the city again, and I swear things were different there for a few years. There was tons of investment into downtown. Things looked brighter and the future seemed to have a hint of promise. This being the late 1990s, there was lots of activity and hope.

Now I'm not saying that a sports team can lift up a city on its shoulders and carry it to a promised land all by itself. That clearly didn't happen in Detroit, which is back to its wasteland imitation. But for a few years there, the whole town was Red & White and people had something that made them feel good for a bit. You can't BUY that kind of spirit and who knows how to calculate the value of putting a smile on a face that rarely knows any happiness?

Think about it for just a second. Imagine the glee in Boston when the Red Sox finally beat the Curse! The surprise when Joe Namath came through with that promise to NY. The sheer emotion when the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey team gave us a miracle.

That, my friends, is what sports teams are for.

That's a great perspective. It does show the power a sports team has to stir a city's spirit. Yet, I still find myself feeling that it's not the best thing to rally a city's pride around. I think this is reflected in that many city's don't always decide to rally around their sports teams, similar to what you were pointing out about Nashville.

If there is anything Nashville tends to rally around, it is it's status as "Music City USA". People tend to look for things that are not fleeting.. And can be depended on to stay steady year after year. New York rallies around the idea of it being America's great city, and for all intents and purposes the center of the universe. DC, being the governmental center. New Orleans, always it's music and local culture, and now climbing out of tragedy. San Francisco, being a smug paradise. Most great cities have something like that, which is tied to it's character and identity. Sports are fleeting.

In the case of places like Nashville, where the teams are new.. I think it takes awhile for a team to work it's way into the city's cultural identity. In the case of the Detroit example, no matter how steady a stream of victory a local team might achieve, I don't think it could sustain the spirit necessary to fix it's core problems. After a certain point, when the team starts to lose, it just becomes a downer. Constant sport victories easily become business as usual.

RE: SI.com - Allan Muir: Winning not enough to save Predators - Monday January 15, 2007