Portsmouth

 As a tie-in to this post, I figure I should include this story my former employer sent me last week.

It's hard to quantify the effect of a professional sports team on a city. Some of it is financial, but much is symbolic. What would have happened if Portsmouth had been able to hold on to the Spartans? In 1930, the first year that Portsmouth played in the NFL, the town's population was more than 42,000; the reasons that number has been more than cut in half have little directly to do with football. The big steel manufacturing plant closed down; other manufacturers also left town. Still, though, the civic leaders in Portsmouth today think that if the NFL had remained, the trajectory of the town might have been altered for the good.
"This was a booming shoe town," said the Chamber of Commerce's Carver. "There were four or five shoe factories here. One by one, they closed up. And, of course, when Detroit Steel left, everyone in the county felt the effect. You can't help thinking that if we still had an NFL team, people around the country would think of Portsmouth the way they do of Green Bay."
The Spartans, during their brief NFL life, had some pretty good years. In 1932, they tied for first place in the league with the Chicago Bears. The teams met for a playoff game in Chicago to determine the championship. Heavy snow and freezing temperatures necessitated moving the game indoors, to Chicago Stadium. The contest was played on a shortened 80-yard field, and was won by the Bears on a touchdown pass from -- how's this for big names? -- Bronko Nagurski to Red Grange. The Spartans came that close to bringing the championship of the National Football League home to Portsmouth.

The Spartans ended up moving to Detroit and becoming the Lions.  One of the unique things about the NFL is that there were so many small town Midwestern teams at the beginning of the league.  Canton had the Bulldogs, Dayton had the Triangles, the Decatur Staleys moved to Chicago and became the Bears.  The left-behind cities generally haven't fared well since.  Unfortunately for these towns, if the teams had remained, the league would have folded, just like many of the industries in those towns.  Economic evolution sucks for those who have industrial extinction foisted on them.