Not Rosie O'Donnell.

The excellent Sports Economist pointed me to an article on Portfolio.com which examines the viability of the five major professional team sports (football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer) in untapped North American markets. They used income levels and not actual fan interest and other factors, so it’s really more of a speculative experiment than a real-life investigation.

A few of Portfolio.com’s findings with my comments in parentheses:

•The Los Angeles area has the population and income base to support five NFL teams. (Los Angeles can handle a couple of NFL teams, and with a new L.A. football stadium set to open in 2011, there will definitely be a team or two relocating to this market. The Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars are possibillities.)

•Baseball can only be supported in two new markets: Riverside-San Bernadino, California, and Montreal, which saw its franchise founder and move away just five years ago. (MLB would make more sense if it added two teams and shifted to four eight-team divisions. The article doesn’t give the benefit of the doubt to Portland, Oregon, which has often been named as a propective MLB city.)

•The study identifies Denver area as a seriously overextended city with teams in all of the five main leagues. Only the Broncos and Rockies seem like safe bets to continue drawing well. (The Rockies have probably been aided attendance-wise because the thin air at Coors Field makes for a lot of home runs, which help drive attendance.)

•Six other markets are very overextended: Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Phoenix. (Cleveland and Pittsburgh have had serious population losses as their industrial bases declined. Phoenix is hurting because the economy has been especially terrible in states that rode the real estate boom. The Phoenix Coyotes have by far the worst attendance in the NHL this year. Of course, there was never a good reason to put an ice hockey team in the desert when there are so few teams in Canada. Commissioner Gary Bettman should be fired for that reason alone.)

•The league with the most opportunity to expand: Major League Soccer. The article contends that there are more than 40 North American markets that the 15-team league can move into. (Six MLS teams draw fewer than 15,000 fans per game. Perhaps that can cover small operating costs, but it’s difficult to fathom how MLS will ever attract great athletes if it has by far the lowest salaries. At the same time, it’s likely the only game in town if Akron or Allentown want their own “professional” franchise.)