Did You Know?

The Final Four teams in the NCAA tournament have been decided and a plethora of history remains among the contenders with North Carolina (Michael Jordan, Phil Ford, Dean Smith), Kansas (Wilt Chamberlain, Danny Manning, Phog Allen), UCLA (Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton, John Wooden) and Memphis (Keith Lee, Anfernee Hardaway, William Bedford) (William Bedford???). All four teams are home practicing before they arrive in beautiful, little, quaint San Antonio, Texas for the games to begin.

Wait, did I just type little and quaint? What on earth was I talking about? Did you realize that San Antonio is the 7th most populous city in the United States? Seventh!!! Its population of 1,296,682 makes it larger than such bustling megalopolises as Dallas (9th - 1,213,825), Detroit (11th - 871,121 and dropping), San Francisco (14th - 744,041), Baltimore (19th - 631,366), Boston (22nd - 590,763), Seattle (23rd - 582,454), Washington, D.C. (24th - 581,530), Denver (26th - 557,917), Atlanta (35th - 470,688), Miami (45th - 386,417) and Minneapolis (48th - 372,811). Atlanta 35th? San Francisco 14th? San Antonio 7th? When did this happen?

Since I am currently looking at the Census, I spot a few other interesting numbers. San Jose, California is the tenth largest city in the country (in terms of population), Jacksonville, Florida is 12th (primarily because it is so large in area), Columbus, Ohio is 15th (must be all of the Ohio State students/alums), Louisville, Kentucky is 27th (bigger than Atlanta?), Albuquerque, New Mexico is 33rd, New Orleans is now 38th (thanks to the population drop after Katrina), Honolulu, Hawaii is 47th and Arlington, Texas is 50th. Arlington is scary at 50th since Dallas is 9th and Ft. Worth is 18th. That is a lot of people in one single (non-New York City) area.

So for those of you expecting a nice little town to visit for this tourney, San Antonio may be all that you are expecting, and much more.