Charlotte, N.C. -- In the Sporting News' 16th annual survey of best sports cities in America, San Jose was named the best among the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) institutional headquarters and in the top-25 nationally.
For purposes of the survey, San Jose, which included Palo Alto and Santa Clara ranked 24th among the 400 cities included in the survey.
All nine WAC schools' headquarters made the list. Boise (Boise State) was 69th and Reno (Nevada) also made the top-100 at 93.
The Sporting News' Best Sports Cities list of cities and towns in the U.S. and Canada, was created using a system that assigns points to a variety of categories, including a city's number of teams, their regular-season won-lost records, playoff berths, bowl appearances and tournament bids, championships, applicable power ratings, fan fervor, attendance and more.
"There's a great atmosphere around the sports scene in the San Jose area," says Bob Hille, The Sporting News chief of correspondents who has coordinated the rankings since 1996.
Logan, Utah (Utah State), 101st; Ruston, La. (Louisiana Tech), 108; Fresno, Calif. (Fresno State), 110th, Honolulu, Hawaii (Hawaii), 116th; Las Cruces, N.M. (New Mexico State), 125th; and Moscow, Idaho (Idaho), 128th rounded out the city rankings for the homes of the Western Athletic Conference schools.
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles are the top-five cities in the 2009 survey.