How do you build a community?

I got to wondering about something a few nights ago. I was stumbling around the Greensboro Sports Board and came across this post. The post was about Fox Sports' ranking of the 368 best cities for sports over the past 12 months.

According to the article, Greensboro comes in a whopping 197th. That's a few steps below those sports hotbeds like Wilmington, NC (155), Davidson, NC (157), Itta Bena, Miss (166) and Cullowhee, NC (191). But wait...be proud Greensboro! We're still a step ahead of the bustling metropolis of Boone, NC (198).

My head is swimming at this point. How can this be? I figure they must be crazy so I start digging into the criteria.

"To be included in these rankings, a city must have at least an NCAA Division I basketball team or a Class A minor league baseball team, or it must score in select other categories upon which we base our rankings. Those other categories include being the site of a training camp for a major league or NFL team; a NASCAR Nextel Cup race; an NCAA Division I-A bowl game; a PGA Tour tournament, or a Triple Crown horse race."

Check. Check. We have the Bats and a PGA Tournament. We're qualified. Let's go on.

"Once a city meets the minimum criteria, we take a 12-month snapshot, roughly from July to July, of the sports atmosphere, putting a heavy premium on regular-season records (from the most recently completed season); playoff berths, bowl appearances and tournament bids; championships; applicable power ratings; quality of competition; overall fan fervor, as measured in part by attendance as a percentage of venue capacity; sports atmosphere and fan knowledge; abundance of teams, though we reward quality over quantity; stadium/arena quality; ticket availability and prices; franchise ownership, and marquee appeal of athletes."

Ah...It all comes clear to me now. Greensboro has missed the boat on most of this. Yes, we have the venues. We have the largest coliseum in the country without a permanent tenant, i.e. no hockey, basketball or indoor football. We will have a bright, shiny new baseball stadium. We have a newly remodeled Forest Oaks Country Club. But we don't have what it takes to pull it all together. I know I'm talking sports again...but sports is part of the bigger picture.

This really got me thinking and lead me to a conclusion. Greensboro is a city. Guilford is a county. Neither are communities. There is nothing...I repeat...NOTHING...that makes us a collective community. There is nothing that brings us all together. Nothing we can unite behind.

Sure there are little "communities" here and there. There are pockets of neighborhood communities around the city and county. There are other smaller sports groups, church groups, arts groups, civic groups, etc. But where is the glue that brings us all together. What is it aside from living in the same geographic region that unites us?

In my life, I've had the privilege of living in several different what I would call "communities". I grew up on a dairy farm in northeastern Wisconsin. The area was settled in the 1800s primarily by Belgian immigrants. They brought with them a tradition called the "Kermiss". A kermiss is what many folks would call a harvest festival. Once a year, the entire area around each little unincorporated town would come together to celebrate the year's harvest. Everyone came to the kermiss. And the next weekend, you went to the adjacent town's kermiss and so on. You knew your neighbors and everybody talked about the Green Bay Packers.

I lived in Sheboygan, Wisconsin for two years. In terms of the landscape, the similarities to Greensboro are striking. You could be driving down the street in either town and not notice the difference. But yet, Sheboygan and its civic organizations, with a population with less than half of that of Greensboro, puts on not one, not two, but four major festivals a year which bring tens of thousands of residents together. You could talk about Bratwurst Days to anybody and get an opinion.

I lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for nearly eight years. Pirates, Penguins, Steelers, Pitt. It didn't matter who you ran into, depending on the season, "How about those Bucs, Pens or Stillers?" was always a conversation starter. And you always got an opinion too.

When I meet someone in Greensboro for the first time, what do I say? How about those Bats? I'm just as likely to get a four letter word response as I am to get a real opinion. Or worse yet, "Who are the Bats?". Same went for our dearly departed hockey team....and our indoor football team. Somehow starting off a conversation with "How 'bout that Billy Yow?" just isn't the same.

Funny thing though, while the city's teams struggle, promotional support is cut off or doesn't exist at all. Never, EVER, in over three years of living here, have I seen a banner hanging from a light pole downtown with a Generals, Prowlers, Bats or Dynamo symbol on it. Most of the time the frames are just hanging there empty. I work downtown. I pass by them everyday. It's really kind of sad.

The rest of the time you might see a banner for the ACC tournament at the coliseum. That's fine. It's an event that brings in $20 million to the community. Never mind the fact that Greensboro's own residents are very unlikely to have the chance to go to it. Never mind the fact that every time it comes to town, it further promotes other cities and their towns. Let's just take the money and run with that one.

It's not about promoting sports, it's about pride in our community. It's about giving people something to rally around. A few groups are trying. The the little known Greensboro Sports Commission is trying. The Jaycees are trying. The downtown business owners are trying.

But who is going to put it all together? How do you get 230,000+ people who are used to going their own ways to come together and work toward the same thing. I think everyone wants Greensboro to be a better place. A place to be proud of. The question is who can do it and how? How do you build a community?

It's an election year. I wonder if any of our elected officials or candidates want to tackle this question. Heck, I'll even offer an open invitation to post the responses unedited. My email address is at the top of the right-hand column. Fire away if you've got the answer.