Column: Nashville is the WNBA’s most logical expansion destination

I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. I have lived here for all 23 years of my life, but for about as long as I can remember, I have always loved it when my family and I would take trips up to Nashville, Tennessee.

My mother’s family, including my grandmother, great-aunts, cousins, one of my aunts, one of Mom’s childhood friends and one of Dad’s friends lived in Nashville, and I would love going up there to see them. I fully confess that this fondness is one of the reasons, but not the only reason that I think that the WNBA should expand to Nashville.

It’s a great coincidence that around the time I was born in 1998, Nashville started to become a burgeoning sports city, as the NHL expanded to the Music City with the Nashville Predators during my birth year and the year before that, the NFL had relocated the Houston Oilers to the same city to become the Tennessee Oilers, later to be renamed the Tennessee Titans in 1999.

Nashville’s emergence as a top-flight sports city is definitely the first reason that WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert would be wise to put one of the two possible expansion teams there. Both the Titans and the Predators have been near the top of their respective leagues in attendance, with the former being 12th in 2021 and the latter being fourth in 2021-22.

Not only that, but ever since the MLS also expanded to the state of Tennessee with Nashville SC in 2020, they’ve been near the top of the league in attendance as well, as they are currently fourth in attendance since they began playing at Geodis Park this year.

Given how the city has rallied behind all three of its professional sports teams, it’s not a stretch to say that Nashville would rally behind a potential WNBA team as well. I’m basing that opinion on a survey conducted by the Nashville Sports Authority where 80 percent of the residents surveyed said that they would support a potential WNBA or NWSL team in Nashville.

Clearly, there is enthusiasm for this idea, as the same council is already making a bid for a team. They definitely have a strong case when you consider the factors that the WNBA is looking for in an expansion city including demographics, population, viewership, politics and policies and generations.

The entire Nashville metropolitan area consists of 1.3 million people and the population has grown by two percent each in the past two years. Many of these people are northern transplants coming from cities where basketball reigns supreme….