You might want to get a pencil and take notes, because this will be the most important thing you read in a long time. This is the true value of blogs such as this one. The ability to share vital information that expands mental horizons and build perspective on life.

Ok, so as the beloved Cleveland Indians play on MLB Extra Innings, it comes to mind: why is their opponent the Minnesota Twins and not the Minneapolis Twins? This is not an isolated phenomenon as it relates to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Their NBA team is the Minnesota Timberwolves, the NFL team is the Minnesota Vikings and the NHL team (which actually plays in St. Paul) is the Minnesota Wild.

The immediately obvious reason for this is that the city name Minneapolis is not very marketable and might not fit so well on player uniforms. This seams reasonable enough, but are "Indianapolis", "Milwaukee" and "Philadelphia" really any different in this respect?

Then there's the possibility of wanting to be more inclusive of an entire state in order to develop a larger fan base. Again, this seems very plausible, but are people in Duluth or Moorhead really going to naturally cheer for anyone other than Minneapolis' teams? It seems very unlikely. About 70% of Minnesota's population reside in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, so it seems like those people wouldn't mind if their favorite team represented their hometown rather than their home state.

Minnesota is probably about the most extreme example of a large percentage of a state's population living in one metropolitan area. Many other states have more than one large city or don't have a city as large as Minneapolis-St. Paul. And yes, it is quite large. This notion is further magnified by the fact that Minnesota is a quite large state. Outside of Mpls-StP, there is about 80,000 square miles of Minnesota and about 1.5 million people. That is pretty sparse and definitely more sparse than the Georgia/Atlanta, Portland/Oregon, Seattle/Washington, or Denver/Colorado relationship.

Ok, so now that that's out of the way, you can go ahead and return to your regularly-scheduled lives.