Whatever, M&T gets as loud as any outdoor stadium out there.

Pete, I've learned a long time ago that ESPN is a bunch of ignorant blow-hards that probably do their best to keep a pulse on each team, but realistically, it's just too difficult to be informed on such a broad scale; to truly be in the know, you have to narrow down and specifically cover one city's teams. Actually, that's almost what ESPN does; they are out of their element when they wander outside of their NY/Boston bubble.

I read these opinions, groan for a moment, and then think of how much I don't respect their opinion.

That's nothing new to me. ESPN has been dissing Maryland sports for years. The Ravens sell out every game and gets dissed. Even after winning the Super Bowl they were still dissing the team and the fans. They constantly diss the Orioles and even the history of the franchise. The University of Maryland sports programs still do not get the respect it deserves after winning championships in certain sports. This is why I refuse to watch ESPN programming anymore. Whenever they show an event that has Maryland sports on I turn the volume all the way down and listen to the game on radio. At least I can expect to hear some decent things about my team. If they can't show a little respect to us then they can screw themselves. I will never support ESPN. And that even goes to the ESPN in the Inner Harbor.

I used to think we had a great fan base, until the night that a few hundred miscreants cheered Kyle Boller's injury. And more lowlifes boo'd him after he threw incompletions after sustaining a massive hit a couple weeks ago. How many of the 16 teams ranked ahead of us have fans who cheer injuries to their own players?

I didn't think this was slight. If you don't think that the Raiders have a huge, passionate, national fanbase then you know nothing about football. I live in central PA and there Raider fan clubs. I would bet money that there are no Ravens fan clubs in LA, Chicago, New York, or any other city. Living outside of Baltimore, I get a pretty good perspective about what the rest of the league thinks for the Ravens and it's not good. Our fans may be passionate, but outside of Jacksonville, we probably have the smallest fan base in the league.

I lost all interest in anything ESPN has to say years ago. You could count on the fingers of one hand the number of intelligent reporters they have on all their networks combined. The rest are all talking heads whose only aim in life is to find a saying that they can make their own. Sadly, most sports fans think ESPN is manna from heaven. I think it's garbage. By the by, you've done a great job taking over the Blog from ....what was his name? I forget. Cheers!

stupidest survey ever. and they seriously think pittsburg is louder than us?

One positive note. Of ALL the teams the NFL granted franchises to since the Colts left Baltimore, NONE rank higher than the Ravens. I guess ESPN knows more than the NFL

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Pete's reply: Not true. The Browns rank very high.

How could they rank the Saints fans a few spots higher? Two years of losing and their fans will disappear again! That's why I don't like ranking anything. The people who do it usually are biased by media or prejudices.

I'm not sure why you are surprised- it's not a secret that the Steelers have a huge fanbase and the Ravens have an incredibly small one comparatively. Not to say that the Ravens faithful aren't dedicated, or that Baltimore doesn't care about football at all... but you have to admit that sticking a brand new team in the middle of Pittsburgh, Philly, and DC wouldn't exactly do fantastically well.

Heck, I didn't even know a Ravens fan before 2000.

In the days when ESPN had Australian Rules Football as its anchor show, Sportscenter, with its cheap set, was a welcome addition. Its only competition was the sports on local news broadcasts. It did a decent job covering all the teams.

Disney bought ESPN and it was a whole new animal run by their corporate heads. Their motto: If you are not NY, Boston, LA or Chicago, you get little or no coverage.

The profit-driven ESPN is now much like a 24-hour news channel. It covers the same story over and over. It is a lot cheaper to cover the Brett Favre story or the articles you mentioned than to actually have reporters at various venues doing real journalism.

When huge corporations took over it marked the end of the television journalists. That is why I very seldom watch ESPN, CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC and the like and prefer the print media. For now, it is the only place to get real news and sports.

First, I'd like to say I agree 100% with Ron. Unfortunately I live in NY now, (Brooklyn to be exact), though once resided/grew in the promised land(still have a summer home in PuttyHill :). ESPN seems to work in tandem with the local papers in covering the teams. Stories are lifted from both sides and referenced quite often. How many times does ESPN comment on the back page of the Post or Daily News? As far as us being a small but loyal bunch, I would have to agree we are. It's not often I meet another Ravens fan, but than again, I've never met a Panthers fan or a Raiders fan. It's not the size of the dog in the fight yadda yadda. Our stadium rocks, we sell out, we love the game. That should be enough. Look, fan bases are built in communities and areas that have had long exposure to their teams. The Squeelers have fans whose parents were fans. Alot of our fans are just learning football b/c parents were disenfranchised after Irsay and the Mayflower crap, so you could say this football tradition is just beginning, and if this is the beginning than imagine how nice it will be when it blossoms, cause it's pretty cool just the way it is. Our fans are intelligent, passionate and blue collar. Better than halloween costumes, drunk frat guys yelling at girls during JETS games, tolerant, etc..

ESPN doesnt know anything. Baltimore is more passionate about it's football than they will ever understand. Im from Baltimore but live in Albuquerque New Mexico where this is bandwagon central. I see tons of Steelers fans and..ugh Colts fans. I'm probably the only Ravens here and thats not a tribute to Ravens fans not being faithful, it's that we're not a bandwagon team...And i REALLY like that. I HATE bandwagoners and thats what most of the Steelers fans as well as Red Sox and Yankees fans are.

Ravens should be ahead of the Saints and Bills fans for sure. The latter two teams may not even be long for their respective cities. Indy fans will drop off in droves the minute Peyton can't play and/or the team has a couple of losing seasons (why only 56 sellouts during the reign of Peyton compared with the Raven's 96 during the reign of Dilfer/Grbac/Banks/Redman/Boller/McNair/Boller/Flaccosmith?). The once fearsome and now just quaint and silly Raiders Nation is continuing to slowly decay since its heyday in the late 70's/early 80's.

Gee, ESPN's opinion is soooo important to me, I'm going to start dressing up like the mutant aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, like the Raider fans. Naaaaah.

I would not get too excited by ESPN's
"drive-by" survey. I have avidly followed NFL football since 1953, and ththe Baltimore fans bleed purple. ESPN knows more than people who play the game, coach the game, and those who make M+T Bank Stadium sell-outs a weekly deal. We have both great museums and fans. It is a good thing ESPN did not includes fileds in their survey. Heinz stadium is the saddest field going back to the early 1950's in the NFL. Finally, remember that the ESPN personnel are known for volume not intelligence.

Who cares what everyone esle thinks! We have a Football Team with a great owner, one of the best stadium in the NFL, some of the best player to ever play the game (past and present) and fans who care about there team.

Whatever. I've been to FedEx with a couple of friends who are Skins fans and they've got to be the most pathetic bunch of losers ever. I heard them raining boos down on the team for being down 7-0. No way do they rank ahead of us. I don't care, and you can call me a homer, but Baltimore fans rock and should be ranked in the top ten. More typical bunk from the Mickey Mouse Sports Media at ESPN. (pun intended)

We cheered when one of our own players was seriously hurt. How are we not last place?!?! Those kind of fake fans make me sick!!!! I'm surprised we're ranked so high, no true football town cheers when one of their own gets injured.

Pretty accurate list, I'd say.

And to those who asked which fan bases besides Baltimore have cheered when one of their own was down with an injury, I'm going to venture a guess and say all 31.

Being ranked in the middle of the pack is not a lack of respect. It's not like the Ravens were near the bottom. And it is true that it's been hard to establish a fan base outside of Baltimore.

I live in western MD and the Ravens rank number 3 well behind the Steelers and the Redskins in number of fans. But back in the 60's the Baltimore Colts had the most fans around here. It will take a long time and a new generation of fans for the Ravens to catch up. Winning another Super Bowl or two would help. The Steelers gained their fan base in the 70's and Skins in the 80's when those teams won multiple Super Bowls.

I was surprised Dallas wasn't higher. They have fans everywhere just like the Steelers.

Baltimore isn't one of the top 20 markets in size & is the 2nd newest franchise in the NFL I believe...what did you expect??? Middle of the pack is just right....

Am in Seattle-Seahawk Country, the only reason B-more gets no love is because the Ravens and the Orioles aren't dominate teams. Plus the D.C. /Philly factor and the Browns move to B-more is still view as unpopular. Here in Seattle we just lost tthe Sonics to a bunch of hillbillies from Oklahoma- Guarantee they will move in 10 years. Seattle is full of bandwagoners because the teams here always choke during crunch time. Go Ravens, Go O's, Terps, Wizards and Caps.

I wouldn't worry too much about what ESPN releases. They follow the same anti-Ravens/Baltimore/MD line which was exposed as as extreme bias by facts and reality time and again. Neither would I put too much weight on what their "experts" think, since they made huge mistakes repeatedly and never apologized, not to mention that some of of them are either ignorant or better, just far from being smart, to say the least.

But why should we be concerned with what some "alien expert" have to say, when we have original anti-Ra, intenvens in our own yard; I'm talking about Mr. Preston and Mr. Steele mainly. At least with them the problem is not lack of cleverness, but rather a sheer ill intent to always find the negatives, intensify them, multiply them, and then throw them as "red meet" to the fans. There is a huge difference between being sarcastic for the sake of showing what a clever journalist you are, and between being maliciously sarcastic so that you can increase the hitting power of yrou writing.
I am not against telling the FACTS if you know what they are, on the contrary, but the way "the fans" behave towards Boller for example, has very much to do with what the "duo hitters" write, how they write it, what words they choose and what is their hidden agenda; and you can stay assured that they have one, or more.
Maybe it is worth while to take a thorough look and compare their writing with what other journalists in other football cities write, what they say and how they say it, even when it is negative. I couldn't find similar low-hitting wording and similar vicious attacks in other places, but on ESPN; and I'm sick of it.

So maybe it would be a good idea if the Sun could borrow them for free to ESPN for an unlimited time; I'm sure ESPN will be willing to embrace them and their shrewdness with open arms. And since we shouldn't take what ESPN says anyway, we might kill to birds in one shot.

Hey I live in Portland Oregon a God forsaken football town. We have a Ravens fan club here. With 10 Baltimore homesick fans. Just be glad you get to see the games, out here in Oregon all we get is Seattle or Oakland and both make me want to buy a ticket back to Baltimore.