SEC
6 SEC cities make U.S. News's list of 125 best cities in America
The SEC footprint contains a number of wonderful cities, and now some of them are getting recognized as great places to live.
On Tuesday, U.S. News released its list of the top-125 cities in America, and six cities that are home to SEC universities made the cut.
Fayetteville, Arkansas — home of the Razorbacks — led the way all the way up at No. 4, followed by five other SEC towns:
- No. 4 — Fayetteville, Arkansas
- No. 15 — Nashville, Tennessee
- No. 29 — Lexington, Kentucky
- No. 46 — Knoxville, Tennessee
- No. 67 — Columbia, South Carolina
- No. 109 — Baton Rouge, Louisiana
To make the cut, a city had to have a population of at least 50,000 people, so some SEC cities didn’t make the cut (Starkville and Oxford, to name a couple). Others simply weren’t named to the list at all.
What do you think of these rankings?
Lou Holtz was once asked while coaching at Arkansas if Fayetteville, AR was on the edge of the earth. Holtz responded, “No, but you can see it from here.”
Lou holtz coached in Fayetteville when Fayetteville had 25,000 people and was surrounded by cow pasture. Now it has a metro population of 750000 and more jobs than there are qualified applicants.
More like 491,966 Metro and 295,083 Urban
There is not 3 quarter of a million people in Fayetteville
I actually preferred Auburn when the student population made up 2/3 of the city.
The metrics they use are somewhat iffy. A large part of the Desirability and Quality of Life scores come from their own internal surveys. The jobs vs workforce score is somewhat overstated, as we’re living in an era where the national unemployment rate is minuscule, and there are very few areas where employers are not begging for applicants.
That said, people generally live where they want to live and where they can afford to live. Lists like this are a great conversation piece but the only folks who get excited are the Chambers of Commerce. I don’t plan on moving to Austin, TX any time soon.
Unless you like hippies and carbon monoxide, you shouldn’t move there ever!
thank god they didn’t put gainesville. I love my gators but cant say Im a big fan of gainesville