Chances are you have seen this piece by Wallet Hub that ranks 2015’s Best and Worst Cities for Soccer Fans. As the title suggests, the piece seeks to make an extensive ranking of the best and worst places for a soccer fan to be in the United States, an ambitious undertaking to be sure.

Upon close inspection of the piece, we here at ICS saw something that confused and surprised us: Sacramento, home of Sacramento Republic FC, 2014 USL Champions and leader of all lower league teams in attendance, was ranked 170th out of 171 cities. To find the answer for how Dayton, Ohio and Highland Heights, KY could be better cities for soccer fans than Sacramento, we took to the methodology section and saw what many, us included, would consider a flaw. The piece took only MLS and NCAA soccer into account, leaving out two entire leagues of professional soccer in the process.

By excluding all of the NASL and USL, the piece was flawed from the start, as it looked at an incomplete picture of the American soccer scene to attempt to rank where the scene is strongest. If it had looked at the complete picture, cities like Sacramento and Indianapolis, which have teams leading their respective leagues in attendance, would likely have been ranked higher than 170th and 120th, respectively.

The rest of the methodology used, such as how many teams a city has, looking at social media followers, and the success of a city’s teams, is ok for the most part. However, completely omitting attendance also weakens the piece’s validity a tad, seeing as how it purports to list the best cities for soccer fans. While it could be argued that social media follows and likes are a fair substitution, they also could be affected by support from outside the city, rather than attendance, which solely measures support in the city.

Overall, the idea to attempt to measure the best and worst cities for soccer fans was an ambitious one and one that could have turned out very well. However, the potential for the piece was ruined and the results skewed by completely ignoring the entirety of lower league soccer, both USL and NASL.