I took out all the major metro areas in our region (read: major league sports cities minus Green Bay) to see how towns like Des Moines, Duluth and Madison stack up. The results might surprise you. For instance, despite the oil boom, North Dakota as a state still produces less economic output than the metro areas of Omaha or Des Moines.

And I didn't realize that Green Bay has a bigger economy than Cedar Rapids, Fargo, Duluth and Rochester.

UPDATE: At readers' wise requests, I added the Quad Cities to the list, which include Davenport, Moline and Rock Island, and I added the word "might" to the headline.

(I tried to color-code the bars by state: red for Nebraska, yellow for Iowa, black for Wisconsin, blue for Michigan, orange for South Dakota, maroon for Minnesota and green for North Dakota.)