Each State's First Surviving Sports Franchise

The reason for the "still exists today" qualifier is that the early days of these leagues featured a lot of short-lived teams, which would make the quiz unnecessarily hard.

The name is the name the team is/was most commonly known by in that location. The first name they played under in that location (if different) is given in parentheses and accepted as a type-in. An asterisk (*) indicates a team that shares a name with a different franchise that currently plays in that location.

Sources: MLB, NFL (NOTE: Includes AFL teams that later merged into the NFL), NBA (NOTE: Starts in 1946, when the NBA was still called the Basketball Association of America), NHL