Order of sportsman importance in DC:

1) Redskins

2) Wizards

3) Caps

If the Redskins are doing well then that will be because one of the following players will be doing well and then they'll be the King:

a) Portis

b) Santana Moss/Campbell/Cooley etc.

c) defensive player like Haynesworth/Hall/Landry/Orakpo

If the Skins suck and the Wizards are playing great then the King will be:

a) Gilbert

b) Gilbert

c) Gilbert (hard to see the Wiz doing well if Gilbert is playing and playing well)

If the Skins suck and the Wiz suck then by default the King of DC for part of the year will be

Ovechkin

As a New Yorker, and a huge Yankees fan, I can tell you that A-Rod is not anywhere close to the King of New York.  Is he the most scruitinized athlete in New York?  Absolutely.  But the Yankees are Jeter's team.  Any real Yankees fan will tell you they'd take Jeter over A-Rod any day (and personally, I'd take Scott Brosius over A-Rod any day).

Now, having lived in DC for a few years, I noticed (and DC natives can feel free to correct me), that the Redskins are top draw in the area.  So I would guess the King of DC would have to come from the Redskins.  Ovechkin has become very popular, but before he came along, no one down there seemed to care about the Caps.  And there was a good portion of people at Caps playoff series the last 2 seasons who looked like they just took the tags off their Ovechkin jerseys.  I'm not saying there aren't any "real" Caps fans, but I would guess that a Redskins game would probably get higher ratings in the DC area than a Caps playoff game (if it were possible for them to fall on the same day).  So, because of their popularity, I'd have to argue that the King of DC would have to be on the Redskins.   

Hooper, if you're still unconvinced about the A-Rod-Jeter discussion, read Joe Torre's book (as told to Tom Verducci).  A-Rod has always been about himself; Jeter has always been about the team.  Jeter has 4 rings; A-Rod has none.  If the king is who the fans want it to be, the winner is Jeter, hands down.  In fact, David Wright would get far more votes than A-Rod at this point.

However, if I can apply your same logic to your original question on DC, then the all-time king was, is and will be Marion Barry.

There's no king unless you win.

Obviously DC is a Redskins town, and Portis is currently the brightest light.  But none of these guys have won.  It pains me to say this because I despise him, but the king is still Joe Gibbs.  The prince is Riggins.  Gibbs coached the winners with a lot of interchangeable parts.  Riggins pulled off the one big memorable play that won their first Super Bowl.  Doug Williams and Mark Rypien, although their careers in no way matched Riggins', are still remembered for playing career games when they won the big one.  People still remember Timmy Smith because his WHOLE CAREER was that one Super Bowl win over the Broncos. 

Don't get me wrong, Ovechkin already outshines them as an athlete but the city really doesn't care about the Capitals. 

As for New York, I agree that Jeter is king, but he's like King Lear.  Their last WS win, which is all anyone cares about, was 9 years ago.  Face it, without A-Rod the team is nothing, but he's a Hessian.  Jeter is the soul of the team.  But he can't carry them the way A-Rod can over the course of a season. 

Agree that the best player on the Redskins is the king, but the Capitals had sold out the entire net season before the playoffs started due to a great owner, great marketing, etc but primarily due to by far the most eciting hockey player in the world (and arguably one of the top 10 in all of sports), the Great 8.  Hard to put Arenas ahead of Ovi in my opinion...and his Eastern Motors commercials are hilarious.

 Marginally related, and completely subjective but interesting looking at ranking sports franchises on ESPN...

GWALUM2001,

It's an odd thing about the Caps - they have less than 30,000 hardcare hard fans in DC and most of them are season ticket holders of one type or another.  So attendance doesn't translate into widespread popularity.  The Wizards are much more popular even though they don't draw nearly as well (particularly when Gilbert has been hurt and they haven't played well). 

The Redskins will obliterate other sports news coverage if they win a few big games.  Portis' interviews after practice draws more attention that a Caps 10 game winning streak.  As a city of front runners, DC-ites did follow the Caps at the end of the playoffs because they suddenly had become "hip."  But the Caps will be off the radar screen until net year's playoffs. 

In general hockey is mostly dead.  I saw recently that the NFL Draft coverage on tv drew more viewers than the NBA and NHL playoffs combined.  The Redskins almost trading for a new quarterback drew way more coverage than Ovechkin in the playoffs.  A hockey player just can't be king in DC for more than a week or two.

And if you go to former players then any of the following players would cause a riot before Ovechkin would: Riggins, Theisman, Deter Manley, Art Monk, Darrel Green, Doug Williams.

FQ,

I agree that ESPN the magazine is crap...I thought it was interesting to see how they compared the DC teams and didn't really look at the comparisons across markets.  I realize this is not the debate, but as a GW season ticket holder for 8 years, a Capitals season ticket holder for 3 years, a partial ticket holder for the Redskins and Nationals (and a former ticket holder for the Yankees), if we were talking about the overall "fan eperience", the Capitals absolutely crush anything I have seen as far as value per dollar spent and this is at an $85 per seat cost.   

To thinker and back to the point, I can't dispute the skins being king no matter how hard Snyder tries to alienate fans (no tailgating in most of the parking lots, you have to be kidding me!).  Hockey as a sport is definitely 4th overall, but I think the Capitals have turned the corner in this market.  I think it will be interesting to see what happens in DC over the net few years.  Coverage of the Capitals has increased in the post, ratings have gone up significantly, etc.  DC has become a "destination" for free agents (see Theodore and Fedorov last year and Mike Knuble last week), they have one of the most engaging owners in sports, great practice facility etc not to mention Ovi.  If the Caps win the cup (definitely have a shot over the net five years the way the team is put together), I think they may surpass the the Wizards as the number 2 team in town. 

Hockey as a whole may be dead in your opinion, but it certaintly isn't in this town. 

Thinker, you might want to re-think your statement regarding the Caps' following.  What you suggested is in fact an old, long-time adage.  Granted that interest is much higher in the playoffs but the Caps-Pens playoff games on CSN averaged over 110,000 viewers in the DC area or over 140,000 if you include the Baltimore region.  The Caps have an impressive streak of sellouts and will sell out their season tickets for 2009-10.  When the team moved from Cap Centre to MCI, the joke was whether all 20,000 Caps fans would make the move as well.  Your point about comparing their following despite having more success to a greater Wizards following still has some validity but the gap isn't nearly what it once was.

MV,

I was basing my comments about the popularity of the Caps on a recent interview I saw with Ted Leonsis (not my personal bias - and btw I was definitely one of the front runners going around town asking "do you know the score?").  I probably watched more hockey during these last playoffs than in the combined last 10 years.  It was Leonsis that talked about the hardcore fan base as not being very large at all but hoping to slowly grow it.  He talked about having to rely on fans of the Caps' opponents to fill the Verizon Center and that only in this year really seeing mostly Caps fans in the playoff games as being a measure of great success.  There is no disputing the brilliance of Leonsis' plan to build up the Caps from a moribund franchise to what they are today - a team on the precipice of a potential 5 year run of greatness. 

That all notwithstanding, DC is not really a great sports town and to the etent that it is - it's mostly all about the Redskins.  Go on the Washington Post Sports blogs and look at how many people comment and debate Redskins and Wizards issues vs. Caps issues.  After 30 years of complaining about the lack of MLB in DC the Ntinals with a beautiful convenient stadium aren't drawing shit, ecept when the Red So come to town.  The hope I guess is that if someday they become a decent team people will go to the games.  And I would imagine that if Ovechkin got hurt ala Gilbert then the Caps would drop off the radar like a meteor.  I think the popularity of the Caps is largely a trendy "alternative" that will be hard to sustain because of the nature of DC.