Among your favorite sports teams, who have historically been the most successful and the least successful? For me there is quite a wide disparity.
My favorite basketball team is the L.A. Lakers, who have won seventeen championships, including the last two and five of the last eleven. The Florida Gators (NCAA) have also been very successful, winning three football championships since 1996 and two basketball championships in 2006 & 2007.
On the other end of the spectrum is the Chicago Cubs, who haven’t won a World Series in over 100 years and haven’t even been to the World Series in 65 years.
Falling somewhere in the middle would be the Chicago Bears, who haven’t been all that good lately, but at least I can remember their Super Bowl championship in the 1985 season.
I’m a Saints fan. And a Mississippi State fan. And a Braves fan, when I followed baseball, starting back when they’d be 20 games out of first by the end of April, with Glenn Hubbard, Bob Horner, Phil Neikro and the Mighty Murph.
On the upside, to a slightly lesser degree, I’m a fan of SEC football in general, and the SEC rules the college football world, so there’s that.
More people have seen the Dodgers play in person than any other team in America. The only reason we haven’t won every World Series in the last 50 years is that that much success would swell our heads too much. So we work the humble angle and revel in the fact that we are on the Decent Coast.
Football: NFC: Rams; AFC: Raiders - both kinda the same - decades of misery punctuated by brief eras of glory.
Baseball: Cardinals - always and forever - only the Yankees have more World Series wins -although right now it’d be nice if they could find a pitcher who can actually close a game or two (damn Rockies…)
Basketball: Not much of a pro basketball fan, but I do root for the Grizzlies since they’re the hometown team.
The Canadiens are hockey’s Yankeees, with 24 Stanley Cups; by comparison, Toronto is next with 13 and Detroit with 11.
The Blue Jays had a pretty good run from the mid 80s to the early 90s, with five AL East titles(85, 89, 91-93), two AL pennants (1992, 93) and two World Series Championships (1992, 93). They were the first team since the 77-78 Yankees to win back to back World Series. Since then, though, they’ve been astoundingly mediocre. If they finish 80-82 this season, they will have a cumulative record of 702-702 since June 3, 2002.
Just wondering, how do end up with a rooting interest in teams from Florida, Chicago (2), and Los Angeles?
Mine are all the Colorado pro teams (where I live) and Wisconsin for college sports (where I went to school.)
So, not bad. UW is a perrenial top 20 team in football and basketball, and it is not unreasonable to think that they could pull off a championship in either.
The Rockies went to the World Series four years ago and to the playoffs last year. The Avalanche and Broncos have both won multiple championships in the not too distant past, and the Nuggets are one of the best teams in the NBA.
Not to rain on your Stanley Cup parade, but hockey is the one sport where championships before 1967 should be put in a different category.
I think the Canadiens were a great hockey team, but when you have a 1 in 6 chance of winning the championship each year for 60 years, it’s kind of hard not to amass some impressive championship numbers. Then consider the Maple Leafs haven’t won since 1942 and until this year, the Blackhawks hadn’t won since 1960, and you are looking at a 1 in 4 chance.
That doesn’t mean the Canadiens shouldn’t count the Stanley Cups. I just think they should be put in the proper context. (FTR, If I was a Canadiens fan, I’d be just as proud as you are… )
OK. I am a rarity apparently, since I root for the teams I grew up with. **Ponch8 **has the Cubs and Bears in his blood, so I assume some ties to the Chicago area. However, he is also a Lakers fan, which is strange to me. As a kid, didn’t you just follow the team from your home town?
Sorry. Back to the OP. I am a Pittsburgh fan. I was born there. So, I live and die with each sports team, and I don’t root for any other teams, even though I haven’t lived in Pittsburgh in a long time.
In my lifetime I’ve seen
**Steelers **- 6 Lombardis. No complaints there. I was a kid when the immaculate reception occurred, so I’ve been lucky in that I missed the 40+ years of awful football and have been able to enjoy 30+ years of high level football.
**Penguins **- 3 Stanly Cups. It was a long wait (I’ve been around since they came into the league in '67, so I suffered incredibly before Mario Lemieux was drafted.)
**Pirates **- 2 World Series Championships, but nothing since 1979, and no winning season since 1992. The Pirates are my favorite team, and baseball is my favorite sport, so the Pirates have been a sore spot for me for a long time. The owner, Mr. Nutting, is a cheap bastard who makes money every year with the worst team in baseball. He doesn’t care about anything but money, so he has killed people like me for a very long time. Where is a well-placed lightening bolt when you need one?
The NBA isn’t in Pittsburgh, and as a result, I never followed the sport. Dr. J was my favorite player, so I followed the 76ers for a while, but I wasn’t passionate about it at all. I absolutely hate the NBA now, so I’m glad that Pittsburgh doesn’t have a team.
All in all, I’ve been a pretty lucky fan, although the Pirate’s annual sprint to the basement hurts in a way that’s hard to describe.
Actually, the Leafs last Cup was in 1967. But it must feel like 1942. And Montreal did win 9 of the first 12 Cups after the '67 expansion. All that, though, was before my time. I was born in '79 and the Canadiens won it that year, but then not again until '86, and then again in '93, and that was the last one so far. To be honest, if I were born about ten years earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been a Montreal fan, because they won all the time.
And I knew the Canadiens won a number of cups after expansion, but the truth was, the expansion teams were shit, and Montreal was the best organization in the NHL, so they should have been on top of the mountain.
I’m picking nits, though. Like I said, if I was a Canadien fan, I’d count them all. I just think the NHL’s original 6 was closer to the original 3 in quality (how could I forget the ineptitude of the 1940 Rangers, their last cup until 1994?)
I grew up in Illinois, but I like the Lakers because of Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s appearance in Airplane! Then I went to UF to get away from the crappy winters we have up here.
I’m in that boat, so I’ll tell you at least my version. I grew up as a big Cubs & Bears fan (about 180 miles south of Chicago). But hockey and pro basketball never really hit my radar much growing up. I moved to California as a young adult, and I developed an appreciation for hockey, so I became a Kings fan (although I’m still a lot more rabid about my Cubs and Bears). And I followed the Lakers a lot during the Magic era, but I stopped watching much pro basketball several years ago.
To the topic of the OP - Cubs & Bears. At least the Bears have been to a couple of Superbowls (and won one) in my lifetime. Don’t get me started about 1984 or 2003 with the Cubs…
I grew up in eastern Kentucky and Cincinnati was the predominant pro market. I started paying attention to baseball around 1973 or 74 and was lucky enough to see one of the best teams ever in the 1975 Reds. Of course they also won the World Series in '76 and '90. There have been some really down years in there though. I am really happy to see them doing so well this year (hope they can get over losing 4 straight to the Phillies).
Football has not been quite as good. The Bengals did go the Super Bowl twice in the 80’s, but a few years ago after a sportscaster on the local news in Cincinnati had reviewed the game, he said “Tampa Bay will be in town to beat the Bengals next week”.
I went to the University of Kentucky who won championships in '78, '96, and '98. I watch the football team faithfully, but I admit anytime they are in a close game I am wondering “I wonder what they will do to screw this up?”.
Imho, winning is not necessary to be “a fan.” It’s kind of like the last scene in the Bad News Bears, where the kid screams out “wait till next year, #@$%!@#@!!”
I like the Steelers. I haven’t really been a fan of any basketball teams, I usually follow players not teams, and I pretty much gave up watching after the Shaq/Kobe/Payton/Malone debacle. I tried to like the Knicks, but I gave up. I used to like the Mets, but after their drug scandals in the 80’s, I stopped watching all baseball.
Overall though, I like certain players regardless of which teams they play for. I was a big fan of Latrell Sprewell, Jordan, etc.
I’m a Badger alum, as well (BBA '87, MS '89). When I was growing up in Wisconsin in the 1970s, and then going to school there in the 1980s, the football and basketball teams were mediocre-to-bad. (Thank goodness we had hockey, at least.) In the years since I graduated, both football and basketball got far better, so it’s fun to follow them now.
As far as pro sports go:
Packers: 12 league championships (most of any NFL team), though 8 of those happened before I was born, and 3 of the 4 others were before I turned 3. Watching them win Super Bowl XXXI in 1997 was a big thrill, especially since, for most of the time I’d been a Packer fan before then, they’d been pretty bad. Since then, they’ve been reasonably good most of the time, and look to be one of the pre-season picks to win the NFC this year (which scares me, of course. )
Brewers: Ugh. They had a good run when I was a teenager (between around 1978 and 1982, when they lost the World Series), and then made the playoffs two years ago, riding C.C. Sabathia’s arm. But, overall, they’re usually a second-division team, and it’s starting to look like the young core of players which helped get them to respectability over the past few years may be starting to get dealt away.
Blackhawks: woot (finally)! When I first started following them, after moving to Chicago from Wisconsin in '89, they were pretty good, and made the Cup finals a few years later. But, then, they went into a serious downturn, and were pretty awful most of the time, until tightwad Bill Wirtz finally passed on, and his son took over the team, a few years back. The playoff runs the past two years were great (esp. this year, of course).
But I’m also a Notre Dame fan, so at least I’ve got to root for 3 National Championship football teams (1973, 1977 and 1988) in the time I’ve been a fan. I was alive for their 1966 championship but was only 5 so it didn’t make much of an impression on me.
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