NFL - Cleveland Browns. The NFL abandoned Cleveland in 1997, then the fans came back hungrier than ever for the replacement team in 1999, and despite a recent 0-16 season they love them more than ever!
Baseball- Now with the Red Sox and Cubs off the list, can we go back to Cleveland? I don’t have attendance stats but is there a city in baseball more hungry for a World Series title than Indians fans?
NHL- This one is easy. Toronto Maple Leafs fans. The last team to win a Stanley Cup in the Original Six era, they haven’t even made a Cup final since then. Yet every year their fans pack the streets for viewing parties during the playoffs only to have their dreams crushed year after year. As a matter of fact, they go to #1 on my list with a bullet!
NBA- Tough one because of how many times teams go back and forth to new arenas. Initial thought are Utah Jazz fans. Only game in town, made a couple NBA Finals rounds, just not an attractive superstar magnet. But the fans seem to show up year after year.
What about other sports? Futile college teams that have rabid followings? World soccer? Disagree with any of my examples? Winnepeg Blue Bomber fans I want to hear from you! Call now at 1-800…
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The Leafs are basically the patron saints of this concept. The fans are loyal, vocal, and sometimes kind of scary (I’m sure our own LeafsFan is only the first two).
According to this, Utah is the least followed team on social media. Their attendance numbers are middle of the pack.
I would go with the Toronto Raptors or New York Knicks. The Raptors are Canada’s team through thick and thin. The Knicks have generally been inept since 2000 and still draw more interest than most, one could probably say from being in a huge market with some celebrity support moreso than loyalty.
Perhaps Liverpool for football? An epic collapse in the Champions League final last year with their goaltender completely having a mental breakdown and isn’t even with the team this year. They do have an excellent chance of winning the Premier League this year, however.
If I’m looking at the stats right, the Pittsburgh Pirates have made the playoffs only six times since 1979, and have lost in the first round each time. For the last 22 years or so, there’s been a loyal cadre of 20,000-30,000 fans per game no matter what. There may not be many, but they surely are loyal.
I was in college (in another state) in 1998. At the time, the Indians were rather good, so you saw a lot of Indians gear around. But you could always recognize the real Clevelanders, because they were wearing Browns gear. While the team didn’t even exist. It’s tough to get greater team futility than not even existing at all.
In international football, I would have said England - their level of fan intensity is quite high despite having gone 52 years without appearing in a World Cup final (which will be 56 years by the next one.) They have never won the Euro title either. But England isn’t exactly a *bad *team either.
In NFL, I agree, it’s the Browns - and possibly the Lions a close second.
Until the past decade, the Blackhawks were in a similar boat (though I suspect that Maple Leafs fans have had to put up with more, and there are likely more of them).
The Blackhawks spent decades mired in mediocrity: from 1973 to 2009, they’d gone to only one Stanley Cup final, and lost. The then-owner, Bill Wirtz, was famously frugal, and refused to allow home games to be shown on TV (for fear of hurting his ticket sales), and so, the team got little exposure in Chicago, even when they were pretty good. Even so, they managed to maintain a loyal (if somewhat small) fan base in that era.
Then, Wirtz died, his son Rocky took over the team, he hired a good front office and coach, and they won 3 Stanley Cups.
The Indians don’t have very good attendance, for some reason. The team has been really good lately but the attendance has been worryingly bad, not responding to a winning team the way it usually does.
I am not sure why this is, so I am not sure it’s reflective of the fanbase enthusiasm or if it’s an economic issue.
In my honest opinion this is absolutely the #1 answer in any North American professional sport and it’s not a close call. The combination of hapless futility, blown opportunities, and absolute, unwavering obsession is unmatched anywhere else. Not even Browns fans can touch it. Of course, part of this is the fact that hockey is singularly important to Canadians in a way no sport is to Americans.
Huh. I don’t follow hockey, but I’d always just sort of assumed that the Leafs were pretty good, given how much fandom one encounters for them. I guess that just illustrates the point.
Liverpool FC is the most disproportionate to reality I’ve encountered, albeit not quite futility, as they do well in the cups. But in terms of sports fandom as religious cult they are a special group. Gifted, even.
The Welsh rugby union team is a related cultish phenomenon but I guess it’s different when you’re talking nationalism.
To an outsider, ice hockey seems to be a sport where a superstar would have disproportionate influence, given five outfield players and the speed and skill level of the game. This would make the Leafs’ ineptitude truly staggering, given they haven’t cracked it in decades [I know there’s four lines, so the gameday rosters are actually bigger than most sports]. Is it the salary cap that makes this so challenging, that it’s just not possible to load up on the best of the best at more than 1 or 2 positions?
Liverpool won the CL in 2005. Made the CL final last year and have an ok shot at a double this year. Their support is more than say, the Browns, but I think their taste of success in living memory puts a ding in their claim.
Seattle baseball fans are long-suffering, if not always terribly numerous. It’s been 50 years since the Pilots’ single season, and 40+ years of the Mariners without even making it to the World Series.
They are good now, and getting better, but these things eb and flow. Typically there’s a window of opportunity to draft well and sign big contracts, and then the team languishes as they rebuild, and the cycle repeats.
Typically teams have 4 or 5 players who take half the salary cap, and the other half is apportioned to the other 17ish players. There are some 6 million people in the Greater Toronto Area. Why would they not sell out every night? Hockey is like a religion here.
The Leafs are probably the best answer, but deserving a mention are the St. Louis Blues, who went to the Stanley Cup finals the first three years of their existence (benefiting from being lumped in a conference with all the other expansion teams), got skunked all three times, and haven’t been back since. They don’t enjoy the widespread following of some of the premier teams, but locally they have a rabid fan base, and since 1999 they’ve averaged over 17,000 fans per game all but two seasons. They’ve put some exciting teams on the ice, but they haven’t rewarded their fans with much playoff success.
Until 2015, I would have said the Golden State Warriors. When they won the first round of the 2007 NBA playoffs against the Mavs, you would have listened to the deafening roar in the Oracle Arena and thought they had just won the NBA Finals. In fact it was, at that time, a rare playoff appearance and an even rarer playoff win.
I agree, pretty hard to find any team that compares with the fervor of Leaf fans who flock to games and buy merchandise no matter what their record or roster.
The problem with the Leafs has almost always been poor management.
IMHO, their problem has always been not sticking to rebuilding through their own system. Whenever they get a sniff of a strong playoff run they would trade away their top prospects and draft picks for UFAs, journeymen, etc… Of course, they can afford it, but it has been to their detriment.
TIP - If you ever get cornered by rabid Leaf fans, just throw out a Ballard reference and duck out while they’re distracted arguing with themselves.
In 2016 when the Cubs won, here was the list of futility. Since then, both the Astros and Eagles have ended their droughts. Franchise League Last Championship
Arizona Cardinals NFL 1947 (69 Years)
Cleveland Indians MLB 1948 (68 Years)
Sacramento Kings NBA 1951 (65 Years)
Detroit Lions NFL 1957 (59 Years)
Atlanta Hawks NBA 1958 (58 Years)
Philadelphia Eagles NFL 1960 (56 Years)
Texas Rangers MLB Never (55 Years)
Tennessee Titans NFL 1961 (55 Years)
Houston Astros MLB Never (54 Years)
San Diego Chargers NFL 1963 (53 Years)
Toronto Maple Leafs NHL 1967 (49 years)
