How is that underachieving?
“We know them, the ones who are hyped, have lots of good players but on the big stage they fail more often then not.”
Right out of the OP.
For a very narrow window, I would nominate Phi Slama Jama in the early 80’s and UNC basketball between their two championships in the 1980s and 1990s.
I was watching a c. 1990 matchup between UVa and UNC on ESPN Classic in my hotel room the other day, and the announcers were talking about how it was a ‘rebuilding year’ and a ‘down year’ for UNC hoops. And yet, I counted 4 (four!) future NBA players on the floor for the Tarheels at that moment.
- Hubert Davis
- Scott Williams
- George Lynch
- Rick Fox
I think Dean Smith was way over-rated as an X’s and O’s coach.
I’ll nominate my beloved Houston Astros. One World Series appearance in franchise history and they did a great imitation of a possum: curl up in a ball at home and get killed on the road.
Tough to beat the All Blacks as international underachievers, as suggested by Highpockets. Perennial strongest test nation until the World Cup arrives, then chokesville.
The most underachieving team in English football is probably Spurs. They’ve not won the title since 1960, despite consistently being a big, well-funded and well supported club in London who have been in the top division since 1950. They have the financial muscle to pay 15 - 20 million for a player, and pay top salaries, but it never seems to work out for them.
They had a lot of cup success through the 60s and 70s, but that petered out and by the 90s things were getting miserable. They’ve stayed that way, give or take, and they’re now well adrift of the powerhouses in the division.
I dunno – the only time they were arguably the most talented team in the NL was 1998, and the Yanks would have been a big favorite in a hypothetical world series that year anyway. And compared to the Oilers…
I’m a Redskins fan, but the 2000 Redskins HAVE to rate up there with the great underachieving teams of all time. They entered the season with pretty much everyone predicting then to waltz into the play-offs with nothing worse than a 13-3 record and stop…whoever in the superbowl. The previous year they’d had an explosive offensive (outshined by the Rams though), and in the off season they picked up some big names on Defense AND Marvin Lewis as the Defensive Coordinator. Really, how could you go into a season with a playoff team with the second best offense, leave the offense in tact and make seemingly large improvements on the defense and NOT succeed. And yet they ended up 8-8.
Yes and no. On paper, they were much better than the Yankees many of those years (especially 1953). In addition, they lost close races to the Phillies and the Giants (though the Giants may have cheated).
The Yankees weren’t “rolling over the league” in that time frame. Here are the number of games by which they led the league:
1949: 1
1950: 3
1951: 5
1952: 2
1953: 8.5
Only in 1953 did they win comfortably; the other years they hadn’t clinched before the last week of the season (1949, they won on the last day). And in 1952 and 53 the Dodgers dominated their league much more than the Yankees dominated theirs.
The Yankees were good, but the Dodgers had too many instances of choking their season away during this period.
I read “the big stage” as “major professional sports”, not just “the post-season”. The Panthers don’t qualify for the beginning of that statement. They’re not players that are hyped, and when they make it to the post-season (or the Super Bowl), they’re exceeding expectations.
That’s a little strange to say considering the '90s were the most successful decade in the franchise’s history. They made the playoffs three times in the '90s and zero times in every other decade. Also, while they had some good talent in the '90s, they really didn’t ever have a decent starting rotation, which is almost a must for post-season success.
By that same reasoning, does that mean the Minneapolis and LA Lakers from 1958 to 1970 were also underachieving because they almost always got beat by the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals (plus once by the Knicks) during that time? The Bill Rusell-led Celtics of that period were as much of a dynasty as the Yankees during the late 40’s and 50’s.
That would have been my contribution. I don’t rally follow baseball, but dad was a Pirates fan and so I keep an ear out whenever the scores come on the radio. I know they must have one some games this year, but I never seem to be listening when they have done so.
How has Buffalo not won a Stanley Cup yet? They have the fourth best all-time winning percentage in NHL history, and at various times they have employed Gilbert Perreault, Scotty Bowman, Pat LaFontaine (though fragile as a Sabre, I’ll concede) and Dominik Hasek.
Surely they should have gotten lucky at least once by now, after 38 seasons.
They even made a few deals with Satan. 