After rubbing one of your great grandad’s old bowling trophies a sports genie emerges. He says the following, “I am, indeed, a sports genie but I only have one power. Think of all the sports teams you love and are a fan of, I have the power to guarantee that the one you choose will win it’s highest championship, however, by doing this, the other sports you are a fan of will never win a championship for a guaranteed 10 years. You can choose this, or you can just let your teams be as they are right now and hope for the future.”
So, do you take the deal? A team of your choosing wins the championship, but it guarantees 10 years of non-winning for your others.
I’m a Lions fan, so at first I thought hells yeah I would take the deal. 10 years is nothing.
But then I thought, well, even though I may never see the Lions win the Super Bowl in my lifetime, a genie-engineered championship would seem like cheating. I’d make plenty of unknowing Lions fans happy, but I would know the truth.
Then I thought, but magical genie intervention may be the only way the Lions ever even have a chance to win it all, so I’m conflicted.
In general, I think this would be a good tradeoff for most sports fans. The only cost for the wish is that some teams don’t win a championship for ten years? There are 32 NFL teams (and the other major sports have similar numbers), so a team can expect to go a couple decades between championships.
How about if I wish for the U.S. men’s soccer team to win the World Cup; does that mean that the U.S. will win no other international competitions for ten years? That would mean a hell of a drought in the Olympics.
Take it if you support teams that historically don’t have success. Leicester City won the Premier League in 2015/16 despite being tipped to be relegated and the odds being 5000/1 at the start of the season. The next season they were in a relegation fight. I’m sure if they went down to the second division and never came back up none of their fans would care because they’ll always have that one title which 99% of teams will never get.
I know this is against the spirit of the hypothetical, but which major teams get you the longest odds (biggest payout) for the championship at the beginning of the season? I think I read that in the NFL it was the Houston Texans this year.
Of the 3 teams I root for, 2 of them have won championships in the last 6 years, one of which is in a strong position for the next several years (KC Chiefs), one is in the beginning stages of a rebuild that I’m excited to watch (KC Royals), and the other is Notre Dame football. ND would be the only one I’d take the deal on since they haven’t won since ‘88, but I’d rather take my chances with the Chefs and see what the others do.
Do they have to be teams we actually care about, or can we pretend? For example, could I wish for the Blue Jays to win the World Series (don’t care) just so that the Leafs are guaranteed to have another 10 years of Stanley Cup futility? Not, to be clear, that I have anything against the Leafs per se, just that the angst of Toronto hockey fans is hilarious.
Of course, many would tell me that this is a total waste of a wish because the Leafs are surely going to experience another 10 years of futility anyways. I’m just curious about the ground rules.
This was the thing I was most afraid of when it came to this hypothetical. I would hope that this wouldn’t derail the thread much…so far so good.
As a Packers fan I say “booooooo”
This would work under the terms of the hypothetical, but your other teams would be punished. It’s not necessarily a like-for-like, it’s just you pick one thing you’re a fan of and the others suffer. USA soccer and USA everything else are separate entities.
Ouch! Even in this hypothetical the Browns can’t catch a break.
I would love to go back in time and make this thread in, say, 2013, and see just how many Cubs fans would chime in.
There are only really three teams I care much about: the Green Bay Packers, the Milwaukee Brewers, and the University of Wisconsin Badgers football team.
As the Packers have won two Super Bowls in the past 25 years, and once in the past 11, I think I’d be OK with putting the not-for-ten-years whammy on them (sorry, Aaron), to let one of my other two win it all.
I would probably give the genie’s favor to the Brewers, who have only been to the World Series once, losing to the Cardinals in 1982.
Knowing they would win would hurt the enjoyment a bit, but even so this is an easy call.
The only teams I’ve ever had much enthusiasm for at any time in my life are: US men’s national soccer team, Chicago Bears, Chicago Fire, University of Illinois BB and FB, Barcelona. The US going from like a… I dunno, 15% chance at winning a WC in my lifetime to 100% and basically all I’m sacrificing is Barcelona (and given their current state maybe this isn’t even a sacrifice). Yeah, pretty easy call.
Damn, back in the late Mike Martin days of FSU Baseball I might have taken this even though it would have doomed a lot of FSU programs (and the Cubs) to 10 years of futility (and cost FSU the Softball Natl Champ).
Now? I don’t think I’d take it, unless I could convince the genie of my undying love for all things University of Florida and then I’d award the Women’s Lacrosse team* their 1st National Championship and thus doom the rest of the Gator teams to 10 years of nuttin’.
I have to admit that I’d spend a long time going “Ummmmm”, as someone who is not really a fan of any particular team (although to keep British football supporters from getting excitable I claim a loose allegiance to Crystal Palace when asked). On the other hand, I suppose this means that if I do pick one, the effect on any other team will be nil.
Oooh, I suppose I could pick one of our X-leagues-down footie clubs and then place a bet for them to win the Premier League in X number of seasons from now (however long it would take for them to get promoted up). I’d get some insane odds on that one. Beckenham Town FC for the win in, what, eight years?
