New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/s...ports-city-after-cleveland-cavaliers-win.htmlNow that Cleveland has finally won a title, the mantle of most cursed sports city must be passed on. But which unlucky city gets it?
Here are 10 candidates.
(For the purpose of this exercise, well focus on the big four leagues Major League Baseball, the N.F.L., the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. but consider titles in other pro leagues as well.)
10. Milwaukee
Last major title: 1971 Bucks.
The agony: Lost a three-games-to-two lead in the 1982 World Series to the Cardinals. Led Game 7 before Keith Hernandez and George Hendrick drove in runs to give the Cardinals the lead.
Mitigating factor: Although the Packers, winners of the Super Bowl after the 2010 season, nominally play in Green Bay, they are essentially Milwaukees N.F.L. team.
The future: The Bucks missed the N.B.A. playoffs, and the Brewers were 17 ½ games out entering Monday.
9. Washington
Last major title: 1991 Redskins.
The agony: Despite a talent-laden roster, the Nationals barely broke .500 last season, which culminated with a dugout fight between the star Bryce Harper and closer Jonathan Papelbon. The Capitals had the best record in hockey but lost in the playoffs yet again.
Mitigating factor: D.C. United has won four M.L.S. Cups, most recently in 2004.
The future: The Nationals are still loaded with talent and are among the favorites to win the World Series, and the Capitals should be great again. The Wizards were .500, and the Redskins are owned by Daniel Snyder.
8. Houston
Last major title: 1995 Rockets.
The agony: The Colt .45s/Astros have been playing since 1962 and finally made the World Series for the first time in 2005. They were swept by the White Sox, with every game decided by one or two runs.
Mitigating factor: The Comets were the first dominant team in the W.N.B.A., winning four consecutive titles.
The future: The Astros were 11 games out entering Monday, and the Rockets were .500. Although the Texans were shut out by the Chiefs in the first playoff round, they are not terrible, and any team would love to have defensive end J. J. Watt.
7. Atlanta
Last major title: 1995 Braves.
The agony: Since the Braves were widely considered the best team in baseball for a decade or more, their one World Series title feels like an underachievement. The Falcons were 13-3 in 2010 and 2012 and wound up with one playoff win. (A year ago, the Upshot chose Atlanta second on a list of cursed cities, behind Cleveland.)
Mitigating factor: Atlanta got to host the 1996 Olympics.
The future: The Braves are atrocious, the Falcons are mediocre, and the Thrashers left town. The Hawks have made the playoffs nine straight years, but with a top three of Paul Millsap, Al Horford and Jeff Teague, they do not seem ready to challenge the elite.
6. Nashville
Last major title: None.
The agony: The Titans lost Super Bowl XXXIV when Kevin Dyson came inches short of the goal line as time expired.
Mitigating factor: The Oilers/Titans have been around since only 1997 and the Predators since 1998, so the agony is relatively fresh.
The future: The Titans, coming off 2-14 and 3-13 seasons, are one of the worst teams in the N.F.L. The Predators, who lost in the second round of the playoffs, are solid but seem below championship caliber.
5. Minneapolis
Last major title: 1991 Twins.
The agony: The Twins have lost in division series in their last five trips to the playoffs. The Vikings are 0-4 in Super Bowls and have not been to one since 1977.
Mitigating factor: The Lynx of the W.N.B.A. have won three titles in the past five seasons.
The future: The Twins are very bad, but despite losing at home to the Seahawks in the first round of the playoffs on a missed field goal, the Vikings have hope for the future behind Teddy Bridgewater.
4. Toronto
Last major title: 1993 Blue Jays.
The agony: After that Series win, the Blue Jays did not make the playoffs until last season, the longest drought in sports.
Mitigating factor: The Argonauts have won four Grey Cups since the Jays last title, most recently in 2012.
The future: The Maple Leafs were the worst team in hockey, but the Jays are in the playoff hunt again, and the Raptors were the second-best team in the Eastern Conference.
3. San Diego
Last major title: 1963 Chargers (A.F.L.).
The agony: The Padres made two World Series, and both times ran into one of the best teams in baseball history. They lost, 4-1, to the 104-58 Tigers in 1984 and were swept by the 114-48 Yankees in 1998.
Mitigating factor: The San Diego Sockers won four straight indoor soccer crowns from 2010 to 2013. The weather is also fantastic.
The future: The Padres are in last place, and the Chargers are coming off a 4-12 season.
2. Cincinnati
Last major title: 1990 Reds.
The agony: The Bengals last seven playoff trips have ended in the wild-card round, including the last five years. The Reds were leading their division in 1994 when the season was canceled by a strike.
Mitigating factor: The now defunct Cincinnati Excite won the American Indoor Soccer League title in 2005-6.
The future: The Reds are in last place, but the Bengals were 12-4 behind a big season for quarterback Andy Dalton.
1. Buffalo
Last major title: 1965 Bills (A.F.L.).
The agony: How much time do you have? Four consecutive Super Bowl losses, including the Wide Right game against the Giants and a 52-17 shellacking by the Cowboys. The Music City Miracle. The longest active playoff-less streak of any major sports team (by the Bills). The Sabres have 29 trips to the playoffs in their history without a Stanley Cup.
Mitigating factor: The Western New York Flash, based in nearby Elma, won the Womens Professional Soccer title in 2013, just before the league went out of business.
The future: The Bills were 8-8 under Rex Ryan. The Sabres were seventh of eight teams in the Atlantic Division but did have the exciting rookie Jack Eichel.
Correction: June 20, 2016
An earlier version of this article omitted the Rockets N.B.A. title.
Correction: June 20, 2016
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the Minnesota Lynxs recent W.N.B.A. championships. They have won three titles in the past five years; they did not win three straight titles from 2011 to 2013. (The Lynx played in three straight finals from 2011 to 2013.)
ESPN
http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/...es-crown-most-tortured-fans-san-diego-buffaloCleveland finally got its trophy. Fifty-two years after the Browns won the 1964 NFL championship, the Cavaliers ended a drought that seemed like it would never end by roaring back from a 3-1 series deficit against the Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals to bring glory back to Northeast Ohio. By my count, 151 teams representing Cleveland in the four major American professional sports attempted to win a championship during that time span and came back empty-handed. (Save your jokes about the 2016 Browns and their motivations.) You're familiar with the Browns, Cavaliers and Indians, but it's a list that includes the Crusaders of the World Hockey Association and the Barons of the NHL, too.
The run of bad luck befalling Ohio's second-most-populous city seemed to stretch beyond sheer disappointment and variance. Cleveland, it was often said, was cursed. The Red Sox fan in me knows that curses can be broken, but I did start thinking about how long it had taken a Cleveland-based team to win a title. We know that cities usually win titles more frequently than Cleveland, but how frequently? Has any city ever waited longer for a title than Cleveland? And with the Cavaliers finally lifting a trophy after so many years of pain, who takes the city's place as the continent's most tortured fan base?
To figure all of this out, I came up with a new, not entirely empirical measure of losing called the Sports Misery Index. Just as no number can ever entirely explain the glee of winning a championship, no metric can ever fully articulate the pain that comes with year after year of losing. That's reality. All we can do is try to estimate that pain and put it in context, which is where the Misery Index comes in.
The method
One of the problems with figuring out which city has been tormented the longest is that all sports markets aren't created equal. This isn't a reflection on fandom or how much a given city cares about its team, but the reality that some cities have more shots at losing (and more chances to get their hopes up) than others. Compare Washington, D.C., and Jacksonville, for example. The Jaguars, Jacksonville's only professional team, haven't won a title in their 21 years of existence. That's hardly out of the ordinary. In Washington, though, there have been teams suiting up in each of the four major sports since the Nationals came to town, and none of those teams has won a title since Washington's football team won the Super Bowl at the end of the 1991 season. It has been 25 years since a Washington team won a title.
Fans in Washington and Jacksonville have each waited a relatively similar amount of time in terms of years for a title, but Jacksonville's team is 0-for-21. Washington's teams are 0-for-84. We need a way to adjudicate for both time and opportunity. The Misery Index scoring system does just that. For each market, the first team to fail to win a title in a given season yields one point. Each subsequent team that comes up short in the same calendar year generates a half-point. So, each year that its respective teams fail to win, Jacksonville receives one point of misery (for the Jags), while Washington receives 2.5 points (one point for its football team and a half-point each for the Wizards, Capitals and Nationals). You keep accruing points until somebody representing your city wins a title.
After finding a scoring system that worked, I went back through 1876 and calculated the Misery Index for every city or market that sent a professional baseball, basketball, football or hockey team out to play. I made a few choices. I included the American Basketball Association, WHA and American Football League but didn't include any other competitors to the four established major leagues. I left out MLS, college sports and the Canadian Football League, which will come into play. To some extent, that's a reflection on what those leagues mean in different places: Atlanta might value a Georgia Tech national title in football more than it would have enjoyed a Thrashers Stanley Cup, but New York wouldn't treat a St. John's NCAA tournament victory the same as it would the Yankees' winning the World Series. The Sounders mean significantly more to Seattle than Chivas USA meant to Los Angeles. You get the idea.
I didn't count partial seasons, and I combined markets where it made sense. Oakland and San Francisco were joined at the hip, but San Jose and Sacramento were separate entities. New Jersey's teams, as well as all entries past and present from Brooklyn and Long Island, fell under the New York City umbrella. Cities that lost teams before regaining them didn't pick up any extra points for the years they were without teams, but their counter also picks up from where it previously left off when they get their teams back. I'm also going to talk about teams' winning their titles during the actual year and time in which they won as opposed to the start of that given season; it's not as if Cavs fans could start planning for their parade back in October.
Active misery streaks
Let's look at the post-Cavaliers landscape. Cleveland's meter has been reset to zero, but what about the rest of North America? Which city inherits Cleveland's title as the most tormented in professional sports? The answer might surprise you.
Honorable mention: Milwaukee
I have to mention Milwaukee, which represented one of the stickier situations on this list. If you limit Milwaukee to the two teams that play in or near the city -- the Brewers and Bucks -- it would comfortably qualify for this list in third, given that the last champion out of Milwaukee would be the 1970-71 Bucks. Milwaukee has accrued 67.5 points in the meantime. The complicating factor is the presence of the Packers in Green Bay. Milwaukee is a little less than two hours from Green Bay and a similar distance from Chicago, so it seems unfair to automatically assign Green Bay to the Milwaukee market on a geographical level.
At the same time, though, my Milwaukee sources tell me that there are far more Packers fans in the city than there are Bears fans. And because we're trying to gauge suffering in a given city, it's likely that most denizens of Milwaukee celebrated when the Packers won the Super Bowl in February 1997 and again in 2011. Including the Packers drops Milwaukee's Misery Index down to 10.5, which barely counts for even a tiny murmur of discontent. With that in mind, it doesn't make this list.
5. Vancouver (49 points)
Last title: never
This is a controversial selection because we're limiting Vancouver to the Canucks and its brief run with the Grizzlies. Vancouver doesn't have an NFL team, but the BC Lions play in the Canadian Football League and have won six Grey Cups, most recently in 2011. I suspect that Vancouver might not be quite as frustrated as its numbers suggest because of that, but by the rules of the Misery Index, Vancouver fans are still waiting for their first title in American professional sports. The Canucks are 0-for-45 since entering the NHL in 1971, and the Grizzlies failed to even make the playoffs during their six seasons of existence before moving to Memphis. The curse of Steve Francis?
4. Washington, D.C. (54 points)
Last title: NFL team, 1991
D.C. is crying out for a title already! As I mentioned earlier, the District's four teams have failed in each of their past 84 tries to win a championship. It really hasn't been very close, either. Just one of those teams -- the 1997-98 "Godzilla" Capitals -- made it to the finals of their respective competitions, and those Capitals were swept in four games by the Red Wings. FanGraphs gives the Nationals a 9.9 percent chance of winning the World Series; could they be D.C.'s best hope over the next few years?
3. Minneapolis/St. Paul (58 points)
Last title: Twins, 1991
I didn't count any points for teams participating in the 2016 MLB season, but given that the Twins have the league's worst record at 23-49 and have a 0.0 percent shot of even making the playoffs per FanGraphs, it seems safe to suggest that Minneapolis will make it up to 58.5 points this fall. Minnesota hasn't even made a single trip to the finals in any sport over this time frame, with the Vikings failing three times as favorites in the NFC Championship Game, with two overtime losses and a 41-0 shellacking at the hands of the Giants in 2001. And this doesn't even include any additional points for that breathtakingly painful defeat against Seattle in the playoffs last season.
It's rough out there for Minnesotans, but there's still a comfortable gap between Minneapolis in the third spot and the two teams at the top of this list, which are on the second- and third-longest stretches of futility in American professional sports history. Even worse, neither of them seems particularly close to claiming a title of its own any time soon ...
2. Buffalo (76.5 points)
Last title: Bills, 1965
It has been more than 50 years since the denizens of Buffalo, who faithfully cheer on the Bills and Sabres with precious little in the way of hope, have celebrated a title. The Bills haven't made the playoffs since the Music City Miracle in 1999, while the Sabres are rebuilding and have missed out on the postseason in each of the past five seasons. The last time the Sabres made the finals, 1999, they were pushed aside by the Stars in controversial fashion; they haven't as much as won a playoff series since 2007. Buffalo teams have made the playoffs just five times in their past 30 tries. Boston, in contrast, has produced 22 playoff teams in its past 30 attempts. There are exciting young stars in Buffalo -- Sammy Watkins! Jack Eichel! -- but it still feels like we're far away from seeing a Buffalo franchise compete for a championship. It's disappointing, too: Buffalo's celebration upon winning its first title in a half century might even put Cleveland's to shame.
1. San Diego (83.5 points)
Last title: Chargers, 1963
And then, rising above (or below) the fray, it's ... San Diego? Indeed, it's San Diego and its tan, Teva-ed denizens who inherit Cleveland's title as the longest-suffering fans in sports. With the Padres in last place in the NL West and already listed with a 0.0 percent chance of making the playoffs, this number will rise to 84 shortly. The Chargers finished 4-12 and might not even be in town next year. And the Clippers, Mariners, Conquistadors and Rockets have all come and gone without delivering a title.
San Diego's last title came on Jan. 5, 1964, 44 days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in a league that hasn't existed for 46 years. The Padres have made the World Series twice and lost eight of their nine games. They blew an 8-6 lead in the 13th inning of a play-in game in 2007. In the Chargers' lone trip to the Super Bowl, they went down 14-0 within the first five minutes and were blown out by 23 points. Just in the past 15 years alone, they lost one playoff game where their legendarily accurate kicker missed three field goals and another when their safety fumbled away an interception with an eight-point lead and six minutes to go. This city has experienced trauma.
And yet, there's something undeniably weird about suggesting that San Diego fans are long-suffering. When we think of heartbroken cities, we almost always think of frigid cities that are past their economic prime. We think of Cleveland and Boston, of Buffalo and Minneapolis. The idea of fans suffering in perennially gorgeous weather by the beach feels wrong, like there's something inherently more meaningful about losing when you have to trod back home and shovel snow for six hours.
There's not. San Diego fans have suffered for 53 years while barely sniffing a title; there are grandfathers who have spent their entire lives in San Diego rooting for local teams without ever feeling for a moment like they're close to winning a championship. That's every bit as depressing as it must have been for Cleveland fans during their dry spell, and with the late-'80s Browns, the mid-'90s Indians and the two eras of LeBron, you can argue that they had much better teams and players to support.
Exit Cleveland. Enter San Diego, now the most tortured sports city in North America.
USA Today
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/06/sad-depressing-miserable-sports-cities-2016-rankingThe Cleveland Cavaliers 2016 NBA Championship victory didnt just succeed in winning the city its first major sports championship since 1964, it also propelled Cleveland up the ranks of the general happiness standings.
Before we begin, two caveats: Only cities that have at least one current NFL, NBA or MLB sports franchise qualify for the rankings, which means theres one Canadian-based franchise (Toronto) included below.
So without further adieu, here are our rankings of most miserable and depressing sports cities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwCiQASnw6o
