Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The Minnesota Misery

Bill Simmons loves to talk about tortured fan bases and franchises. It's actually really interesting to fully immerse yourself in the history of other cities and franchises. You begin to understand how lucky you are if you happened to have been a fan of a championship team. I consider myself lucky to be a fan of two champions: the 2000 Super Bowl Champion Rams (the most fun I've ever had watching a team and probably one of the most fun teams to watch ever) and the 2006 World Series Champion Cardinals (my favorite team on top of the world). Seeing a team raise its sports' respective trophy above their head in absurd jubilation is one of the best feelings a sports fan can ever have. It is the ultimate prize in fandom.

But there are some who have never felt the glory, or at least haven't for a generation (or two or three). There's Buffalo (1965) and Cleveland (1964) and Seattle (never). That's right, Buffalo's two teams haven't won a championship since the Bills won one before the Super Bowl existed, Cleveland's three teams have had a similar streak of futility, and Seattle has lost a franchise to a prairie town and never won any kind of professional championship. Those are definitely the three cities (if we are talking about sports cities, which we are) that currently should top the tortured list.