What Does Forbes Know About Sports Misery?
I always like to pick on non-sports publications when they talk about sports. I think it is justified. Stay in your lane. Forbes has gotten into the act with the 5 most miserable sports cities in the country. Or the cities that have suffered the most misery, does that sound better? The thing is, for these cities, it doesn’t matter how you phrase it, they’ve been kicked in the junk and some polite wordplay isn’t going to make any difference. Of course, since this isn’t a list of the most valuable franchises in sports, Forbes totally dropped the ball. Their biggest problem was trying to measure these cities, put point values on their misery…impossible.
Their List:
- Seattle
- Atlanta
- Phoenix
- Buffalo
- San Diego
Where to start? I think Seattle belongs somewhere on the list. They seem to be (with the possible exception of baseball) good fans. They are burdened with the Seahawks and their hideous color scheme, and the Sonics left town for Oklahoma City of all places. That’s a blow to your self-esteem. But the most miserable? Seattle seems a bit nouveau to take the crown. But, amongst this group, they probably should be on top.
Atlanta is a total joke. You have to care about professional sports to be miserable. Forget about hockey. They were spoiled with 15 years of playoff baseball…didn’t care. The Falcons were popular when Michael Vick was there, but you get the sense that the Falcons have to win at least 12 games to be relevant. I will say that the Hawks have on occasion been a sorry excuse for a franchise, but that hardly makes a miserable city. This article put emphasis on losing playoff series, so the Braves run was the epitome of misery? Go talk to a Royals fan.
Phoenix and San Diego automatically get disqualified for weather considerations. What does that have to do with it? Misery is a package deal. It isn’t about just the teams. It’s about sitting out in the stadium on an awful day, or being in lockdown for the entire winter while your basketball team goes 19-63. If you can trip out of your back door and fall in the ocean, if cold is 65 and hot is 85, sorry San Diego…you’re out. And, Phoenix just doesn’t have enough history, I’m sorry. The Cardinals stink, but considering how long they’ve been in Arizona it actually could be worse. The Diamondbacks won a damn World Series! And then the fans abandoned the team when they got terrible again. No dice.
Buffalo clearly belongs on the list. To have them at 4 is an insult to any true Buffalo fan. They only have two teams so their points per franchise is very high here. They never spend any money, they occasionally have a couple good hockey players, but the team is never good enough, and the Bills? Oh, sweet lordy, the Bills. Don’t they love their Bills. I think they once had a parade in Buffalo for losing the Super Bowl. Doesn’t that make you just want to cry for them? Awful. And, now no one wants to play there, no one wants to coach there (it is Buffalo, after all), they need a new owner. They’d love to lose another Super Bowl at this point. Poor Buffalo.
My Top Five:
- Cleveland
- Buffalo
- Kansas City
- Seattle
- Salt Lake City
How Cleveland doesn’t top this list is beyond me. The Indians were once so bad there was a movie about them being bad. They got a new stadium, lost a heartbreaking World Series and eventually found their way back to the basement. They last won a World Series in 1948. The end is not in sight. The Browns were once a proud franchise, but guess what? That franchise is now in Baltimore and grace periods expire. The Browns were ripped away from the city and they get an expansion team in their place a few years later that eventually was the breeding ground for Derek Anderson. I don’t think we need to touch on the basketball situation in Cleveland. They just traded for Baron Davis.
My other two picks I think are a little under the radar. They are both smaller markets where the fans have a good reputation for being passionate and fair. Which, I think translates into owners getting away with murder. The Chiefs by all accounts have one of the best fan bases in the league, and yet they operate like a poor man’s version of the Eagles. The Eagles shoot for 10-6 every year, the Chiefs shoot for 6-10. Have they won a playoff game since Joe Montana? Super Bowl 4 or whatever it was…that was a long time ago. The Royals had one great decade…the 80s. Since then they’ve essentially been a farm system for the big market teams. See ya Greinke! Can’t wait for this fresh round of prospects to be shipped out. Who wants Billy Butler? Your 2017 starting Yankees 3rd Baseman…Mike Moustakas!
I feel bad for Salt Lake City because all their eggs are in one basket. It’s the Jazz, and now the Jazz are falling apart. No one wants to play in Salt Lake City. They were lucky enough to get a couple of superstars but that coincided with the Jordan era, which means no titles. Now Jerry Sloan is gone. Deron Williams is gone, and the worst thing about Salt Lake is there is nowhere else to turn. Even disgruntled Cubs fans could hop on the Blackhawks bandwagon or something? Out in Utah what else is there to do.
So, that’s my analysis, feel free to tell me where I am wrong.
Quiz of the Day: Fast Food Chains. Category: You’re Gordo. My Score: 25/50.
I imagine the more you’ve traveled around the country the better you’ll do here. I didn’t do too great. My hints would be to think all meals and expand your idea of fast food just a little bit. For example, my freebie: Panera Bread.
3-Putt Territory 
Ouch. 16 of 50. My favorite answer was Sbarro. Are there any actual Sbarro stores or does it just exist at highway rest stops?
I think between malls and rest areas Sbarro is doing fine.
Airports too maybe?
Is there a free standing Sbarro? There shouldn’t be.
18. wow. first time getting a higher score than DC…i’m gonna thank my addiction to coffee and the fact that i live in PA now and MA recently…two states just slightly more chain oriented (with the exception of Northampton, MA) than Vermont.
Q
Maybe the first time where I actually took the quiz. There have been a few of them where I looked at the subject matter . . . leading actors and actresses from a whole bunch of movies I haven’t seen? . . . and mentally gave myself a 9 out of 50 and moved on.
There should be a separate sporcle quiz for naming the rest stops on I-95. Maryland House . . . Chesapeake House . . . Molly Pitcher Service Plaza . . .
What about Milwaukee? Miserable weather, have they ever won anything? Seriously? When “fattest fans” and “winter coats” are how you’re population is described, it can’t be good.
Milwaukee is a good one. I guess I would want to know, is everyone in Milwaukee a Packers fan? because that would really lessen the blow of having the bucks and brewers.
although, the Brewers are quasi-trying lately.
38, finally beat you. and i’m not proud of this one.
I’d be proud. That’s a massive number.
I feel bad for some of the hockey towns that lost their teams to the south . . . Hartford, Winnipeg, Quebec. These cities aren’t usually listed on the “misery” lists but I have to think it’s at least somewhat miserable to have your hockey team playing in Raleigh, NC.
My other nomination would be Minneapolis. They do have a new baseball stadium and the team is good . . . but will they ever be good enough? The Vikings have been nothing but heartache. And their hockey team left fifteen years ago and was replaced by some expansion team. And the Timberwolves?
I think the reason minny gets booted is their fans don’t seem like they give a sh*t honestly. Aren’t the Vikings looking for a new stadium-since it just effing collapsed-and the public is telling them to pound sand?
I think Minnesota fans are pretty good. I don’t think you pin not building a stadium on a fan base these days. And the baseball stadium is new, not sure how they got that funded.
For some reason i just assume their fans are ho-hum. Like “oh, the twins suck? Ok, guess it’s time to go ice fishing.” What were they like when the Twins/Vikes weren’t good?
Hartford is a good one.
I thought a lot about minneapolis. The argument you make is more convincing than the one in my head.
I guess I gave a lot of credit to the Twins. The Vikings are a gut punch, though. Plus, we’re robbed of the cool name/jersey combo that was the North Stars.
How did they miss Cleveland?
The LeBron thing, Indians have the longest AL world series drought, Browns moved then came back and now suck and have never been to a Super Bowl.
An interesting city to look at is Washington D.C.
Snyder has a once proud franchise in shambles, the Nationals blow and the Caps haven’t done anything of significance in a while. Oh and the Wiz blow.
The counter to that is the Nats are on the rise, anyone can win in the NFL and the Caps have Ovechckin. D.C. would fall into the Eli Manning placement on this list (hovering around a top-10, but more middle of the road).
DC is a good one for one you don’t think of right away.
You forget how long its been since the Skins were decent, but still, they have 3? Super Bowls.
They did lose a baseball team a million yrs ago, but like you said, The Nats could be on the rise.
Bullets/Wiz –disgrace.
They’re def top-10, though I don’t know how great their fans really are aside from the Skins.
chicago?
from the Q in gqlueless
Well, Chicago just had a Stanley Cup. And a relatively recent World Series.
They’d be putting everything on the Cubs, but I think having Michael Jordan kind of disqualifies a city from this list for 30 or 40 yrs
Philly could be an “underrated” misery city. Take out the phillies and you aren’t working with much.
yeah, the Phillies have saved Philly to a certain extent although things are generally good right now. even the Sixers have become less embarrassing.
you know who really has it bad is the ghetto new york fan. Mets/Jets and Islanders.
i wouldn’t know how to distinguish that, but if there are people out their that root for those 3 abortions, that’s pretty tough.
100%. I’d probably call it “the Long Island fan” Typically it runs-mets/jets/islands, Rangers/Yanks/Giants. So for one side, you’ve have a decent level of winning. When the Yanks sucked, you got championships from the Giants and Rangers, those two slump, the Yanks pick up the pace. The other side has just had an endless run of putridity.
3-putt, well, here’s what i have to say…i will never trust my rare-moment-not-to-impulsively-blabber-back about charlie sheen, when you alerted me to the 20/20 moment, last evening…i thought i was doing you a favor by freezing my typing fingers, for once…
but then now, we would have had proof, i was thinking, this dude’s custody rights are time limited.
i was fortunate to see the amazing, freakin amazingly sober interview he had with the today show this morning – say, at 430 am cali time, after his kids were taken away from the home last night.
sounds like there are sketchy legal issues happening, yet – however – in my social work eyes, it was only a matter of time…he says there has been no mistreatment of the kids.
yet, ethically, he visibly remains in a period of compromised mental status due to under-treated and treatment non-adhearant substance dependence. this would be considered a form of neglect.
non-jargony speaking, he’s a hot mess. kids are at risk.
and he looked physically unwell this morning, despite his sober remorse and clear consciousness.
he’s a sick man, and i think i prescribe for him: less porn and crack, more viewings of “crazy heart” with buttered popcorn. ah, if it could be that easy, right?
boom. assessments by q.
yeah, i just made a short post about him.
it was just too wild a story not to say something.
i agree he’s a hot mess and kids are certainly better off in the short term somewhere else.
When the Jazz suck, you just marry another chick. The beauty of polygamy.
Forget Zack Greinke, he demanded to be traded and said that if he wasn’t he wouldn’t come to spring training. The Royals had no choice. So you know what? The last time that the Royals traded a star before that is seven years ago, and under an entirely different regime. Instead, they have signed their top players to long term contracts (and hey, that includes Greinke himself), not traded them. So the next time you say they operate as a farm system for other teams I suggest you do your homework first.
Who are these star players of the last 7 years? Who is the last star player that played the majority of their career in K.C.?
Mike Sweeney? If we are stretching the definition of star?
It may have been a different regime, but a lot of good players passed through KC and left for bigger markets, Dye, Damon, Ibanez, Beltran.
It’s not really a question of what they are doing at this moment (though, they’ll eventually have to get rid of some of their young talent if it develops, just like the Rays), it was a comment about how rough it has been in KC for the last 25 years or so.
And, the fact remains, Greinke got traded. If you want to put all that on him, that’s fine, but it says something about the organization that he wants to move on, just like what happened way back here in Philly with Scott Rolen. The Phillies then weren’t positioned as a winner, and the Royals haven’t shown they are either at this point. They’ve just recently shown the ability to develop some players, but that’s about all they’ve done in these last 7 years you mention.
but, it’s nice to see people still get fired up about the Royals, I hope they keep all their talent for a change.
thanks for the comment.