I am bored and procrastinating, and my earlier posts piqued my curiosity So the posts that follow (and are linked below) break down the big four North American sports leagues as to the most recent championship for each franchise or the year of founding for those that have never won. For each league, I identify the longest gap since a title for teams that have won a title and the oldest team never to have won a title.
There is a nice philosophical question here: How much time must pass since a championship (or since a team’s founding) before the drought becomes “historic” or until we can label a fan base as “long-suffering?” I considered this in 2020 when trying to decide whether the Dodgers qualified as a team breaking a drought: Does 32 years qualify as a drought? Is it comparative (the streak must be longer than that of any other team)? Does history matter (a 32-year gap for the Dodgers is small, since they had won five prior titles)? Must we recalibrate as time passes (a 20-year gap is relatively small if the league has existed for 130+ years) and leagues grow (it is, statistically, harder to win a championship now than 30 or 50 years ago, so more teams may have longer gaps between titles). Should we look less at championships than at overall competitiveness (such that being a fan of a team that never even competes is worse than being a fan of a team that competes every year, even if it has been awhile since it won).
I posted each league separately to avoid one long post. Here are links to each (click the “2” at the bottom of the post to expand). Update: I have added the bottom-line conclusions as to each league below the links for ease of accrss.
MLB:
• Longest since title: Cleveland (77 years, perhaps going on 78)
• Never-Won: Five teams. Brewers and Padres (57 years) are the oldest teams without a title.
NFL:
• Longest since title: Cardinals (79 years and two cities ago) and Lions (69 years).
• Never Won: Six teams. Vikings oldest (going on 65 years)
NBA:
• Longest since Title: Sacramento (76 years with no end in sight)
• Never Won: Eight teams. Phoenix (58 years) is the oldest
NHL:
• Longest Since Title: Toronto (59 years)
• Never Won: Ten teams. Buffalo is the oldest (56 years).