Los Angeles doesn't even have an NFL team, and when they had a chance to get one their "rabid fan base" failed to come up with the money. Also, the Dodgers have gone to one World Series in the last 30 years, which matches what the Astros have done.
That's not a second place trophy. Houston Oilers won back-to-back AFL Championships in 1960 and 1961.
We're a slightly smaller media market and newer big city than we realize. Also, the weather is great which means there's other stuff to do, and most of our residents come from other places with more of an impact on their identity, so they'll cheer for those teams. Furthermore, I think we're actually a little cheaper and more humble than people from other big cities and just won't waste extra money on sports. I don't think baseball is feasible outside of having an historic team or a being in a big three city. Houston never spent enough to upgrade marquee stars and retain depth, and the Rangers proved almost empirically that there's no logic, commercial or otherwise, in overspending. We also got screwed with an intelligent but uniquely petty and mean spirited football owner, and I think the NBA's post-99 salary structure made signing and drafting mistakes that much more irreversible.
I'm sure when the dallas idiots throw their World Series and NBA championship in our faces, we can counter them with "yeah, well our now defunct WNBA team won 4 championships back in the 90's!"
And as penance to appease the gods, I will be spending tonight re-watching for the first time in ever a certain 1993 playoff football game from upstate New York in its entirety. Maybe the wind won't blow the ball off the tee while Del Greco's kicking it!?! Will the ref see Beebe step out of bounds?!? Maybe this time they'll call PI on Darryl Talley!?! Can't wait to find out!
The problem is not that our owners don't want to win at all costs, the problem is the path they choose to take to get there.
With a nod to Bobrek's butterfly effect (change 1 play, change everything)....Oilers won the toss & took the ball. What if they deferred?
I did it for all of us. It was a really fascinating game to watch, I'd of course seen the nfl films show & whatnot but never watched the whole cluster**** since that day. So many little things just went haywire in the 2nd half, impartially it's really one of the greatest games you could ask for. Partially, it made me just about sick to my stomach again. Jerry Gray started for the Oilers as a nickelback. Bills ran a 3-2-6 pretty much the whole game. Oilers had 4 1st round picks starting on the OL. Other guy was a 2nd rounder. 3 of the 4 starting DL had led the AFC in sacks in their career. The other was Ray Childress. Moment of Doom #1: they flashback to Elway the previous playoffs, Oilers were up 21-6 at the half. They show Elway's 4th & 10 scramble & throw for 60 yards setting up the winning FG. This is the first time I puke in my mouth a bit, several more followed. Listening to the halftime show was so painful (and not just because of Costas), they interviewed Cowher & basically asked him how they could possibly stop Moon & the Oilers the next week. Cowher laughed. Boomer Esiason & Will McDonough pretty much said Moon was having the best playoff game in the history of the NFL. Costas brought up the largest playoff margin of victory in history. This is when the Blanton's started flowing heavily. I was tempted to turn it off, but I persevered. We had about 3 easy interceptions go right through hands and end up as significant completions on scoring drives for the Bills; biggest one was by lb Eddie Robinson (his rookie year, had totally forgotten about him). Greg Montgomery, a pretty damn good punter, had possibly the worst day any punter has ever had in the history of football at any level. 2 or 3 shanked punts in the 2nd half and of course he let the snap go right through his hands on a chip shot FG in the 4th quarter. I did not remember all of that. The non-call on Darryl Talley assraping Earnest Givens on Moon's OT interception is every bit as infuriating as I remember. The announcers even seemed shocked it wasn't called. I still contend that the '93 Oilers (following year) were by far the best team in NFL history to not make a league championship game, if not a Super Bowl, but that is another thread. I will now say 12 Hail Lombardis & 4 Our Rozelles. Amen.
When you look at the Champions in the sports, it's more about organizations than cities. Lakers, Cardinals, Steelers, Spurs, Jordan. These teams win because they are great organizations or players, not because of their city. Its easy to say our sucking is symptomatic of something because all of our teams suck now. But when you really look at it our town has expierenced as much success as most over the last 25 years in the big 3. Denver (2 Titles), Rockies usually suck, Nuggets usually suck, Broncos suck post Elway Tampa (1 Title) Rays sucked for ages, Bucs only closed the deal once Oakland (1 Title) Raiders awful recently, warriors usually suck, A's usually suck Seattle (0 Titles) Mariners mediocre, Sonics left, seahawks usually suck other than the one playoff run San Diego (0 Titles) Chargers regular season damage, padres mediocre Atlanta (1 Title) Braves lots of winning, hawks terrible, falcons mediocre Phoenix (1 Title) Suns still havent closed, Cardinals suck, D-backs usually mediocre since the title Philadelphia (1 Title) The Eagles and Phillies have been extremely good recently but 1 title is all they've won The list goes on. New York and Boston do a lot of winning, but aside from those two there is no such thing as a city that determines winners, only good organizations. The Marlins have won 2 world series, do you think being in Miami is the reason why. The Astros and Rockets have been good for most of the 25 years, you cant take a small snapshot and judge that way. The texans are the only real problem we have, our owner appears to accepted mediocrity and we love the sport too much to not care.
