In our final article, we take a look at some of the worst sports cities in North America based on their championship records. Some cities, for reasons that are beyond you and me, simply suck at winning the big game or are completely terrible and can’t even make it to the big game at all. Here are some of those franchises listed in no particular order( we believe you’ll be surprised by a few).

The Ugly

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia have some of the most devoted fans in all of sports. Unfortunately, this article isn’t about how devoted your fans are to your favorite team or city but how well your teams do when it counts the most – winning the big game. Philadelphia racks up an impressive 13 championship finals appearances. This number might be deceiving though because the city’s overall record out of 13 is a staggering 2-11. That’s right folks. Since 1980, the city of Philadelphia has only won twice in 13 appearances. No wonder why the fans are so passionate in that North-Eastern State. If you were to count rioting and lynchings as being passionate about a city than Philadelphia ranks as #1. I would be pissed off too if my city only won twice in 13 appearances. The NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers have made it 4 times to the Stanley Cup Finals since 1980 and have lost all 4 times.The NFL’s Eagles have had multiple chances in the post-season but haven’t been nearly as successful as they should be. They haven’t won 1 Super Bowl and hold a 0-2 record in the big game since 1980. MLB’s Philadelphia Phillies have at least done marginally better by winning at least 1 World Series in that time span and hold a 1-2 record overall. The NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers were the one bright spot winning an NBA Title in 1983 against the Los Angeles Lakers thanks to the help of Hall Of Famers Julius Erving and Moses Malone. They would make it back 3 times with their most recent finals appearance being in 2001 but haven’t won another championship since that amazing 1983 year. Philadelphia has little trouble making it to the big game. The answer to that city’s troubles is to simply win one more game or series and finish #1 instead of the runner-up position.

Buffalo, New York.

Buffalo holds a dismal record of 0-5. The NFL’s Buffalo Bills have made it to the Super Bowl 4 times since 1980 and have yet to win it once. The Bills also had the opportunity to go to the Super Bowl 4 years in a row with the same collection of players and failed all 4 times. For some teams, the third attempt was lucky but for the Bills not even 4 times in a row was any luck to them. The NHL’s Buffalo Sabres made it to the Cup Finals in 1999 before losing in triple overtime in game 7 thanks to a goal by Dallas’ Bret Hull. The goal was considered controversial because Hull’s skate was considered to be in the crease at the time of the goal which wouldn’t make the goal stand. The goal is considered to be one of the top 5 worst officiating calls in sports history. This again led no championship for Buffalo who have yet to see a single championship in that city since 1980. (more…)

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In part #1, we took a look at some of the greatest sports cities that have won multiple championships or titles amongst their teams in MLB, NBA,NFL and the NHL. In this article, we take a look at some of the more mediocre clubs that have had an equal amount of success as well as failure. These are cities who’s sports teams have made it to the finals but just haven’t reached the success that they could have achieved to make them great sport cities.

Mediocre Cities

Dallas, Texas.

Dallas has a decent overall record of 4-2. Out of the 4 titles, 3 have come from the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys who won 3 Super Bowls in 4 years thanks to the help of quarterback Troy Aikman, running back Emmitt Smith and wide receivers Dion Sanders and Micheal Irvin. Other than the cowboys, not much has happened for a state who’s motto is supposedly that ‘Everything Is Bigger In Texas’. Owner Mark Cuban bought the struggling Dallas Mavericks of the NBA and helped turn that franchise around with the team reaching the NBA Finals in 2006 only to lose to Shaquille O’Neal and the Miami Heat. After moving from Minnesota, the Dallas Stars of the NHL have won 1 Stanley Cup and lost 1 as well. The team has been a strong contender for many years but hasn’t seemed to find the right mix to make it back to the Cup Finals Yet. Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers, who at one point were owned by President of The United States, George Bush, have yet to make it to the World Series once since 1980. This is a city on the verge of some great things in the near future but isn’t quite up there with the big boys just yet.

Denver, Colorado.

Denver has an overall record of 4-3. Quarterback John Elway was long considered to be a guy that couldn’t win the big game losing in 3 appearances at the Super Bowl. However, his luck changed and along with running back Terrell Davis and tight end Shanon Sharpe, the NFL’s Denver Broncos went on to win back-to-back Super Bowls in 1996 and 1997. After relocating to Colorado from Quebec City, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in their very first year of being a franchise. They have since won once more making them 2-0 overall in the Stanley Cup Finals. However, the luck isn’t as great for MLB’s Colorado Rockies who have yet to make it to the World Series yet. The same can be said of the NBA’s Denver Nuggets who have yet to make it to the NBA Finals since 1980. (more…)

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Every now and again, the staff at this website likes to put on their thinking caps and come up with solutions to questions that viewers keep on pondering about. For this article, we did a little research and tried to figure out just who had the best and worst sports cities in North America based on their Championship Records. Let’s face it; you can have the best sports franchise all season long but if you don’t win the final game than all of your team’s hard work goes straight out the window. Many teams have had successful seasons but the only thing that matters at the end of the season is the large trophy or cup sitting in the winning team’s locker room.

We looked up MLB , NHL, NBA, and NFL championship records dating back to 1980 to figure out just which city has had the best and worst luck at winning championships in their city. We should note that we tried our best to only study cities that had multiple teams with the name of their city representing the team. In some cases, like with the Texas Rangers or Phoenix Suns, we included the state or city’s team name into our calculations because the team that used their state’s title was located in the same city as the name of a similar sports franchise with another league. Ex. Phoenix Suns- Arizona Diamondbacks( both teams are located in Phoenix, Arizona.) So without further adieu, here’s our picks for the best and worst sports cities in North America.

Great Sports Cities

Los Angeles, California

Since 1980, the city of Los Angeles has seen the most Championship appearances in sports with 17 appearances to the finals of a major sporting event. Their biggest participant at these events have been the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers who have been to 13 NBA Championships and won 8 of them. The Dodgers have also been in the spotlight by winning 2 World Series Championships in baseball. The Los Angeles Raiders(now Oakland Raiders) went .500 in the 80’s with a 1-1 record at the Super Bowl. the Los Angeles Kings NHL franchise led by Wayne Gretzky helped the kings reach the final in 1993 but lost and have not been back to the finals since. The other disappointment with the city of Los Angeles have been the Clippers NBA franchise which has not been to the NBA finals once since 1980. Overall the city of Los Angeles has a record of 10-7.

New York City, New York.

New York City holds an overall record of 8-7 with 15 Championship appearances. Leading the way are the New York Yankees who have a record of 4-3 but dominated the 1990’s winning 3 consecutive World Series titles in 4 years only to lose to the Diamondbacks in 2001. The Mets have also won 2 World Series and their only loss came to their arch rivals the New York Yankees in a battle of New York baseball clubs called ‘The Subway Series’. The New York Rangers only have made one cup appearance since 1980 but won the Stanley Cup in their only appearance in 1994 by beating the Vancouver Canucks in a 7 game series. Not to be outdone, the New York Giants have won 2 Superbowls and lost once with their only loss coming to the Baltimore Ravens in a defensive packed Super Bowl. The one sour spot for the city of New York has been the NBA’s New York Knickerbockers who have made 2 NBA final appearances but lost both of them. (more…)

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Hockey has finally returned and I thought I’d wait a while before I gave my comments on any post-lockout hockey stuff. The lockout was a terrible situation for everybody involved but did wasting a year’s worth of hockey really help the game in any way? Well to answer this question, you’d have to take a look at the so-called “New NHL” and figure out if taking off 1 full year’s worth of hockey really helped the state of hockey in North America. I am but only 1 of millions with their own opinions on the matter, but in my opinion it ‘HAS’ helped hockey.Let’s take a look at the first week in the ‘New NHL: Scoring is up, Penalties are up, fighting is down. I would say that that the biggest change to happen so far is the deletion of the red line in hockey. I’m seeing a lot more counter-attacks and 2-on-1 and 3-on-2 breakouts as well as an increase in break aways to start off the season. Some would say that this “New NHL” is a more woosy/European version of hockey due to the fact that fighting is down and also for the fact that defensemen are hitting less because of their fear of getting a penalty.

While to some degree defensemen may be hesitating a bit more before going up against forwards; I would also add that I’ve seen an increase in body checks and open ice hits. The reason for this simply being that defensemen are learning quickly that they can’t use their sticks to hook or grab players anymore and must rely more on their physical strength and use their bodies more to their advantage.

If you watched a nightly broadcast of Sportscenter, you’d find a few nice highlights every night of a defenseman laying out a forward with a body check. In regards to fighting, it has gone down but mostly for the fact that 4th line players are seeing less ice time because of the increase in penalties and also because of their lack of speed in the “New NHL”. Speed is definitely an issue so far and you can see it by watching teams like the Montreal Canadians and Minnesota Wild in games in the opening week.The red line being taken out and the increase in penalties has allowed the faster teams to excel whereas the slower teams are having a harder time reacting to the change in style. Goal scoring has also gone up and it’s nice to see games ending with scores of 6-5 or 5-4. Does this mean that we’ll be seeing this every night? No, of course we won’t as goaltenders are still getting shutouts and I don’t think the reduction in the size of their equipment has made such a drastic change to their playing habits either. What has changed is the angles of their nets related to the movement of the blue lines which is causing problems for goalies trying to cover their angles.

The biggest this season was the addition of shootouts to end ties. While purists hate the idea still, the fans seem to be enjoying it very much. The only problem I have with the shootout is that it’s over way too fast with only 3 players going head to head with the goalie. They should increase it to 5 players which is the same amount of players that normally play on the ice anyways. The “New NHL” is here to stay. The only question remains is whether the fans in The United States (Not Canada) come back to the game and help to make it more successful than it was before. While some are calling hockey ‘Olympic Hockey’ ; I don’t think we need to get to that point just yet as I think there will always be a difference between the NHL and Olympic Hockey for a variety of reasons that will separate each game from one another. But one thing is for certain, The NHL is faster,more skilled and will hopefully regain the casual sports fan back to watch the game in the not too distant future.

[ratings]

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There have been many hobbies that have been created in part due to the popularity of the internet. Downloading porn and getting in message board debates about the latest star wars films comes to mind first but another hobby that has helped the sports fan on the internet is the boom in popularity of Fantasy Sports Teams. This article will help to give the dummy with no knowledge of Fantasy Sports a bit of information to help him understand what fantasy sports is all about and hopefully decide to join in on the phenomenon sooner or later.Let’s start off with the basic definition of fantasy sports as defined by our favorite free encyclopedia, http://www.wikipedia.org.

Fantasy Sports:A Fantasy sport is a game where fantasy owners build a team that competes against other fantasy owners based on the statistics generated by individual players or teams of a professional sport. Probably the most common variant converts statistical performance into points generated by a fantasy team, and are typically simple enough to be manually calculated by a “league commissioner.” More complex variants use computer modeling of actual games based on statistical input generated by professional sports.

Boobnewb’s Definition of Fantasy Sports: A fantasy sport lets the average fan become the imaginary general manager of a sports team. You can decide which players you want on your teams based 75% on the knowledge you have of the sport and 25% based on the luck you have in picking those players in a fantasy draft. You can show off to your friends how good you would be compared to them by choosing just the right players on your team that will make your team a successful club compared to theirs through a process of mathematical statistics like goals,touchdowns, baskets etc.

Have you ever seen a sports team’s general manager make a horrible trade or make a horrible draft pick? Are you sitting on your couch and thinking to yourself that you could do a way better job than that idiot if you were given the job of being the team’s general manager? Well, now thanks to the internet you can put your money where your mouth is and create your very own fantasy sports team. Before the internet; fantasy sports still existed but it was more difficult to keep track of statistics with simply a paper, a calculator and a pen or pencil. When computers and printers were invented it made things a bit easier thanks to the help of spreadsheets with programs like excel that would help to do a bit of the work for you. Now with the help of the internet it has made viewing results for fantasy sports much easier thanks to up to the minute results and websites that automatically do the all of the work in keeping track of statistics for you.

Generally, Fantasy Sports start off with a commissioner. This is the owner of the league and can also be a player in the game as well or simply be there to enforce the rules and be impartial to any players who are in the league. The commissioner can set the rules for the league such as how many players will be allowed to join the league as well as set the point totals for each statistic. The next priority for the league is to set up a draft date. These can either be live on the internet or done offline in some fashion between all the members of the league.The commish can either decide in which draft or order the players are selected or he can let the internet randomly pick who gets which pick in the draft. Also, unlike most of the normal drafts in professional sports, in fantasy sports every single player in the league including rookies for the upcoming season can be chosen to be on your particular team. Once the draft is finished, all the members of the league now have their teams all set up and ready to go for the upcoming sports year. Usually, depending on the sport, you need to make sure you draft well for each particular position of a roster.
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