Post by skinsfan44 on May 20, 2008 10:47:13 GMT -5
Here is more proof that Philly (Especially Eagle fans) are the biggest losers in the USA. ;D
Enjoy.
100 Seasons ... 100 Heartbreaks
By Bryan Armen Graham, SI.com
They say history is written by the winners but as the Penguins dispensed of the Flyers on Sunday afternoon -- capping yet another season without a championship in Philadelphia -- the losers made a little history of their own.
The Flyers' elimination made it 100 consecutive seasons without a title for Philadelphia's four major teams. That's far and away the record for a four-sport town -- a gold standard for civic sports futility.
Philadelphia (yes, my hometown) has been a major trophy-free zone since 1983. The drought has battered the area's collective psyche, rendering an entire generation of sports fans wounded, disillusioned and emotionally bankrupt. Whether you chalk up the streak to bad players, bad management or just plain bad luck, the hard numbers remain the same: 100 seasons, zero championships.
Is there a pox on Philly's sports teams, like the Curse of Billy Penn purports? No. Every season is its own snapshot. But there's nervous (read: bad) energy generated throughout the city whenever one of our teams makes a deep playoff run, a palpable tension among the locals as the big game approaches. That much is real.
Sure, baseball and hockey lost years to work stoppages along the way. But we'd be remiss to discount those lost seasons: the calendar pages still turned and the pain still festered.
A lifetime of rooting for teams that always let you down has taught many Philly natives how to lose, itself an important life lesson. Fans have been conditioned for failure. They expect defeat. Compound this trend with the city's historical inferiority complex and you've got something worse than fatalism: It's the perverse sense deep down that we don't even deserve it.
To commemorate the dubious milestone, here's a list of the 100 worst moments in Philadelphia sports during the drought. The scope is limited to the four major sports with a couple of obligatory exceptions. While the sheer length of the list might strike an outsider as a tad gratuitous -- an excessive tribute to failure -- there's simply no better way to relate the epic scope of Philly's perpetual heartbreak.
--------------------------------------
To see the list (and trust me, you will want to see it) click on the link below. ;D
sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/more/05/14/philadelphia.drought/index.html
Enjoy.
100 Seasons ... 100 Heartbreaks
By Bryan Armen Graham, SI.com
They say history is written by the winners but as the Penguins dispensed of the Flyers on Sunday afternoon -- capping yet another season without a championship in Philadelphia -- the losers made a little history of their own.
The Flyers' elimination made it 100 consecutive seasons without a title for Philadelphia's four major teams. That's far and away the record for a four-sport town -- a gold standard for civic sports futility.
Philadelphia (yes, my hometown) has been a major trophy-free zone since 1983. The drought has battered the area's collective psyche, rendering an entire generation of sports fans wounded, disillusioned and emotionally bankrupt. Whether you chalk up the streak to bad players, bad management or just plain bad luck, the hard numbers remain the same: 100 seasons, zero championships.
Is there a pox on Philly's sports teams, like the Curse of Billy Penn purports? No. Every season is its own snapshot. But there's nervous (read: bad) energy generated throughout the city whenever one of our teams makes a deep playoff run, a palpable tension among the locals as the big game approaches. That much is real.
Sure, baseball and hockey lost years to work stoppages along the way. But we'd be remiss to discount those lost seasons: the calendar pages still turned and the pain still festered.
A lifetime of rooting for teams that always let you down has taught many Philly natives how to lose, itself an important life lesson. Fans have been conditioned for failure. They expect defeat. Compound this trend with the city's historical inferiority complex and you've got something worse than fatalism: It's the perverse sense deep down that we don't even deserve it.
To commemorate the dubious milestone, here's a list of the 100 worst moments in Philadelphia sports during the drought. The scope is limited to the four major sports with a couple of obligatory exceptions. While the sheer length of the list might strike an outsider as a tad gratuitous -- an excessive tribute to failure -- there's simply no better way to relate the epic scope of Philly's perpetual heartbreak.
--------------------------------------
To see the list (and trust me, you will want to see it) click on the link below. ;D
sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/more/05/14/philadelphia.drought/index.html
