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Title Towns
The Minnesota Timberwolves' play this year has me thinking that they might have a shot at winning not only a first round playoff series (for the first time in team history) but the whole shootin' match.
Which would be great; excluding the old Minneapolis Lakers, my home state of Minnesota hasn't had a champion outside of the '87 and '91 Twins. And 12-13 years is quite a drought, especially for a city/metro area that has a team in each of the four major sports.
Or is it?
I always wondered how often a city that has a team in each league could expect to take home a championship. Just based on the quick math, it seems that as there are thirty or so teams in each league, if you're rooting for four teams, each of which has a 1 in 30 chance each year (not that they actually do; the Clippers have a 0 in infinity chance, for instance), figure four teams a year and you should look for a title once every 7 or 8 years.
And that's today; 20 years ago there were far fewer teams, and fewer still the farther back you go. I don't feel like looking it up exactly, but it seems like once every five or six years would be the figure.
Now, of course, there are other things in play here. A dominating team in one league significantly diminishes the chances of every other team in that league. The chances of, say, the Chicago White Sox winning the American League pennant in the 20s and 30s weren't 1 in 8, they were a lot worse, because the Yankees were so good.
But I wondered, by and large, how it actually played out.
A few qualifiers:
- I included cities that had one OR MORE teams in each of the four major leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL). Obviously this throws off the numbers a little bit; for a while there, Los Angeles had the Raiders, Rams, Kings, Dodgers, Lakers and Clippers. But doing it a different way would have required way, way more work than I was willing to put into this. I don't get paid, you know.
- I only counted championships that occurred during a year in which the city had at least one team in each sport; thus, the Twins' 1987 World Series doesn't count, since there were no Timberwolves yet. The 1991 title does, since the North Stars, Timberwolves, Vikings and Twins all played that year. Atlanta has zero, because when the Braves won in 1995 the Flames were long gone and the Thrashers hadn't come yet. Confused? Don't be.
- I didn't count AFL teams, pre-merger, except for the Jets, who won Super Bowl III.
- Any calendar year in which a team played counts. So, since the Blues started play in St. Louis in the fall of '67 and the Hawks left for Atlanta in the spring of '68, we're calling that 2 years. Shut up; we just are.
Herewith, my research:
Atlanta: 1972-1980, 1999-2003
Years with at least one team in each of the 4 leagues: 12
Championships during those years: 0
Boston: 1946-1948, 1970-2003
Years: 37
Championships: 9 (1 championship every 4.11 years)
Chicago: 1946-1950, 1961-1963, 1968-2003
Years: 44
Championships: 11 (1 championship every 4 years)
Cleveland: 1976-1978
Years: 3
Championships: 0
Dallas: 1993-2003
Years: 11
Championships: 3 (1 championship ever 3.67 years)
Denver: 1995-2003
Years: 9
Championships: 4 (1 championship every 2.25 years)
Detroit: 1946-1947, 1957-2003
Years: 49
Championships: 8 (1 championship every 6.125 years)
Kansas City: 1974-1976
Years: 3
Championships: 0
Los Angeles: 1967-1994
Years: 28
Championships: 12 (1 championship every 2.33 years)
Miami: 1988-2003
Years: 16
Championships: 2 (1 championship every 8 years)
Minneapolis/St. Paul: 1989-1993, 2000-2003
Years: 9
Championships: 1 (1 championship every 9 years) (duh)
New York: 1946-2003
Years: 58
Championships: 26, 30 if you count the Islanders
(1 championship every 2.23 years; 1 every 1.933 years if you count the Islanders)
(I'm not a New Yorker, I have absolutely no idea how many New York City people root for the Islanders, and I frankly have no idea whether to consider the Islanders as a New York City team. I suspect I shouldn't but I've done the results both ways, just in case)
Philadelphia: 1967-2003
Years: 37
Championships: 5 (1 championship every 7.4 years)
Phoenix: 1998-2003
Years: 6
Championships: 1 (1 championship every 6 years) (duh)
San Francisco Bay Area: 1967-1976, 1991-2003
Years: 23
Championships: 5 (1 championship every 4.6 years)
St. Louis: 1967-1968
Years: 2
Championships: 0
What does all this mean? Well:
Overall, this gives us 347 years and 87 championships (91, if you count the Islanders), for an average rate of one championship every 3.9885 years (every 3.813 years, counting the Islanders). So, 1 every 4 years. That's a bit more frequent than we'd expect, but you've got to realize that the Yankees are involved here.
Let's do just the cities that have exactly four teams, shall we?
That gives us 194 years and 33 titles, for an average of one championship every 5.87 years. That would actually turn out to be one championship every 6.24 years if no team takes home a title this season (no sure thing, that, with the way the Wolves, Flyers, Avalanche and Red Wings are going).
The straight math would tell us to expect a title one year out of every 7 or 8, but let's not forget that for years there were far fewer than 30 teams in each league.
So, based on some basic research and hasty interpretations, I think we can conclude that every major sports city gets a championship just about as often as it's supposed to.
Not that that makes the 1998 NFC Championship Game any less painful.
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