And, to disagree with Mr. Drew Carey, Cleveland doesn't rock!
Either way, this was interesting and I never thought to look at this way.
kicking clevelands butt since 1933!!!
Love ya Black & Gold
This may be off topic, but it is fun!
Four of the top five most miserable cities don't have NHL teams, so the ranking at the top wouldn't change much. The one city with an NHL franchise, Philadelphia, would drop some, but not out of the top five.
The cities whose most recent titles came from the NHL all won titles in other sports within a few years, so there aren't any other huge jumps there. Raleigh would go off the list entirely, though, as it has no other major league team.
Yeah, the NHL is clearly the number-four league, but the Stanley Cup is such a cool trophy that winning it brings a lot of relief to a city. That's why I kept it in: more for the Stanley Cup than the NHL.
Nice work--of course I am not thrilled because I am a die hard Cleveland fan. However at least now I know my heart can withstand just about anything since all Cleveland teams have all broken my heart many times :).
I find it somewhat amusing that some inadverdently want their Cities misery index to be higher -- what I wouldn't give for Cleveland to be nowhere on the list!
Anyway thanks for keeping the board alive as go into our quiet period.
But then I thought of friends of mine from upstate New York. Watching them, I think it is possible, maybe even probable, that watching your team go to the Super Bowl four times, and lose them all, provokes more misery than never seeing your team make the playoffs.
So... since I could not decide whether playoff advancement meant more, or less, misery, I stuck with the simpler formula: It's all about the championships.
The Mariners had by far the best record in baseball that year. They won 116 games, which set a new American League record for number of wins.
But did we get to go to the World Series?
No. Damn Yankees.
But seriously, Robert, I think you totally missed the point about Tampa Bay. Here, our misery index is always 0, no matter what our sports teams do. Why?
a) It's 82 degrees and partly cloudy on Nov 21st.
b) Busch Gardens is open 365 days each year (366 in leap years!).
c) We have beautiful Gulf beaches less than an hour away, and just as beautiful Atlantic beaches just over two hours away.
d) We're only an hour from the House of Mouse.
e) If we don't like our own sports teams, there's always Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville...or in a worst case scenario, Atlanta or New Orleans. It's not unusual to see a Buccaneers flag on one side of a car and a Miami flag on the other...
So you see, no matter what happens in the Sports World, we are always smiling! Misery index = 0!
Actually, I thought about that looking at San Diego so high up on the list. I mean, lots of folks will feel some sympathy toward fans in Cleveland and Buffalo, but San Diego? Nope. Teams stink? Hit the beach.
And how can you not include the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their years of misery, especially their inaugral season?
At least it's not Boston, where sports fans can't seem to be happy despite the fact it's been raining championships recently.
Allow me to predict... that just as soon as Cleveland loses Chief Wahoo, and renames its MLB team "Spiders," Cleveland gets off the top of this list.
It's all about the karma.