After watching the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl for the second time in four years Sunday night, it dawned on me: northwest sports fans are getting the shaft, big time.
I realize that the Ducks have made it to three straight BCS bowl games, so, for the record, I’m only talking about championships here. And yes, I realize that Oregon appeared in the title game in 2011 and the Seahawks appeared in Super Bowl XL back in 2006.
Other than that, it’s been slim pickings for the past few decades.
The Trail Blazers, Portland’s only major professional franchise (until the Timbers joined the mix last year,) haven’t been to the NBA finals since 1992 (and 1990 before that.) You would have to go all the way back to 1977 to find the Trail Blazers’ last (and only) NBA championship.
The Seattle Sonics – may they rest in peace – made it to the finals back in the ’95-’96 season, but only won one championship in franchise history, and that was back in the 1978-79 season.
See what I’m getting at?
Northwest fans, despite all their hardcore loyalty and never-ending cheering, are getting robbed of all the fun. Who’s to blame? That could be explained, but it would take about a hundred more articles to do so.
Northwest fans have watched as year after year, teams from all across the country win championships in their respective sports, with many doing so multiple times in a handful of years.
At the time of this article’s publication, it will have been 12,664 days since the Trail Blazers won its one and only championship, with little indication that the team is anywhere close to doing so again. It’s also been 11,938 days since the Sonics last won a title, and with the Sonics now in Oklahoma City under a new name, Seattle clearly isn’t on their way to an NBA championship in the next decade.
With how much everything has to go right in college football just to get to the title game, there’s way too many factors out there to predict the next championship game an Oregon team will even get to, let alone win. For the Ducks, it could be as soon as this next season. For the Beavers, well, yeah.
And for anyone who witnessed the Seahawks play more than a couple games this year, it doesn’t look like Tarvaris Jackson is leading that group to a Super Bowl anytime soon.
And the Mariners… Uhh…
In the meantime, we’re stuck with what we have: a northwest sports environment in which winning championships isn’t really on the table.
But you know what makes that a somewhat good thing? I’ll tell you: it’s the fact that, here in the northwest, you’ll find the most loyal, honest, and hardcore fans in the world of sports.
Because it’s easy to root for the championship teams. It’s a whole different thing to root for northwest teams.
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