Which major pro sports franchise is the saddest right now?
It’s tough to get more down bad than the Detroit Red Wings right now, with a 10-year playoff drought, an ex-captain being booed following his trade request and a key defenseman preferring a trade of his own.
Zooming out at the entire sports world: Which major sports franchise is the saddest right now? We’re not talking overall history. We’re talking which team is the hardest to cheer for today if you’re one of its fans.
MATT LARKIN: I’ll start with the Detroit Red Wings to ensure we get at least one hockey answer. Their playoff drought is the longest active one in the NHL; they haven’t hosted a Wings playoff game in an arena that opened in 2017; they watched one of their most beloved players in franchise history, Steve Yzerman, plunge them into the abyss with his questionable roster moves as a GM; their Michigan-born captain Dylan Larkin wants out; and their second most valuable defenseman, Simon Edvinsson, might too because they couldn’t negotiate a contract with him all summer given they had no GM. This was a model organization from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s. How is the standard so low now?
ANTHONY TRUDEAU: It has to be the New York Jets, who have sunk so low that a 1-3 start with former draft bust Geno Smith under center has actually exceeded expectations. It’s bad enough that the Jets’ 15-season playoff drought nearly doubles the next-worst mark, that Aaron Glenn has been one of the more unprepared head coaches in recent NFL history, that the Aaron Rodgers experiment flamed out so spectacularly. What really hurts for Jets fans, though, is that there’s no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel. They must know nothing will get better as long as eccentric meddler Woody Johnson is running the show, supposedly with the help of Madden ratings.
PAUL PIDUTTI: I’m going over to Major League Baseball for the hopeless wreck that is the Los Angeles Angels. It’s been 17 years since their last playoff win. It’s been 12 years without a postseason appearance. In their last 10 seasons (skipping over the 60-game pandemic year), the Angels have never finished better than 17 games back of the division lead. Reminder: there are only five teams in MLB divisions! What makes the situation most tragic is that Mike Trout has been the face of the franchise for 16 seasons now. Trout is a three-time AL MVP and seven-time finalist who has… wait for it… three career postseason games played. He was 23 years old in that one brief postseason experience in 2014. Trout is now 35. Some good news? Longtime owner Arte Moreno has mercifully sold the team to Stan Kroenke — owner of the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Rams, Arsenal FC & WFC, Colorado Rapids, and yes, the Colorado Avalanche.
STEVEN ELLIS: Since NASCAR went to a charter system, therefore making teams a “franchise” with an inherent sale value… I’m going with Denny Hamlin’s #11 Joe Gibbs Racing team. He’s one of the greatest drivers of his generation. He’s won multiple Daytona 500s and has been competitive for 20 years, something very few drivers can claim in any form of racing. But he’s still seeking his first championship, despite being so close so many times. Hell, he had it in the bag last year before his final pit stop went sour, and he lost the title to a guy who hadn’t been competitive in the championship race. And then there’s this year – he looked like the clear favorite by the halfway point in the year and entered the Chase (a form of playoffs, essentially) in first. Yet… it looks like it’s going to be another flat effort in the end with the way things are going. Given he’s expected to retire in 2027, he could be the best driver in any racing to not win a championship. Wild.
MIKE GOULD: I’m going to go with the Arizona Coyotes, seeing as they no longer exist. But for a real answer: the Ottawa Redblacks. They’re 0-15, averaging fewer than 15,000 fans per game, and the CFL is about to undergo a huge overhaul to its rulebook that will take away many of its distinctly Canadian elements. I’d be pretty peeved about pretty much everything if I were a die-hard fan of that team.
SCOTT MAXWELL: I was almost tempted to go with my Miami Dolphins because they’re currently spending $184.3 million in DEAD cap space, but they are at least committed to a rebuild. Instead, I’ll go overseas and poke fun at Tottenham Hotspur FC. To all the non-soccer fans, imagine if instead of a salary cap, teams had a spending cap based on their own football-related income. Now imagine this rule being implemented when only four teams in the Premier League were considerably wealthy. This would benefit those four teams because their spending floor is much higher than the rest, and the only way for other teams to catch up is to break those rules (see Chelsea, Manchester City). Now imagine being one of those four teams with that advantage over the rest of the league and still failing. That’s Tottenham. They haven’t won the league since 1961, and in a sport where there are three or four tournaments every year to earn trophies, Tottenham has collected two in the 21st century despite having this financial advantage. To make matters worse, they aren’t even hanging around in the fight anymore. They finished 17th (which is just outside of the relegation zone) in the past two seasons, with last year seeing them miss relegation by two points. Of course, after a disastrous season like that, they spent a ton of money to improve the club and bring them back to former glory, ultimately ringing up a bill north of 300 million euros. Surely they improved, right? Nope, they’re in last. They’re on another level of incompetence, especially given their advantage over most of the competition.
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