The two circles of sports fan Hell
Is it really better to keep coming close and falling just short than to never come close at all?
There are two NFL teams which have played in the Super Bowl four times, and lost every single one: the Buffalo Bills (who lost four in a row) and the Minnesota Vikings.
Of the Bills’ four appearances, three were blowouts in which they weren’t really given much of a chance to win in the first place. You never really hear about those. The first game, which went down to the wire and was lost on a missed field goal? That’s the one that still hurts.
Fast forward to this weekend’s slate of NFL playoff games. The Bills won, but after yet another regular season in which the Vikings looked like one of the best teams in the league and a Super Bowl contender, they lost to the Giants and were eliminated in the first round.
That’s not the first time that’s happened. The Minnesota Vikings’ history of playing well all year until it really matters is unparalleled in NFL history.1
The Vikings are a division rival to my Bears, so I find this absolutely hilarious. Another of our division rivals is the Detroit Lions, who have a history of torturing their fans in a completely different way: by being absolutely terrible almost every year and never making it out of the wild-card round in these extremely rare years they make the playoffs at all.2
To the best of my knowledge, Vikings fans have never organized their own street protest. And why would they? Unlike the Lions, their team has a history of being competently run and is rarely truly awful.
But they get so close and collapse time and time again.
Long before he went Hollywood, when he still did reader-mailbag pieces in writing, Bill Simmons discussed whether it was worse to be a fan of the Chicago Cubs or the Boston Red Sox, both then mired in decades-long World Series droughts. The Cubs were usually mediocre if not downright awful; the Red Sox were often really good and came heartbreakingly close to winning it all several times. Sounds familiar.
Simmons (or the guy who wrote to him) compared it to two teenagers: one who can’t get a date at all3 and one who gets a date with the hottest girl in school but strikes out. Both find themselves in the same place, watching Saturday Night Live at the end of the evening.
Is it better to come close, get your hopes up, only to have them wrecked on the rocks, or to never get your hopes up at all? The greatest philosopher of our time argues for the former, but I dunno. I think the “it’s the hope that kills you” brigade might have the stronger argument, at least where sports are concerned.
When you’re terrible year after year after year, at least you have something to talk about, even if it’s all complaining. Maybe I’ve just been beaten down by almost four decades of mediocrity, but there’s a small part of me that enjoys complaining about whatever stupid thing the Bears did now.
Statler and Waldorf always complained about The Muppet Show, but they kept coming back to their box seats week after week, didn’t they?
Only the team I still call the San Diego Chargers (who suffered their own historic choke job against the Jaguars on Saturday night) comes anywhere close. It still blows my mind that a team which had Drew Brees and then Philip Rivers at QB, the incredible LaDainian Tomlinson at running back and Antonio Gates as tight end never even made it to the Super Bowl, much less failed to win one.
After a dreadful start the Lions actually did get red-hot as the season went on, just missing the playoffs and beating the Packers to knock them out of playoff contention even after they knew they were officially eliminated. Even if they’re my division rivals, I can’t hate them.
I feel seen.