Top Five Most Hated Sports Franchises

Sports Illustrated just published a list of the 25 most hated teams in sports history, and that reminded me of my own little mental list, composed as the Lakers and Celtics were sucking all the joy out of the NBA playoffs. A Lakers/ Celtics finals might have been great for the NBA, but to me it just meant that we'd have to suffer between one of those two teams winning a championship again, certainly not something to embrace. Now, I don't hate the Celtics, just dislike them, so I suppose I was pulling for them. But it was a tepid support, kind of like accepting Russia as an ally against Nazi Germany. Sometimes, the fight against evil makes for strange bedfellows.

There's really nothing worse as a sports fan then watching a team you truly despise march towards a championship. I'm sure that every Red Sox fan will tell you that the Curse of the Bambino years were made all the worse by watching the Yankees win some two dozen championships at the time. Yet, somehow, the Red Sox 2004 championship, seeing as it included the Sox vaulting over the Yankees in about the most humbling way possible, somehow seems to even things up. Yankees fans won't admit it, but I think they'd trade at least, oh, five or ten of those titles to get that one back. And this is something Sox fans don't get: to the rest of us, now, you guys are even. That was it, you slayed the dragon. You're not the good guys against the Evil Empire any more; you're both Evil Empires now.

Anyway, back to the SI list for a moment. It's a decent list, though it seems like they, for the most part, chose the 25 most hated franchises (or colleges, or countries, or whatever) and chose their most hated teams. I don't, for example, hate the '92 Dallas Cowboys any less then I do the '93 or '95 Cowboys that also won the Super Bowl, or, for that matter, the 2009 Cowboys. Well, maybe a little bit more. Plus, in the interest of being inclusive, there's things like the 1976 East German women's Olympic swim team, for whom I suspect the venom has mostly faded. There's even an honorable mention for an America's Cup sailing team. But not one Lakers or Celtics team. Nor the Lawrence Phillips-era Nebraska Cornhuskers. Hell, how about the 2010 French World Cup team, that was seemingly reviled by even the members of the 2010 French World Cup team? Now that's hatred.

So while there may be high spots in hatred for certain teams, and there are certain, otherwise harmless franchises that have the misfortune of assembling a truly despicable team (the 2000-01 Trail Blazers is a great call), I think it's really the year-in, year-out hatreds that stick with us. My list, of course, is biased from the perspective of a Philadelphia sports fan. There are teams on here (well, one team) that the average fan probably doesn't hate. Conversely, there are several other teams, such as the aforementioned Celtics, not to mention the Yankees, Red Sox, Steelers, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and Duke Blue Devils that just don't raise my ire like they do others, though I fully accede to them being eminently hatable (the Blue Devils, I must note, get a pass because I married into the family of a graduate). I encourage you to make your own list!

1. Dallas Cowboys. Oh hell yes. If you're a sports fan from outside the southwest, and you don't hate the Cowboys, there's just something wrong with you. They are, without a doubt, the most despicable organization in the Western Hemisphere not named the Tea Party. Though, let's face it, a lot of Tea Party members are probably Dallas Cowboy fans. I hate the Cowboys so much that, when it looked like they were heading back to the Super Bowl in 2007, I found myself desperately rooting for anyone to beat them, even the Giants. Only a team like the Cowboys can inspire mortal enemies to put aside their differences for the greater good. Oh, and don't even get me started about Tony Romo. I want to get some sleep tonight.

2. Los Angeles Lakers. I'm honestly a little surprised that they placed so high on my list, because I care so little for basketball in general and the NBA in particular that it seems odd to so hate an NBA team. Perhaps it's just the glow of their second straight championship, and the public redemption of Kobe Bryant, but the fact is that the Lakers get me stirred up more then just about anyone else these days. My dislike of them stems from the 2000-01, when they cruised through the Western Conference playoffs without loosing a game to meet the Sixers, whom were pretty beaten up by this point. I will maintain to my dying day that the Sixers would have won that series had the Lakers been even remotely challenged at any point along the way to the finals and weren't fresh as daisies. But whatever. Most of my hatred, really, is for Kobe, whom I never did like, but c'mon. He's a rapist. We all know it. He should be in jail right now, not staring back at me with come-hither eyes. You're still a scumbag, Kobe, no matter how many rings you have.

3. Atlanta Braves. This is a bit of a weird one, that I know most people don't share. It comes, mostly, from watching the Braves dominate the NL East for 14 straight years. But it also comes from their horrible, milquetoast fans, that can barely sell out a playoff game, and from years of watching excruciating Braves broadcasts on TBS. Oh, and that !@#$ tomahawk chop. Oddly, they've had several players over the years that I've liked, especially the big three of Greg Maddox, Tom Glavine, and John Smolz, but also guys like Ron Gant and Fred McGriff. But I still can't stand them. This year, I've found my anti-Braves passions renewed once again, particularly on the day they came back from a seven-run deficit in the ninth inning to beat the Reds, punctuated by a game winning grand slam. I think we were all happier when the Braves were also-rans, don't you?

4. New York Giants. My hatred of them has tempered a bit recently, since several of the players that most especially struck a nerve- Strahan, Shokey, Barber- are gone. They do still have Eli Manning, though, so there's that. For a couple years there, when the Cowboys were down and the Giants were peaking, I honestly thought I hated the Giants more. But I can see now that I was mistaken. I can't believe that Eli Manning is a Super Bowl winning quarterback and Donovan McNabb is not, though.

4. New York Mets. This might be a bit stronger if the Mets hadn't embarrassingly collapsed several times of the last few years, to the benefit of the Phillies. It's hard to hate a team when they pratfall into a pie repeatedly. But they are the Mets, our biggest rival, so I can't not hate them. And that 1986 team really was a bunch of scumbags. Not that the 1993 Phillies weren't....

Top Five NFL Teams to Never Win a Super Bowl

In honor of the playoffs kicking off next week. I think that numbers 5 and 1 will meet this year, but I've been making that prediction for about five years now, so we'll see.

5. San Diego Chargers

What puts the Chargers ahead of teams with longer histories, such as the Lions and the Cardinals, is that they have two periods of excellence in the Super Bowl era: the old Dan Fouts/Kellen Winslow teams; and the current run begun by Marty Shottenheimer and Drew Brees, and continued by Norv Turner and Philip Rivers. I would be willing to bet my mortgage that the Chargers will beat the Colts (if they face them) in the AFC title game this year.

4. Buffalo Bills

Mostly an NFL also-ran, the Bills accomplished one of the great feats in NFL history, reaching four straight Super Bowls. Of course, they lost all four, by increasingly large margins. So they have somehow become synonymous with losing and failure, which seems wholly unfair, but them's the breaks. Buffalo's first loss was immortalized in Vincent D'onofrio's Buffalo '66, so there's that.

3. Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings have a couple of unfortunate firsts in their history: they were the first team to reach four Super Bowls and loose them all; and they were the first team with a record of 15-1 or better to not even reach the Super Bowl. That year, 1998, might be the ultimate bitter pill, as kicker Gary Anderson went all year without missing a kick-- until the fourth quarter of the NFC championship game, when he missed a field goal that would have put the Vikings up by two possessions. Atlanta scored the tying touchdown and won in overtime.

2. Cleveland Browns

The asterisks to the Browns lack of Super Bowls are well known to any Browns fan. Cleveland was the dominant franchise in the pre-Super Bowl years, winning ten titles. And the Browns suffered the ultimate indignity of having owner Art Modell move the team to Baltimore when Cleveland refused to build him a new stadium, only to watch the newly-christened Ravens win Cleveland's rightful Super Bowl within five years, and the city build a new stadium anyway for an expansion Browns. Oh, and in between there was The Drive. And The Fumble. Why does God hate the Cleveland Browns?

1. Philadelphia Eagles

What, you were expecting someone else? If the Eagles weren't always one of the NFL's showcase franchises, they sure are now. The Eagles do have one NFL title to their credit, back in 1960, and two Super Bowl appearances, getting shellacked by the Raiders in 1981 and coming up three points short of the Patriots in 2005. Keep in mind that I FULLY EXPECT Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb to change this, perhaps as early as this February. Hope springs eternal and all that.

Top Five Definitive Superman Artists

It's snowing pretty heavily outside right now (EDIT: or it was when I started this damn thing), which seems like a good excuse to talk about Superman for a bit. Because of the Fortress of Solitude or something. Just go with it. Superman, of course, has the longest continuous publishing history of any comic book character. And, this is just a guess, but he's probably starred in more comics then anyone else, considering that he's starred in at least two comic books a month for most of his career, and as many as four. That's a lot of comics. And a lot of artists. But what's interesting about Superman is that it's really not all that hard to make up a list of his definitive artists. Several have become so associated with the character that it's impossible not to think of them when you think of Superman; moreover, I honestly don't think you could expand this list beyond two or three more spots without having a tremendous dropoff. Certainly, I don't think you could get all the way to ten.

And what is a definitive artist? Well, it's an artist that made a tangible, lasting contribution to the character. Obviously, that's hard to quantify; length of service has something to do with it, but does not guarantee this status. For example, I daresay that Sal Buscema drew more issues of Captain America then anyone outside of Jack Kirby, but he wouldn't be on my Captain America list. So talent must play a part, but again can't be the only criteria. Thus, guys like Neal Adams, George Perez, and Ed McGuinness, all of whom drew Superman at some point but aren't really associated with him (with the possible exception of Adams) don't make the cut.

In the end, it's mostly just a gut feeling. It's the guys you think of when you think of Superman, or Superman is whom you think of when you think of these guys. Which is a convoluted way to put it. But whatever.

Before we get to the list, a couple honorable mentions:

Frank Quitely: Quitely is the artist of All Star Superman, which may well be the definitive Superman story. But it's still only twelve issues, and outside the regular Superman continuity at that, and I'm still not convinced that Quitely really is all that appropriate for Superman. No, I take that back; Quitely has a unique ability to convey both the fantastic and the mundane that has always been a hallmark of Superman at his best. But still, not quite yet.

John Byrne: Byrne was the mastermind behind the relaunch of Superman in the mid-'80s. Byrne wrote and drew both Action Comics and a renumbered Superman for several years, but for whatever reason he never really clicked with the character. I don't think this work would really be considered a highlight of either Byrne's or Superman's respective careers.

Dan Jurgens: During the '90s, DC published four Superman titles a month, each loosely following the previous week's installment, with an extra number even included on the cover to indicate where the issue fell in that year's Superman continuity. This period is often referred to as the Triangle Years (the shape of the extra number), and Jurgens was probably the driving creative force. But unlike a lot of other fans, I don't look back at this period, which included the death and rebirth of Superman storylines, with much fondness. And nor do I think much of Jurgens. In fairness, he'd probably have to be in any top ten list; one reason why five seems like a good cutoff number.

5. Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Garcia-Lopez was a somewhat regular penciller on Superman in the '70s, plus the regular cover artist, and also had stints on both World's Finest and DC Comics Presents. On the surface, this would seem to not be enough of a body of work . But Garcia-Lopez has also been DC's primary licensing artist for the past 30 years or so. His work can still be seen on hundreds of products featuring DC characters, especially Superman. It's this combination of factors, I think, that push Garcia-Lopez beyond Jurgens, Byrne, Al Plastino and others. Garcia-Lopez's Superman is iconic.


4. Jerry Ordway.

Probably the best of the modern Superman artists. Ordway was the other artist of the great Superman relaunch of 1986, launching Adventures of Superman (which continued the numbering of the original Superman series). It was pretty clear to everybody, though, that Ordway was the "B" artist in the new Superman publishing world in name only. While Byrne struggled to gain a foothold with fans, Ordway was immediately embraced as the proper inheritor of the Superman artistic mantle. Ordway stayed on Superman for years (later only as a writer); his obvious appreciation for the artists of the Golden Age made him something of a throwback, and perfect for Superman.

3. Wayne Boring

I'm going to come right out and admit that I don't know all that much about Wayne Boring. The only two comic books that I own that definitely contain his work (Secret Origins #1 and All Star Squadron Annual #3) were heavily inked by Jerry Ordway. They look great, though. But Boring was the primary Superman artist from the late '40s through the '50s, serving as a lynchpin between the top two artists on our list. Thus Boring was keenly involved in the period where Superman morphed from his early glorified strongman days into the Man of Tomorrow we now know.


2. Joe Shuster

Shuster, of course, is one of the co-creators of Superman. I don't think that the creator credit necessarily brings with it definitive artist status (see Kane, Bob), but it's certainly warranted in this case. Shuster not only designed (and refined) what is easily the most iconic costume in comics, he also developed Superman's square-jawed look.

It's hard to say how much work Shuster actually produced; plagued by eye problems, Shuster had to turn most of the work on his breakout co-creation over to several assistents. But Shuster remained involved, despite his limitations, touching up figurework and faces for years to maintain the look he'd established for the strip.

Shuster left the character permanently after his ill-fated lawsuit to reclaim the character with partner Jerry Siegel failed in 1946. The co-creator of the most iconic character in comics faded into obscurity after that, his eyes now too weak to allow for much of a career. Recently, a collection of Shuster's fetish art was released by Abrams, featuring characters that look disturbingly like the cast of a certain comic book. And, frankly, I don't know what to add after that.

1. Curt Swan

Curt Swan was basically the Superman artist through the Silver and Bronze Ages. He probably drew more Superman stories then anyone else, always with an unparalleled elegance. In a way, Swan was an odd fit on Superman; never a strong action artist, his strengths lay in facial expressions and body language. But these abilities actually fit quite well with the Superman of the Silver Age. As his powers had grown to literal godlike proportions, Superman rarely used his fists in those days, relying on his brain and his vast array of other powers. Swan, the thinking man's comic book artist, was a perfect fit with the more cerebral Superman.

Appropriately, Curt Swan's legendary association with Superman ended (for all intents and purposes) with Alan Moore's coda to the Silver Age Superman, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?". This two-issue story, running between Superman and Action Comics, effectively tied up Superman's continuity for the last 30 years, paving the way for John Byrne. It's funny; Byrne was brought in because the Powers That Be felt that Superman needed to be shaken up, but in two issues Moore showed perfectly how to balance Superman's fantastic past with modern sensibility. And Swan, as the lynchpin of the past, was a perfect compliment to Moore's script. Can you imagine if DC has put Alan Moore together with Curt Swan on Superman full time? But I digress....

Top Five Side One Track Ones

This topic is, of course, the one Jack Black gives John Cusick in "High Fidelity", and I thought it would be a good one to kick off what I hope to be a regular feature here at the ol' blog without a clever name. Keep in mind that these are not merely my opinion, but actual fact; you are welcome to offer suggestions of modifications, but I have the final say, as God intended.

So: top five track ones. I think that a great opening track is one that immediately makes you say "yes, I will like this". It should really set the tone for the whole album, kind of like taking the opening kickoff in for a touchdown (never mind the fact that I think the second half kickoff is far more important, and were I an NFL head couch I would always defer). And these songs do that; they kicked down the doors of my ears and said "listen to ME!" Doors of my ears... yes, that's the simile I want.

I think it's really pretty awesome when this happens, and in fact, it just happened this morning, when I listened to Metric's "Fantasies". I had downloaded this album ages ago (shhhh) but never burned it until last night, and the first track is so kickass that the baby and I have listened to it five times already. I even thought about putting it on this list, but that seems premature. It gets an honorable mention, though.

Yes, this is a very rock-heavy list, and Indie rock at that. Sue me, it's what I like. I thought about putting on things from other genres, like "Linus and Lucy" or "Bombs over Baghdad", but that would be disingenuous. Like Cusick putting "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his list.

Couple more honorable mentions go out to U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name", which I might even argue is the greatest opening song ever, but I guess I'm over U2, so it doesn't make the cut, and Belle and Sebastian's "Lazy Line Painter Jane", which is brilliant but the opening track to an EP, not an album. It feels weird to not have any Belle and Sebastian songs here, but most of their albums don't really start out at top speed; it's the later tracks that are most memorable. Anyway, the list:

5. "Bittersweet Symphony", The Verve (Urban Hymns). This doesn't really fit the criteria I mentioned above, because it's more a great song that happens to be Track One. Still, it's a great, great song. It's a shame that this was the Verve's only true hit, and that they are often considered a one-hit wonder, and that they didn't see a dime from it.

4. "Writing to Reach You", Travis (The Man Who). My friend Travis bought their first album because he saw them open for somebody (Oasis?) and they had his name. I listened to their first album and thought it was all right, but this one... whoa. This song is just so pretty, and so sad; it may be the perfect Britpop song, and it's definitely the perfect Travis song.

3. "Twin Cinemas", The New Pornographers (Twin Cinemas). This song just kind of explodes out of the speakers. Travis (again) saw them open for Belle & Sebastian, said I would like them, burned me a copy of this cd, and I knew after about five seconds that he was right.

2. "Caring is Creepy", The Shins (Oh! Inverted World). This album was recommended to me (by... uhhhh... Travis... look, we just have similar tastes in music); we got a used copy in at my old record shop, so I popped it on and said "yeah, that's for me". You'll note this song is on the Garden State soundtrack, but is not the one Natalie Portman oh-so irritatingly says will change your life. That song was "New Slang" which is only the song Hillary and I dance to at our wedding. Damn you, Garden State!

1. "Reverence", The Jesus and Mary Chain (Honey's Dead). This is the song I want played at my funeral. It won't be, but it's the song I want played at my funeral.