Sometimes I wonder why the hell I root for any teams anymore, particularly after the way they treat me year in and year out. Let’s review the sports teams I love and review their performance over the past year:
1.) The Pittsburgh Pirates: The Pirates were 75-87 in 2003, thus successfully completing their 11th consecutive season of sub .500 baseball. A truly impressive performance.
2.) The Pittsburgh Steelers: The Steelers were also exceptionally impressive this year, racking up a wonderful 6-10 record in one of the easier divisions in football. Thought to be Super Bowl contenders in the pre-season, the Steelers made Cincinnatti look like an all-pro squad. Twice.
3.) The Pittsburgh Penguins: Halfway through the Hockey season, the Penguins are 9-21. This is not so upsetting, as I am used to the Penguins sucking (much like the Pirates). Not to mention Sports Illustrated, when ranking all the NHL teams in five categories (coaching, power play, short-handed, goalkeeping, and one more- I forget), had the Pirates ranked either 29th or 30th in every category.
4.) The WVU Mountaineers: Despite having an 8-4 regular season and providing some wonderful moments, we once again just rolled over and played dead in our bowl game. This statistic is worth repeating:
West Virginia is 1-10 in its last 11 bowl appearances, 0-2 during Rich Rodriguez’ tenure by a combined score of 89-29.
Oh well. Pitchers and catchers report in a few weeks, and we can start the misery all over again.
*** Update ***
Statboy corrects me in the comments:
The Steelers beat the Bengals the first time they played and looked reasonably good doing it. In the SI preview, the Penguins were 30th in every category except for one, and in that one they were 25th, not 29th.