The good folks over at the Washington Post have put together a nifty little interactive graphic that compares the twelve cities in the United States that have a professional team in the four major sports: football, basketball, baseball and hockey. You can check it out here in all of it's glory.
The study looks at overall winning percentage, playoff appearances, and national championships in calculating which cities have had the best franchises. The combined winning percentage of the state of Minnesota's big four professional sports, since 2005, has been a dismal 0.463, ranked 12th out of a possible 12 cities. That's right, Minneapolis is the worst! And not only is the winning percentage the worst, we also have the lowest number of total combined playoff appearances, and the least number of championships. Folks, being a fan of Minnesota professional sports has been a pretty dicey endeavor for the past 10 years.
So how do the Vikings compare to the 11 other NFL teams that were included in this study? Well, slightly better. The Washington Post has us ranked 11th out of 12. While the Vikings have the 9th best winning percentage, we also ranked only 10th in playoff appearances and tied for last in total championships.
The city with the highest combined winning percentage over the past 10 years is Boston, clocking in with a 0.611 combined winning percentage. Since 2005, Boston sports teams have also amassed 29 playoff appearances and 5 championships.
All that said, Minneapolis is a relative newcomer to whole "four professional sports" thing. They've only managed to have representation of all four major sports (at the same time) since the year 2000. Contrast that with "The Big Five" of New York City, Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia and Chicago who gained professional franchises in all four major sports between 1946 and 1967. When you compare their total share of playoff appearances (ranging in the hundreds) and championships (in the dozens) we can take solace in knowing that our time will come eventually.
But in the meantime, as our dearly departed Ted Glover would say, "Embrace the suck!"