Forgettable sports teams

[NEW.ERA]

NHL: 1-Vancouver Canucks: They have three players which most MAY people know, the Sedin twins and Luongo.

Your seriously calling a Canadian hockey team irrelevant? The Canucks consistently make the playoffs and are one of the top grossing teams in the NHL and have more well known players than your giving them credit for.

I applaud you for standing up for your hometown team and all, but Mason Raymond is hardly a household name. Really and truly, there really aren't a whole lot of Canucks fans outside of BC and Coastal Washington state.

I second this with the other two western Canadian teams as of right now the poor Oilers are nestled up in Alberta far a way from every team except Calgary and Vancouver, outside of Iggy and Phaneuf the Flames don't get talked about and Edmonton really has no player on their roster that is ''Big Name''.

Even TSN has Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver usually last on the NHL docket unless there is something big. I'm not saying they are completely irrelevant but when it comes to Canadian irrelevancy these three hit that criteria among Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal or maybe it's just me.

[Breakwood]

NHL: 1-Vancouver Canucks: They have three players which most MAY people know, the Sedin twins and Luongo.

Your seriously calling a Canadian hockey team irrelevant? The Canucks consistently make the playoffs and are one of the top grossing teams in the NHL and have more well known players than your giving them credit for.

I applaud you for standing up for your hometown team and all, but Mason Raymond is hardly a household name. Really and truly, there really aren't a whole lot of Canucks fans outside of BC and Coastal Washington state.

I second this with the other two western Canadian teams as of right now the poor Oilers are nestled up in Alberta far a way from every team except Calgary and Vancouver, outside of Iggy and Phaneuf the Flames don't get talked about and Edmonton really has no player on their roster that is ''Big Name''.

Even TSN has Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver usually last on the NHL docket unless there is something big. I'm not saying they are completely irrelevant but when it comes to Canadian irrelevancy these three hit that criteria among Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal or maybe it's just me.

Maybe they're last on the docket, cause generally Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal games get played earlier in the night than Calgary, Edmonton and Vanocuver games. The first SportsCentre broadcast is at 10pm, after the east games are done, and just as the west games are starting.

[IceCap]

NHL: 1-Vancouver Canucks: They have three players which most MAY people know, the Sedin twins and Luongo.

Your seriously calling a Canadian hockey team irrelevant? The Canucks consistently make the playoffs and are one of the top grossing teams in the NHL and have more well known players than your giving them credit for.

I applaud you for standing up for your hometown team and all, but Mason Raymond is hardly a household name. Really and truly, there really aren't a whole lot of Canucks fans outside of BC and Coastal Washington state.

I second this with the other two western Canadian teams as of right now the poor Oilers are nestled up in Alberta far a way from every team except Calgary and Vancouver, outside of Iggy and Phaneuf the Flames don't get talked about and Edmonton really has no player on their roster that is ''Big Name''.

Even TSN has Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver usually last on the NHL docket unless there is something big. I'm not saying they are completely irrelevant but when it comes to Canadian irrelevancy these three hit that criteria among Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal or maybe it's just me.

Nikolai Khabibulin?

[Lee.]

NHL: 1-Vancouver Canucks: They have three players which most MAY people know, the Sedin twins and Luongo.

Your seriously calling a Canadian hockey team irrelevant? The Canucks consistently make the playoffs and are one of the top grossing teams in the NHL and have more well known players than your giving them credit for.

I applaud you for standing up for your hometown team and all, but Mason Raymond is hardly a household name. Really and truly, there really aren't a whole lot of Canucks fans outside of BC and Coastal Washington state.

I second this with the other two western Canadian teams as of right now the poor Oilers are nestled up in Alberta far a way from every team except Calgary and Vancouver, outside of Iggy and Phaneuf the Flames don't get talked about and Edmonton really has no player on their roster that is ''Big Name''.

Even TSN has Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver usually last on the NHL docket unless there is something big. I'm not saying they are completely irrelevant but when it comes to Canadian irrelevancy these three hit that criteria among Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal or maybe it's just me.

The Oilers and Flames still have fans in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, though. The people in Winnipeg, for example, have latched on to these two teams as their home teams for no other real reason than "closest Canadian teams," regardless of the fact that the Wild, Blues and Blackhawks are all closer, or at least within the same basic radius. I know that there was a lot of BS in Winnipeg when the Moose jumped to the AHL and became a Canucks affiliate, using the argument "Why would we cheer for the prospects of a bitter rival?", when they were willing to hop on the Flamer/Oil bandwagon without hesitation.

That being said, I'm still waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to the realization that soon, the only reason people will talk about Dion Phaneuf will be because he's a terrible defenseman making $6M a year. He's not exactly making the highlight reels with big hits anymore, and more often than not, when I see a goal being scored on the Flames on TSN or Sportsnet, I see a big pylon with a 3 on the back of it getting burned like Richard Pryor. He's awful.

[BBTV]

the admiral's right, it's the Panthers.

The Blue Jackets created a buzz earlier when they were atop their division, and people have been talking about how they have the foundations of a good team.

The A's are a MLB cornerstone. Perhaps they're less relevant then other cornerstones like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs, but they're still a team with a rich history.

The Marlins, well there's a good case to be made for them, but ultimately I don't think you can call a team with two league championships irrelevant.

The Islanders? See the championship thing. Plus their arena troubles and relocation rumours have gotten them some press.

You can't call ANY team in the NFL irrelevant. The media machine that is the National Football League pretty much means each team has its moment in the press, be the coverage negative or positive.

The only team mentioned here that comes to close to challenging the Panthers for complete irrelevance are the Charlotte Bobcats. Really, they're right up there. I only consider them slightly more relevant then the Panthers for two reasons; they brought pro basketball back to a city that had lost it, and that the NBA is more relevant then the NHL as a whole, in the United States anyway (and really, isn't that what matters? )

championships != relevance.

For example, while I would not say that they're irrelevant, I'd say that the Chicago White Sox are certainly in the discussion - and they won just four years ago.

I think you could certainly make great cases that the Blue Jackets, A's, Marlins, and Islanders are all irrelevant. I also disagree (as I stated in my first post in this thread) that there are no irrelevant NFL teams. I think that the Jaguars are certainly irrelevant. If they just vanished from the league, who would really notice? They certainly can't contribute too much to the shared revenue pool, they don't draw any fans, they don't have any dynamic players that anyone (besides for fantasy football purposes) knows about, and they're based in freaking Jacksonville.

[Korbyn]

Flordia Panthers.

The Coyotes would be second, unless you include the Jets as part of the Coyotes. In that case they are hardly irrelevant as Jets merchandise is still sells quite well and the franchise is still deep in the heart of Winnipeg.

[Lee.]

Flordia Panthers.

The Coyotes would be second, unless you include the Jets as part of the Coyotes. In that case they are hardly irrelevant as Jets merchandise is still sells quite well and the franchise is still deep in the heart of Winnipeg.

700,000 Winnipeggers out of 350,000,000 North Americans would certainly qualify as irrelevant, bud.

Actually, if reports are to be believed and the NHL wants back into Winnipeg and QC, there'll certainly be a league- or at least Canada-wide love affair with Jets v3 for a few years. They'll be prominently featured on HNIC and TSN for the first couple years of their existence, and then the honeymoon will end. If they continue along the path that the first NHL Jets/Coyotes travelled down, then they'll be prime relocation candidates again within 10 years. But if the current Moose ownership takes control of any proposed Winnipeg franchise, there could be some on-ice success, which will translate into other areas.

And I'm calling it now- if by some fluke Winnipeg comes back into the league, Pierre McGuire is the GM.

Back on topic, I still say it's the Marlins. They average 16k per game in a city with a total population of 5.4M is absolutely unacceptable...and they're building a stadium that will hold more than double their average attendance? It'll be the only new baseball-specific park built where they'll have to curtain off sections of seating to make it look like it's just a AAA game. Move em to Portland.

[Don]

NHL: 1-Vancouver Canucks: They have three players which most MAY people know, the Sedin twins and Luongo.

Your seriously calling a Canadian hockey team irrelevant? The Canucks consistently make the playoffs and are one of the top grossing teams in the NHL and have more well known players than your giving them credit for.

I applaud you for standing up for your hometown team and all, but Mason Raymond is hardly a household name. Really and truly, there really aren't a whole lot of Canucks fans outside of BC and Coastal Washington state.

I second this with the other two western Canadian teams as of right now the poor Oilers are nestled up in Alberta far a way from every team except Calgary and Vancouver, outside of Iggy and Phaneuf the Flames don't get talked about and Edmonton really has no player on their roster that is ''Big Name''.

Even TSN has Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver usually last on the NHL docket unless there is something big. I'm not saying they are completely irrelevant but when it comes to Canadian irrelevancy these three hit that criteria among Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal or maybe it's just me.

Nikolai Khabibulin?

Ales Hemsky?

[The_Admiral]

while I would not say that they're irrelevant, I'd say that the Chicago White Sox are certainly in the discussion - and they won just four years ago.

Ozzie Guillen has done a great job keeping his team in the headlines after they stopped being good in 2006. Any time there's a threat that people might lose interest in the White Sox, he throws a bitchy press conference along the lines of "ahhhh thees guy suck, all we do get our ass kick" and then it's like

SHOTS FIRED

OZZIE LASHES OUT

HOTHEAD ON HOT SEAT?

HOW CAN SOX RESPOND?

And then they always go .500 or better for a few days and people care again for a while. 2007 and 2009 were like keeping someone alive with an EKG for six months.

New Era Panda, you punctuation-eschewing schmuck, you can't say the Oilers are irrelevant and mean it. They had the greatest player of all time. Stop being such a Flames dope and think big picture.

[NoHoJoe]

4 pages and nobody mentions the New York Jets.

Only one Super Bowl victory for a team that has had four diffrent venues to share with other teams throughout it 50 year history.

Maybe one day this team WILL have a stadium to call their VERY OWN... and NOT in East Rutherford New Jersey, but in New York City WHERE THEY BELONG!!!!

[rams80]

4 pages and nobody mentions the New York Jets.

Only one Super Bowl victory for a team that has had four diffrent venues to share with other teams throughout it 50 year history.

Maybe one day this team WILL have a stadium to call their VERY OWN... and NOT in East Rutherford New Jersey, but in New York City WHERE THEY BELONG!!!!

That's because they are far from irrelevant. The amount of New York, and by extension, national media coverage they garner ensures that most folks are at least vaguely aware of their existence and performance.

[IceCap]

I think you could certainly make great cases that the Blue Jackets, A's, Marlins, and Islanders are all irrelevant. I also disagree (as I stated in my first post in this thread) that there are no irrelevant NFL teams. I think that the Jaguars are certainly irrelevant. If they just vanished from the league, who would really notice? They certainly can't contribute too much to the shared revenue pool, they don't draw any fans, they don't have any dynamic players that anyone (besides for fantasy football purposes) knows about, and they're based in freaking Jacksonville.

The Jaguars, their attendance troubles, and their possible relocation have kept them in the news. Every time TSN switches to ESPN for NFL coverage I hear at least one mention of the Jags' troubles. So I would say they're relevant.

The A's, people know who the A's are. No, they aren't always the headline grabbers, but anyone who even casually follows MLB knows who the A's are.

The Marlins' new arena prospects in Miami earn them a headline here and there.

Same basic principal with the Islanders. Plus, while championships do not necessarily = relevance, they do indeed keep the team alive in the public consciousness, which definitely plays into how relevant they are.

The Blue Jackets, their fast start at the beginning of the season definitely got a lot of attention, and made a lot of fans aware of the young talent the team has. I would say that the average NHL fan is more aware of the Blue Jackets then the Panthers.

So yeah, it's the Florida Panthers. Not only have fans who follow hockey forgotten they exist, but people from the area they supposedly represent are unaware they even exist.

[NoHoJoe]

4 pages and nobody mentions the New York Jets.

Only one Super Bowl victory for a team that has had four diffrent venues to share with other teams throughout it 50 year history.

Maybe one day this team WILL have a stadium to call their VERY OWN... and NOT in East Rutherford New Jersey, but in New York City WHERE THEY BELONG!!!!

That's because they are far from irrelevant. The amount of New York, and by extension, national media coverage they garner ensures that most folks are at least vaguely aware of their existence and performance.

Far From Irrelevant?????

1. How many Super Bowls have the Jets played since 1969?

2. Name at least 3 star QBs that guided the Jets to the AFL/AFC Championship.

3. How many Heisman Trophy Winners did the Jets pick?

[IceCap]

Relevancy has to do with how much the media covers them and by extension how many people are aware of the team and their current happenings. While the Jets have underperformed for years, people are aware of them, due to the amount of media coverage the New York area gets.

[The_Admiral]

The Jets had their big upset with Namath and have made a cute little thing out of their fans' draft day histrionics. Beyond that they've done a decent job of keeping their name in the papers.

Guys guys guys. I think what we're going for here is long-term big-picture irrelevance. It's not "who's gone just under .500 the last coupl'a years." It's "people who live there don't know the team exists, and for good reason."

[NEW.ERA]

while I would not say that they're irrelevant, I'd say that the Chicago White Sox are certainly in the discussion - and they won just four years ago.

Ozzie Guillen has done a great job keeping his team in the headlines after they stopped being good in 2006. Any time there's a threat that people might lose interest in the White Sox, he throws a bitchy press conference along the lines of "ahhhh thees guy suck, all we do get our ass kick" and then it's like

SHOTS FIRED

OZZIE LASHES OUT

HOTHEAD ON HOT SEAT?

HOW CAN SOX RESPOND?

And then they always go .500 or better for a few days and people care again for a while. 2007 and 2009 were like keeping someone alive with an EKG for six months.

New Era Panda, you punctuation-eschewing schmuck, you can't say the Oilers are irrelevant and mean it. They had the greatest player of all time. Stop being such a Flames dope and think big picture.

Think 1991 to Now.

[The_Admiral]

They were generally a respectable first/second-round out who kept running into superior Dallas teams year after year, then they almost won a championship. They probably have one of the most passionate fanbases in the league. I'm not buyin'.

[IceCap]

In Canada at least all six NHL teams qualify as relevant. Yeah, some may not have as broad and national a fanbase as others, but they all get coverage and all are present in the public consciousness to some degree. I've never met a Canadian hockey fan who was unaware of one of the six's existence.

[fishheatcats]

Much to my displeasure the Panthers are probably the most irrelevant team in all of sports. They've been suffering through a case of the sucks rarely seen. No playoff series wins since the '96 East finals vs. the Pens. That run to the Cup hyped the whole area up and the Cats were a big deal but ever since it's dwindled and dwindled. There is still a good core of fans but the local media has totally forgotten about the team. They only mention the Cats when the best player gets traded

And to defend the Marlins, there is no way they are even close to irrelevant. They have two World Championships, a competitive team year in year out, one of the top 5 position players in baseball, as well as high local TV ratings. Just because people don't come out to the absolute worst stadium in baseball doesn't mean the team has no fans.

[Discrim]

likewise, until as recently as mid June, I would have said the Bucks. And I'm a Bucks fan. For the hell of it, I'll rattle this list off:

• they have the misfortune of not being the Packers or the Brewers. Hell, UWM's done a better marketing job.
  
• the Pack have the Bears and Viqueens. The Brewers have the Cubs. The Bucks don't really have much of a rivalry with the Bulls, or anybody for that matter, mainly cus the Bucks and Bulls haven't really been good at the same time for very long. When the Bucks were at their strongest, the Bulls were just kinda there...the Jordan years coincided with the fall of the Bucks...and the post-Jordan years coincided with the rise of the Big Three.
  
• Andrew Bogut being a #1 pick who has the misfortune of not being as highly regarded as Chris Paul. As I often say, the best big man I'd seen in a Bucks uniform up to that point was Ervin Johnson. The Bucks have historically been more likely to have good point guards than good centers (see Robertson, Oscar; Brandon, Terrell; Cassell, Sam; Ford, Terrance Jerrod [til that damn fall]; Sessions, Ramon; Jennings, Brandon). The thinking was that TJ was coming back from his injury and might pick up where he left off. I didn't mention Gary Payton because his 2 1/2 months as a Buck signified the end of the Big Three era, and Mo Williams...the 2007-08 season told me many things. One of them was that following the Bucks was becoming bad for my health. Another one was that the Mo Show needed to be cancelled. The Bucks were never gonna be a playoff team as long as he was the point guard. Lest you Cavs fans tell me otherwise, remember you guys have LeBron. We do not.
  
• that time when Bogut high fived the air after a free throw pretty much symbolized the aforementioned 07-08 season. That entire season was an unmitigated dysfunctional embarrassment. to Milwaukee, to Wisconsin, and to basketball in general. I can't speak for illwauk, but that season pushed me near the point that I could've sworn off watching basketball for the rest of my life and not missed it. I've never felt such sheer disgust for a team I follow.
  
• if you're a Blazers fan, you were probably wondering when the hell the Bradley Center got so noisy. Yeah, that's new this year. A VERY welcome step up from the tomb-like state the crowds had usually been in since TJ fell. Yes, there was once a time when TJ Ford actually brought consistent excitement to a crowd.
  

But, I guess going by league:

NFL: the Lions, Browns, Skins and Raiders are at least punchlines. The Jags would qualify cus people stopped going to their games, and the Texans cus unless you're a hardcore football fan, about the only Texan you hear about is Andre Johnson.

NBA: a lot of people think Seattle got screwed, so being hated and having Kevin Durant makes the Thunder relevant. The Clippers seemingly exist to be a punchline, and lately so have the Knicks, so they can't really be irrelevant either. When I see "Charlotte" in the standings, I still have to catch myself before I say "Hornets." Man I miss the Charlotte Hornets.

NHL: if not for Gretzky, I would say the Kings. If not for the fact that they were pretty competitive in the Picasso era, I would say the Coyotes. The Wild is the Tim Duncan of hockey, even if everybody says their style of play is boring, that's at least a degree of relevance. Narrows it down to the Thrashers, Panthers and Isles.

MLB: the Texas. Bleeping. Rangers. The Natinals do too much dumb to not be a punchline.