Northwestern sports fans have had it rough these past few months. The football team lost to Duke, which hadn’t won a game since 2005. The men’s and women’s basketball teams are settling in to their annual spots in the Big Ten’s basement. The school’s best athlete, wrestler Jake Herbert, is taking the year off to train for the 2008 Olympics. And the athletic director just bolted for greener (and golder) pastures to become the Green Bay Packers’ president and CEO.
It seems pretty bleak for the NU faithful. But I promise you this: It could be much, much worse.
Just ask the residents of southern Florida.
Now, people living in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale/Palm Beach area have it pretty good. The temperature barely ever drops below 60 (and when it does, everyone reacts like it’s the end of the world). The ocean is never more than a short car ride away, and the South Beach nightlife is a Cristal-filled utopia.
When it comes to sports, however, the south Florida fans have had nothing to cheer about since Shaq, D-Wade, and the Heat cut down the nets in June 2006. Since then, the only title Miami area teams have been chasing is Worst Franchise in America.
Leading the charge is the Miami Dolphins, whose biggest victory this season came when Ricky Williams passed all of his drug tests. The Fins lost their first 13 games of the season en route to a 1-15 finish. When they finally managed to win a game, a 22-16 overtime “thriller” over the Baltimore Ravens, the players celebrated like they had won the Super Bowl. Within a week of season’s end, the coach and general manager were fired.
On the bright side, linebacker Zach Thomas can do a mean “Soulja Boy” dance.
Meanwhile, the Heat has gone from champs to league doormat in just 19 months. Superstars Shaq and Wade have been regulars on the disabled list, and coach Pat Riley has struggled to find a competent supporting cast. The Heat’s biggest offseason move came when they traded forward Antoine Walker for basically being too fat to play. When your record is worse than the Knicks’, you know something has gone horribly wrong.
The Marlins have become experts at tantalizing their fans, bringing up star prospect after star prospect only to trade them all away. This year, the front office managed to get rid of the team’s two best players, pitcher Dontrelle Willis and third baseman Miguel Cabrera, at the same time, leaving the Marlins with exactly zero players the average sports fan would recognize.
In college football, the once-elite Miami Hurricanes finished 5-7, their worst record in 30 years. And let’s be honest; no one really cares about the NHL anymore, so the Panthers are basically irrelevant.
The only sports team in the area that was actually successful recently is FAU, which sounds like a government sub-committee but is in fact a Division I school. Florida Atlantic’s win at the New Orleans Bowl was the region’s lone success in a year that most south Florida residents would like to burn from their memory.
So next time you watch guard Craig Moore brick another 25-footer, remember that the Wildcats aren’t the worst bunch in America.
And if things don’t get better soon, at least we have a lacrosse four-peat to look forward to.
Assistant sports editor Jake Simpson is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected].
