Jesse fuckin' Rice said:
As a Seattle fan for almost ALL my life, i EXPECT this. Somehow, the Sonics won a championship, and i dont know how. Seattle just isnt a championship city for sports. I luv my Hawks, Sonics and M's. But lets face it, this city just does NOT care enough to put together GOOD teams to WIN. They care about casual fans who go and watch their games so they can accomodate potential Boeing and Microsoft clients to make this city more money to expand and fit MORE people and cause MORE traffic. I mean wow, have you SEEN what Bavasi has done this year? At least the FO of the Hawks has TRIED to do something. And i dont even wanna START on the whole Howard Shcultz era, ill never stop.
I feel some of your points, our teams have generally had very poor front office management in the past 25 years. Your thing about our city not being a championship town, however, is bullshit. There are really only 3 or 4 true championship towns per sport, and there are a hell of a lot more than 3 or 4 teams who have won championships in each sport.
In college sports, it does, but in professional sports, the "championship town" stuff doesn't matter. You have places like
Anaheim, Miami (Florida Marlins, twice, the Heat once) & Tampa Bay winning championships with very very laid back, bandwagon fans. There are only two cities that have gone more professional sports seasons than Seattle without winning a major championship, and they both have reputations as being some of the most raucous, intense sports cities in the United States:
Philadelphia & Cleveland.
As much as we'd like to think it does, winning in pro sports has very little to do with the city or fans, and everything to do with management decisions. All franchises are profit driven, all are going to cater to corporate interests, are going to at times, alienate their fanbase by what is a perceived lack of willing to spend $. The one exception I might make to this rule, is the case of the New York Yankees. In that situation, the size of the city (and corresponding size of the fan base) has enabled them to do things other teams could only dream of.
But by and large, success in professional athletics has zero to do with what city wants it or will appreciate it the most.
And a quick note about the geography of sports fans in Seattle: It is true that our city proper does care about sports less than a lot of other cities. Snohomish and Pierce county hold the highest percentages of sports fans. A lot of folks in King County, especially Seattle proper, are not into sports. But at the metropolitan area level,
we are an average sports town. No better, no worse. The fact that we haven't won anything since 1979 doesn't have anything to do w/ our city and fans, it's b/c of:
1) Two historic playoff chokes ('94 Sonics, '01 Mariners)
2) The worst officiated Super Bowl in the history of the game
3) Traditionally Poor Front Office Management.