Peyton Manning And The Fleeting Nature of Sports Excellence

The city of Indianapolis has enjoyed a decade of excellence. The Indianapolis Colts have put together an unprecedented 10 years of superior football. To one degree or another, so too have Boston and Pittsburgh. In years past Dallas, San Francisco and Pittsburgh (again) were also the beneficiaries of a prolonged period of excellence from their respective NFL franchises.
In other major league team sports there have been franchises which managed to play at the highest level of their particular sport  for extended periods: the Boston Celtics, LA Lakers, San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons, and of course the Chicago Bulls in basketball. In baseball various teams have produced long runs at or near the top of their leagues – LA Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers and almost perennially, the NY Yankees among others.
I don’t follow the NHL, but I’m sure the same applies to some of their franchises.
In the case of the Colts, I won’t argue regarding which of the teams mentioned above during the past decade has been better. While the Colts have more regular season wins during the last decade than any other NFL team, their postseason record is rather lackluster. The obvious winner in that regard would be the Patriots with the Steelers running a close second.
The point, though, is when looking over the breadth of American major league team sports, the franchises which have performed at the highest level for an extended period of time are relatively few. It is a luxury.
NFL fans in Indy, Boston, and Pittsburgh have lived high over much of the past decade having understandably high expectations of their teams come each September. More often than not, they haven’t been disappointed.
The fall from grace is usually a hard one. Most sports franchises can look back and point to one or more “glory year” periods (excepting perhaps the Detroit Lions, who have never been glorious in the Super Bowl Era). However, the level of play for most teams before and after those ‘up’ years was, more often than not, mediocre at best, and at times dreadful.

The city of Indianapolis has enjoyed a decade of excellence. The Indianapolis Colts have put together an unprecedented 10 years of superior football. To one degree or another, so too have Boston and Pittsburgh. In years past Dallas, San Francisco and Pittsburgh (again) were also the beneficiaries of a prolonged period of excellence from their respective NFL franchises.

In other major league team sports there have been franchises which managed to play at the highest level of their particular sport  for extended periods: the Boston Celtics, LA Lakers, San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons, and of course the Chicago Bulls in basketball. In baseball various teams have produced long runs at or near the top of their leagues – LA Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers and almost perennially, the NY Yankees among others.

I don’t follow the NHL, but I’m sure the same applies to some of their franchises.

In the case of the Colts, I won’t argue regarding which of the teams mentioned above during the past decade has been better. While the Colts have more regular season wins during the last decade than any other NFL team, their postseason record is rather lackluster. The obvious winner in that regard would be the Patriots with the Steelers running a close second.

The point, though, is when looking over the breadth of American major league team sports, the franchises which have performed at the highest level for an extended period of time are relatively few. It is a luxury.

NFL fans in Indy, Boston, and Pittsburgh have lived high over much of the past decade having understandably high expectations of their teams come each September. More often than not, they haven’t been disappointed.

The fall from grace is usually a hard one. Most sports franchises can look back and point to one or more “glory year” periods (excepting perhaps the Detroit Lions, who have never been glorious in the Super Bowl Era). However, the level of play for most teams before and after those ‘up’ years was, more often than not, mediocre at best, and at times dreadful.

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Published by Sebastian on Jan 27th, 2010 in Uncategorized

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