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Seattle's Stanley Cup win is another example of the need to establish which sports and which championships will count in the total. As with the question of whether to include NL championships in baseball from before the AL existed, it's iffy what to do about early Stanley Cup championships, which were not the championship of the NHL. The Seattle Metropolitans won the Cup as champions of one professional league in a challenge against the champions of another professional leage, with no one league clearly representing the top level of professional hockey.
that's not exactly fair - they beat the canadians in that series and were playing them again 2 years later under similar circumstances when the canadiens were representing the NHL
in 1916 the canadiens won the first of their stanley cups as the national hockey association champions
the NHL was a fledgling league not too different than it's predecesors and the fact that there were so many of these little leagues going on they needed a way to have the champions play each other
seattle was interesting because they were the first team outside the dominion of canada to win
on another board we were having a discussion about how to count early NFL championships ..... it's always interesting
the first stanley cup champions played 8 games and didn't have a challenger for the title - obviously it's come a long way
however, for their time and place they are the champions
you can't help the context of the league you were in - look at all the eras of baseball, segregation, war, dead ball, steriods, et al ........... however if you won the WS you are the champs
i put more weight on modern day championships because the seasons are longer, talent pool deeper, sports more international and the playoffs a lot more difficult
but I wouldn't go up to a guy who won an NFL title in the '50s and say he didn't accomplish anything either
Baseball - Chicago (Cubs), STL, Boston, NYC (esp. Yankees)
Football - Green Bay, Pittsburg, KC, Philly
Hockey - Detroit and Buffalo
Basketball - LA and Boston
Overall, Boston might be the best sports city as it has stron fan support for all four major sports. This is strictly unbiased as I am not a huge Boston fan for any sport.
Re, Seattle's Stanley Cup: I didn't mean to imply that their Cup win should definitely not count, only to use this as an example of why a person making a ranking of cities for most championships needs to set criteria for which championships will be included. The rankings could vary, depending on what criteria are used regarding these early pro sports championships involving small regional leagues. The same is true of any situation that existed before the current championship formats involving the modern pro leagues were established, baseball championships before the American League existed, for example. I do feel that in order for any championship before the modern era to be legitimately included, there needs to be solid evidence that earlier championships were roughly equivalent to those today, meaning that there was a clear-cut overall champion among all the top-level pro teams in the sport in question.
Finger Laker, I'm curious about what the debate was regarding early NFL titles. Did teams play uneven schedules in the early years? That would certainly raise some questions about the validity of awarding the title to the team with the best winning percentage. Or was there a question about whether to count AFL championships? Just curious.
a lot of the stuff you get with many of the early sports - players were "part time", leagues weren't inclusive, for a time the champion was decided on win % based on, uneven schedules, teams forming and folding with frequency, disputed champions, financial differences as it relates to competation, territorial rights to players, etc
i take nothing away from any of them, but am in the camp that current championships are a little tougher to come by and are equally open in format
the history is really interesting though and it makes for good discussion
Los Angeles has certainly done well during the several decades that they've had major-league teams, but actually it appears that they still fall a bit behind the top two finishers, based on how the three cities have done since the Lakers moved to L.A.
To keep it simple, though, you can just look at total championships since 1961.
That's not the way I looked at it. I took total number of championships and divided by eligible team-years, not just since 1961. This is essentially championship percentage. I think LA has more championships per year than anyone else, at least that's what I came up with about 20 years ago...the ranking may be different now.
So a simplistic example would be 20 championships in 160 team-years (like four teams for 40 years) is better than 40 championships in 400 team-years.
On that note, Pittsburgh has a Stanley Cup and Lombardi trophy in one year. That's pretty strong.
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