“There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days, some days you’re able to be successful, some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn. That’s what sports is about. You don’t always win. Some other people’s going to win. And this year somebody else is going to win. Simple as that.” Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo on losing in the playoffs last spring.

Antetokounmpo was simply stating the obvious math. In a time where leagues are 30 or 32 teams, media expectations are rooted in the odds of a 12- or 14-team league when playoffs were just two rounds. There’s luck and sheer numbers working against your team. Fans follow this standard that your team must win titles or be forever damned. The closer a club gets the greater the expectations.

Still reporters demanded accountability from the man who’d helped the Bucks to the 2021 NBA title. But Giannis turned it back on reporter Eric Nehm . “Oh my god. You asked me the same question last year, Eric. Do you get a promotion every year on your job? No, right? So, every year your work is a failure? Yes or no? No. Every year you work, you work toward something, toward a goal, right? Which is to get a promotion, to be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them or take care of your parents. It’s not a failure, it’s steps to success.

He has a point. In the modern age failure is relative. The traditional poster boys for “failure” are the Buffalo Bills from 1992 to 1996. After wining the AFC every one of those years Marv Levy’s team went to four Super Bowls and lost every one of them, branding them forever in the media and fan perspective as losers.

No other team has ever made four consecutive Super Bowls. Kansas City made four title games in five years. None have made it to three straight Super Bowls. The Detroit Lions have zero Super Bowl appearances before this season and have won just three times in the postseason since their NFL championship in 1957.

Even in a league with 28 teams, the Bills’ feat was remarkable. Unprecedented. And yet, because they lost all four consecutive championship games they’re an avatar of failure. When compared to dynasties such as the 1970s Miami Dolphins (two Super bowls) or the 1980s-90s San Francisco 49ers (5 Super Bowls) the Bills are seen as chokers or losers. The New England Patriots’ winning six SBs from 2002-2016 are the real outlier.)

The current poster boys for hockey failure are the Toronto Maple Leafs, without an NHL championship since 1967. That year was also the last time the Leafs appeared in the Final series. They have since made the final four five times, the most recent being 2002 when Boston dispatched them. Most fans of the team, as well as most hockey fans, see them as a punchline. But in these times of bloated leagues, a semifinal appearance is the equivalent of making it to the Finals in the six-team league of 1967.

Fans and contemporary media still think they we are living in a time when every club, given a little luck and a good draft, will reward its fans with a champions parade. That’s what the mania for parity and salary caps was about. Balancing the draft would give everyone a shot at a star who’d take them to the holy land. But with 30 or 32 teams that formula doesn’t work. There’s just one Stanley Cup. One Lombardi Trophy. And 31 disappointed fan bases.

Where the 1955-60 Montreal Canadiens, 1976-80 Habs, 1981-84 New York Islanders and 1984-1988 Edmonton Oilers defined clutch with multiple Cups in consecutive or near-consecutive seasons, today’s gold standard is closer to two and done. Detroit won four Cups but it was between 1997 and 2008. Chicago won three Cups in five years (2010-2015). Pittsburgh had three Cups in eight years (2009-2017) .

Basketball (with its smaller rosters) still has super teams dominated by LeBron James and Steph Curry. But the NFL and MLB lack the traditional domination by repeat champions. Since 2000 only the San Francisco Giants have three titles and those were from 2010-2014). While the big-budget Dodgers and Yankees have been perennial playoff teams they haven’t dominated the current 30-team league as they did in the 1970s-1990s.

It’s likely that with the NHL talking about 36 teams fans of many of those clubs will not see their team win a title in their lifetime. Parity will sound nice coming from the league, but after decades of coming up short, the odds say fans shouldn’t be praying for a title.

As Giannis says, we need a new standard of success. Michael Jordan’s great accomplishment wasn’t simply the title he brought to the Bulls, it was the totality of seasons in which his club was a viable contender. “There’s always steps to it,” said Antetokounmpo. “Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships. The other nine years was a failure? That’s what you’re telling me?

In our book Ice Storm on the 2008-2013 Vancouver Canucks, GM Mike Gillis made the same point when describing his formula for success with a team that has gone longest without a Cup. Understanding the place luck and injuries play, he said his description for success was having a contending team that had a puncher’s chance every year and, eventually, a title winner. Yes, there would be down years. On average, however, it would reap tiles and profits for owners.

But Gillis’ owner, Francesco Aquilini, who’d originally subscribed to this formula, panicked when a near-miss for the Cup in 2011 was followed by two first-round eliminations in subsequent years. The bleating of disappointed season-ticket holders and the criticism from hostile media moved Aquilini to replace Gills with local hero Trevor Linden. The Canucks then missed the playoffs in eight of the next eleven seasons.

Setting too high a bar is a recipe for failure to any management. Explaining the rarity of a semifinal appearance— as Giannis did— can lessen the stress. But until media cite a more realistic standard it’s unlikely anyone will cut teams losing in the playoff any slack. They may well ask what’s in it for them when owners cash a fat expansion fee and push a Cup that much further away.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Note to @FOXSports announcers. Francisco Lindor was never a Cleveland Guardian. He was a Cleveland Indian until white liberals– not Indians– decided it was a racist name.

With Cleveland beating the Detroit Tigers on Saturday in Gm. 5 of the ALDS, Guardians jars throughout baseball will be overflowing. That’s because most baseball media and fans will reflexively call the team the Indians instead of the pre-fab name they adopted in 2021. Each time they have to throw a quarter in the jar.

Little wonder for the persistence, as the Indians nickname was around since 1911, allegedly honouring player Louis Soxalexis who was a big deal for a time in Cleveland baseball. Opinions vary, except that sometime after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008 it became fashionable in liberal circles to take scalps deemed offensive. Did we say scalps? Oops. Put a quarter in the jar.

In Obama’s rush of enthusiasm for defining the entire culture as a racial struggle session pudding heads like Bob Costas decided that natives names on teams in every sport had to go. Those of a tendentious nature also insisted the use of Indian symbols on helmets or jerseys is a case of cultural appropriation. At the head of the shit list was Cleveland Indians.

Agitation begun in college culture-studies classes spread like wildfire (oops, another quarter) through the Woke media until the club relented in 2021, choosing the anodyne nickname Guardians having to do with a statue on a bridge and Bob Hope’s father. Don’t ask.

It was the same for the NFL Washington Redskins who were relentlessly shamed about their team’s nickname, even though the team’s sober indianhead logo was respectful of a native man, drawn by a native man , approved by natives councils and was a symbol of pride in much of the community. After years of resistance the team name was changed first to Washington Football Club and then to the (gack) Commanders.

There were dozens of other long-established team names that took an arrow (Oops, this is getting expensive). In Canada the apogee of political correctness was the campaign by Edmonton politicians to change the name of the CFL team away from Eskimos. Because blubber eaters, condescension etc. (Eskimos is the chosen name for American natives in Alaska.) In a move that offended everyone but city councillors the club is now called the Elks. EE, get it? In a stroke of kismet the team has been hot garbage on the field ever since.

As we wrote first in 2016: It would seem from reading media accounts that a vast movement of native Americans and Canadians is underway. Yet, what’s unique about this struggle is the almost total indifference for these virtuous pearl clutchers among the people most affected by the alleged abuse. Polling consistently demonstrates that, as tempests go, this one is predominantly hot air.

A 2004 poll showed that 90 percent of those native Americans polled did not object to the Redskins nickname. A 2016 Washington Post poll which duplicated the poll question asked in 2004, produced an identical result. In another WaPo survey of native Americans “pride” was the word most associated with the team’s allegedly hateful name.

The general public was not gripped by the Redskins debate either. As DC journalist George Will reports, “A 2013 AP-GfK poll showed that 79 percent of Americans of all ethnicities opposed changing it, and just 18 percent of ‘nonwhite football fans’ favored changing it.” National public opinion polls find that a majority of the general public support the team’s continued use of the name, ranging from 60 to 83 percent in recent years.

Those white liberal protesters who object to the nicknames are no doubt sincere about their feelings, but as crusades go this one is several demonstrators shy of the Selma march of 1964. (Which never stops progressives seeking to educate the “deplorables” in American culture.) Sure enough, Canadian native activist Douglas Cardinal thought it was time to get his name in the media again. But his belated complaint was briskly shut down by a judge.

To be sure, there is a range of native symbols caught up in this debate. The Indians name, allegedly to honor native player Louis Soxalexis who played for Cleveland in the first decade of the twentieth century, might be fairly benign. The Cleveland caricature logo, Chief Wahoo, is offensive on just about every level. 

The NHL Chicago Blackhawks name and logo, by comparison, seem to be respectful of the culture. The name was originally to honour not the native tribe itself but a branch of the U.S. military who used the nickname during WW I. In fact, natives often wear the Blackhawks logo themselves as cultural symbols. Ditto for the Braves’ name— although the fans’ war chant owes more to Hollywood than native culture. 

Because the Redskins play in the political fever swamp of Washington D.C. they have naturally received the most attention from activists and from media slavishly following the latest glittering progressive/ left object. Which allows people such as native activist Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo, to proclaim, without facts, that “the majority of Native American people who have spoken out on this” want the name Redskins banned. And not get laughed into the Potomac. (BTW: The high school football team at Miss Blackhorse’s reservation New Mexico? The Redskins.)

Other zealots prefer a more hands-on approach to convincing natives how badly they’re served by these nicknames.  Folks such as Bob Costas are free to use their platforms to make their feelings known. Which is their right. But it doesn’t mean that they’re aided by the facts. The media have leapt in feet-first to promote the right to First Amendment rights while ignoring data.

All of which begs the question: If so many of those affected by this supposed insult don’t see it as an insult… then who is the progressive culture industry doing it for?  I’ll take your answer off-air.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.