My NFL franchise ranking is now in its third year, despite the tardiness this season. So if you’ve read the 2013 or 2014 editions, you know what to expect here.

Also, be sure to check out all my other great sports lists as well!

The Criteria

The categories and point values are as follows:

• 25 points for a championship game/Super Bowl win, 15 points for a championship game/Super Bowl loss (starting in 1932).
• 5 points for a season with a playoff appearance (starting in 1967), and 8 points for a season with a playoff win.
• 1 point for a winning regular-season record, -1 point for a losing regular-season record.
• 3 points for any year with a regular-season winning percentage of at least .750, -3 points for a regular-season winning percentage of .250 or less.
• Consecutive winning regular seasons are worth 2 points starting with the second, 3 points for the third, 4 points for the fourth, and so on. The counter is reset after any non-winning season. So if a team has three winning seasons in a row, they get a total of 5 points.
• I apply a unique multiplier to a franchise’s all-time winning percentage, such that anything below .500 essentially incurs a penalty.

Feel free to share your thoughts on my rankings in the comments below. And as I did last year, I must give credit to two sites that helped form the basis of my own formulations — Bob’s Blog and Page 2.

All rankings are current through the end of the 2014 NFL season. Last year’s ranking in parentheses.

The Top 10

#1.  Dallas Cowboys (#1) — 15.26 avg.

#2. Baltimore Ravens (#2) — 11.93 avg.

#3. Green Bay Packers (#4) — 10.78 avg.

#4. Oakland Raiders (#3) — 10.67 avg.

#5. New England Patriots (#6) — 10.58 avg.

#6. San Francisco 49ers (#5) — 9.63 avg.

#7. Miami Dolphins (#7) — 8.94 avg.

#8. Indianapolis Colts (#10) — 8.28 avg.

#9. Chicago Bears (#9) — 8.04 avg.

#10. Minnesota Vikings (#8) — 8.00 avg.

The big gainer this year is Indy, which jumps ahead of the Bears and Vikings to claim the #8 spot, thanks to a great run to the AFC Championship.

More than a decade of futility is taking its toll on the Raiders, who have slipped to #4 behind the Packers. Same for the 49ers, who now enter a great period of uncertainty following Jim Harbaugh’s departure.

The Mediocre 12

#11. New York Giants (#11) — 7.87 avg.

#12. Denver Broncos (#13) — 7.22 avg.

#13. Cleveland Browns (#12) — 7.16 avg.

#14. Pittsburgh Steelers (#14) — 7.06 avg.

#15. Washington Redskins (#15) — 5.91 avg.

#16. Kansas City Chiefs (#17) — 5.88 avg.

#17. St. Louis Rams (#16) — 5.82 avg.

#18. Seattle Seahawks (#20) — 5.78 avg.

#19. San Diego Chargers (#18) — 5.34 avg.

#20. Tennessee Titans (#19) — 5.02 avg.

#21. Buffalo Bills (#21) — 4.62 avg.

#22. Philadelphia Eagles (#22) — 4.36 avg.

Lots of jostling in this group, mainly between teams moving by just tenths of a point. The Browns, Rams, Chargers, and Titans all moved down a spot while the Broncos, Chiefs, and Seahawks all moved up. Seattle jumped two spots and is up four altogether over the last few years.

The Bottom 10

#23. Carolina Panthers (#26) — 2.90 avg.

#24. New York Jets (#23) — 2.73 avg.

#25. Detroit Lions (#25) — 2.65 avg.

#26. Jacksonville Jaguars (#23) — 2.13 avg.

#27. Cincinnati Bengals (#27) — 1.79 avg.

#28. Atlanta Falcons (#28) — 1.33 avg.

#29. New Orleans Saints (#29) — 1.32 avg.

#30. Arizona Cardinals (#31) — 0.61 avg.

#31. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (#30) — 0.48 avg.

#32. Houston Texans (#32) — -1.13 avg.

For winning their division (despite a losing record) and winning a playoff game the Panthers are rewarded by moving up three spots in the bottom tier. They’re not an imminent threat to crack into the next group, however, as they trail the Eagles by almost a point and a half.

The Texans finished with a winning record and almost made the playoffs, but are still the only franchise on this list with a negative per-year point average.

When we talk about “cursed” sports towns, it’s almost always in the context of things like postseason or championship droughts, heartbreaking losses, or just general futility. In other words, Cleveland. I kid, I kid.

But to my way of thinking there’s something even worse than falling just short of ultimate glory over and over again, and that’s losing a pro franchise entirely. Whether it’s the result of a greedy owner or a lack of fan interest, the death of a sports team is always at least a little sad.

And so I set out to document just with cities and states have lost the most professional teams from the four major leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL). I could expand it to other leagues as well, but I’m not sure that cities mourn the loss of indoor soccer teams quite like they do baseball or football franchises.

A few caveats are necessary. In the early history of pro leagues team movement was fairly common and it can be hard to differentiate between teams folding altogether or simply taking on new identities. Also, I have taken the liberty of lumping some geographic areas together that may get me into hot water with locals. So all the boroughs of New York City are counted as the same, as are other cities located in the same metropolitan area.

If I’ve made any noticeable blunders please let me know in the comments. Publication images courtesy my companion site, SportsPaper.info.

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Which State Has Lost the Most Pro Sports Teams?

This one was closer than I thought it would be but indeed, Ohio can rightly be considered the unluckiest state when it comes to pro franchises folding or moving. To date the Buckeye State has lost 20 teams from the four major leagues.

It started with the Cincinnati Reds (or Red Stockings), one of the charter members of baseball’s National League, who were kicked out of the league in 1880 and subsequently dissolved. Since then two other baseball teams, the Cleveland Blues and Spiders (1884 and 1899 respectively) have vanished.

Ohio has also suffered the loss of two NBA franchises. The Cleveland Rebels were a charter BAA franchise in 1946-47 but went out of business after just one season. The Cincinnati Royals, themselves already relocated from Rochester in 1957, departed the Queen City for Kansas City/Omaha in 1972. The team now plays in Sacramento as the Kings.

But it’s the NFL where Ohio has lost the most, which makes sense given that the league was founded there and was heavily concentrated in the Midwest for its first few decades. A whopping total of 14 NFL franchises have either moved or gone belly up in Ohio, although to be fair most of that movement was done by the mid-1930s.

Of note, however, are some notable franchises that were lost. The Canton Bulldogs, one of the great teams from the NFL’s first decade, were kicked out after the 1926 season. In 1946 the Cleveland Rams moved west to Los Angeles. Of course I don’t think I need to get into what happened with the Cleveland Browns in 1996 — and if you think that doesn’t count because the city was awarded a new Browns franchise in 1999, ask local residents how they feel about that.

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Coming in a surprisingly close second on this list is New York, which has seen 19 teams move or fold. Aside from the infamous moves of MLB’s New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers, the Empire State has lost three NBA teams, one NHL team, and nine NFL teams. New York City’s five boroughs alone account for 10 teams on this list.

Here’s the full Top 10:

1. Ohio (20 teams)
2. New York (19)
3. Missouri (14)
4. Indiana (9)
5(t). California, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin (8)
8. Illinois (7)
9(t). Maryland, Michigan (6)

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Which City Has Lost the Most Pro Sports Teams?

I guess I gave this one away already, but New York City has lost 10 pro sports teams in its history. Some people may take issue with lumping all five boroughs together, but this is my site so my rules.

The exodus began in 1876 when the New York Mutuals, a founding National League club, were expelled from the league as punishment for refusing to make a late-season road trip. Things remained calm for several decades, but the wild and woolly early NFL days brought a host of teams in and out of New York City.

Between 1921 and 1951 a total of six APFA/NFL teams vanished — the New York Brickley Giants (1921), Brooklyn Lions (1926), New York Yankees (1928), Staten Island Stapletons (1932), Brooklyn Dodgers/Tigers (1944), and finally the New York Bulldogs/Yanks (1951).

(See programs for more defunct NFL teams.)

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Just behind New York City in the loss column are St. Louis and Cleveland, who have each seen nine teams go away. St. Louis most recently saw the NFL’s Cardinals move to Arizona in 1988 and the NBA’s Hawks fly to Atlanta in 1968. More recently, all signs point to the St. Louis Rams returning to their longtime home in Los Angeles soon, at which point the city will tie New York for this infamous honor.

In addition to the Browns’ move to Baltimore, Cleveland lost an entire league when the NHL’s Barons merged with the Minnesota North Stars in 1978.

Here’s the full top 10:

1. New York City (10 teams)
2(t). Cleveland, St. Louis (9)
4(t). Baltimore, Detroit, Washington D.C. (6)
7(t). Kansas City, Milwaukee, Philadelphia (5)
10(t). Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Louisville, Minneapolis (4)

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What Team Name Has Been the Unluckiest?

Just for fun, I decided to look at what nickname has been associated with the most defunct/relocated franchises. For this exercise, I only counted the name of a team when it went away, even if was known by another name for a longer period. This part is more art than science, unfortunately.

With that said, history indicates that the nicknames that most often portend doom are Maroons, Senators, and Tigers. There have been five teams each that had this name and then were no more.

The most recent Maroons team is probably the most well known, the Montreal Maroons of the NHL (1924-38), winners of two Stanley Cups. Three NFL teams bore the moniker and were from Kenosha, Wisconsin, Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and Toledo, Ohio.

All but one of the Senators teams were based out of Washington D.C., the exception being the original Ottawa Senators of the NHL. Three separate MLB franchises used the name, folding or moving in 1899, 1961, and 1972. Only hardcore NFL history junkies would know about the Senators that played just one season in the APFA/NFL (1921).

As for the Tigers, the last of them to go extinct was the NFL squad known for most of its existence (1930-44) as the Brooklyn Dodgers. Three other NFL teams were known as the Tigers and were from Chicago, Detroit, and Columbus. The latter of these was also known as the Panhandles.

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The 2015 NFL season is still about three months away, so pigskin junkies have to do all we can to keep the fires stoked. To that end, here’s a little gem from the pre-merger days that I hope you’ll all enjoy.

This is the opening theme/bumper to The NFL Today on CBS, as used during at least the 1969 NFL season. This particular version aired during the NFL Championship between the Cleveland Browns and Minnesota Vikings, played on January 4, 1970. Let’s all soak this in:

This has just about everything a fan of old-school NFL could want. Those tasty late-’60s era team logos, the crude (by our modern standards) TV graphics, and that unmistakable martial music that made you want to strap a helmet on and go hit someone. And all narrated by Don Criqui.

Simply glorious. And if you want more of that game broadcast, by all means check it out on YouTube while you can.

Forget the NFL Combine and pre-draft hype, or even the “who will move to Los Angeles?” rumor mill — the juiciest piece of NFL news this month is the unveiling of the new Cleveland Browns logo.

The visual identity of the Browns really hasn’t changed in a substantial way since the team’s inception (in the AAFC) in 1946. Sure, they’ve dabbled with different mascots and even rolled out a few alternate logos in 2003, but by and large the Browns have always been the Browns. An orange-ish helmet with no logo is as much an NFL trademark as is the Raiders’ iconic pirate or the Cowboys’ star.

(As a subtle reminder, you can check out my rankings of all NFL logos on my Sports Lists page.)

So now the big day is finally here, and here is what the Browns have ushered in for their new logo (from a website screenshot).

 

I gotta say, guys, I’m underwhelmed. They basically slapped a brown facemask on their regular helmet, and changed the top stripes a bit. And the less said about that 25th anniversary Dawg Pound logo the better.

The verdict: It’s neither bad nor good, but certainly not worth all the hype. Yawn.

It doesn’t seem quite possible, but when the Dallas Cowboys travel to face the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Divisional Round this weekend, it will be just the 32nd time the two teams have met since 1960.

The two squads met only sporadically during the Cowboys’ first decade, but twice in the 1960s it was to decide the NFL Championship. Here are a few programs from the all-time Packers vs. Cowboys series (for contests held in Green Bay only), including one of the most famous games of all-time.

As always, you can find these and other vintage NFL programs at The Press Room.

October 24, 1965 (Packers 13, Cowboys 3)

The Packers continued their early dominance of Dallas despite 133 rushing yards from Cowboys fullback Don Perkins. Dallas QB Craig Morton was picked off twice and was sacked nine times. Green Bay’s offense did very little as well, but cobbled together enough to win.

December 31, 1967 (Packers 21, Cowboys 17)

I’ve already written about the game now known as the Ice Bowl, so let’s just marvel at the beautiful simplicity of that cover.

October 1, 1972 (Packers 16, Cowboys 13)

The ’70s was an era of frustration for Packers fans, but the 1972 campaign stood out as a bright spot. That year they turned in one of their two winning seasons for the decade and made the playoffs for the first time since Vince Lombardi led the team to glory in Super Bowl II.

On top of that, Green Bay beat Dallas for the seventh time in eight games. One again, Craig Morton was picked off multiple times while his counterpart (Scott Hunter) had an awful day.

With training camp upon us and the 2014 NFL season just around the corner, it’s time to revisit my list ranking all 32 franchises from best to worst. For reference, here is last year’s list. And don’t forget to check out all my other fantastic sports lists as well!

I didn’t see the need to introduce any major changes to my calculation system, other than to penalize teams for losing seasons. Also, I did go back and correct some data entry errors I discovered. None of this had a noticeable impact on the rankings, as no team moved more than two places from the 2013 list.

The Criteria

The categories and point values are as follows:

• 25 points for a championship game/Super Bowl win, 15 points for a championship game/Super Bowl loss (starting in 1932).
• 5 points for a season with a playoff appearance (starting in 1967), and 8 points for a season with a playoff win.
• 1 point for a winning regular-season record, -1 point for a losing regular-season record.
• 3 points for any year with a regular-season winning percentage of at least .750, -3 points for a regular-season winning percentage of .250 or less.
• Consecutive winning regular seasons are worth 2 points starting with the second, 3 points for the third, 4 points for the fourth, and so on. The counter is reset after any non-winning season. So if a team has three winning seasons in a row, they get a total of 5 points.
• I apply a unique multiplier to a franchise’s all-time winning percentage, such that anything below .500 essentially incurs a penalty.

Feel free to share your thoughts on my rankings in the comments below. And as I did last year, I must give credit to two sites that helped form the basis of my own formulations — Bob’s Blog and Page 2.

All rankings are current through the 2013 NFL season. Last year’s ranking in parentheses.

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The Top 10

#1.  Dallas Cowboys (#1) — 15.20 avg.

#2. Baltimore Ravens (#2) — 11.73 avg.

#3. Oakland Raiders (#3) — 11.00 avg.

#4. Green Bay Packers (#4) — 10.64 avg.

#5. San Francisco 49ers (#5) — 9.79 avg.

#6. New England Patriots (#7) — 9.69 avg.

#7. Miami Dolphins (#6) — 9.14 avg.

#8. Minnesota Vikings (#10) — 8.19 avg.

#9. Chicago Bears (#8) — 8.14 avg.

#10. Indianapolis Colts (#9) — 8.12 avg.

The Cowboys are so far ahead of all other franchises that it would take several more seasons of mediocre to bad football to see them tumble out of the top spot. But they seem determined to try anyway, as their average dipped .30 points from last season.

The Ravens had the second-biggest fall this year, and their average is down an eye-popping -0.77 points. This is mainly due to their age, as they have had so much success in their brief history that anything short of a Super Bowl appearance will have a negative impact on their numbers for awhile.

Elsewhere, only the 49ers and Patriots actually increased their averages from last year’s list. And two teams, the Patriots and the Vikings, climbed up the rankings. New England moved past Miami while Minnesota leapt past the Colts and Bears to assume the #8 position.

The Mediocre 12

#11. New York Giants (#11) — 7.98 avg.

#12. Cleveland Browns (#12) — 7.65 avg.

#13. Denver Broncos (#15) — 7.10 avg.

#14. Pittsburgh Steelers (#13) — 7.07 avg.

#15. Washington Redskins (#14) — 6.05 avg.

#16. St. Louis Rams (#16) — 6.00 avg.

#17. Kansas City Chiefs (#19) — 5.93 avg.

#18. San Diego Chargers (#18) — 5.37 avg.

#19. Tennessee Titans (#17) — 5.25 avg.

#20. Seattle Seahawks (#22) — 4.92 avg.

#21. Buffalo Bills (#20) — 4.67 avg.

#22. Philadelphia Eagles (#21) — 4.36 avg.

This group had the most movement from 2013’s list, with just four teams standing pat. Both Super Bowl teams, Denver and Seattle, both moved up two spots, while the surprising Chiefs did the same.

If the Giants pull it together and rebound from last year’s disappointing finish, they stand the best chance of cracking the top 10. Still, they’d also need a really bad season from Colts, Vikings, or Bears.

Tennessee’s rotten 2013 campaign earned them the dubious distinction of being the only franchise to fall two spots this year, although they’re not in imminent danger of falling into the bottom of the list.

The Bottom 10

#23. New York Jets (#24) — 2.87 avg.

#24. Jacksonville Jaguars (#23) — 2.82 avg.

#25. Detroit Lions (#25) — 2.60 avg.

#26. Carolina Panthers (#26) — 2.43 avg.

#27. Cincinnati Bengals (#28) — 1.46 avg.

#28. Atlanta Falcons (#27) — 1.39 avg.

#29. New Orleans Saints (#29) — 1.37 avg.

#30. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (#30) — 0.68 avg.

#31. Arizona Cardinals (#31) — 0.54 avg.

#32. Houston Texans (#32) — -1.78 avg.

Not a lot of movement here, although some historically bad franchises continue to gain ground in recent years. The 11-5 Saints returned to their recent winning ways and added roughly 30% to their franchise point average in the process. If things shake out right for them they could very well move past Atlanta and Cincy into the #27 spot.

The biggest losers in the bottom third were the Jaguars and Texans, who combined for six wins. The Jaguars fell behind the Jets in the rankings, while the Texans became even more entrenched in the basement. It could take several winning seasons in a row for them to even move into positive territory for point total and average.

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In my Worst Sports Cards Ever series, I look at the good, the bad and the ugly from the long and spotty history of sports trading cards.

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I can only imagine that few things sent trading card companies into a tizzy like an offseason trade. I’m sure the lead time needed to pull off a nice-looking card is pretty lengthy; especially so in the pre-digital days.

So what happens when a player switches teams and a company such as, say, Topps has to scramble at the 11th hour to reflect that change? You get a card like #151 from the Topps 1972 NFL set, for running back MacArthur Lane.

It seems likely that Topps was all ready to go in early 1972 with an image of Lane with his then-current team, the St. Louis Cardinals. But then he was traded to the Green Bay Packers in February of that year, and would not have been scheduled to put on a Packers uniform until some time in the summer.

Try as they might, there was no disguising the fact that this is a laughably crude attempt at airbrushing Packer green onto a Cardinals uniform. Everything gives this one away — the phony shadows and the lack of a uniform number for starters, but most of all the mysterious green blotch on the left side of Lane’s face.

Lane switched teams again in 1975, when he moved to the Kansas City Chiefs. Thankfully that trading card transition was handled a little more gracefully.

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Since their founding in 1966, the Atlanta Falcons have maintained a fairly consistent brand identity. Sure, colors change and logos are modified, but the basic look has remained intact.

So that’s why I was surprised to see this pennant on eBay, purportedly from the team’s inaugural season.

Almost nothing from this pennant seems to have found its way into the team’s branding, apart from the shade of red. That makes me wonder if this wasn’t produced before the logo and wordmark for the team was ever made public. I don’t know what the lead time was for pennant manufacturing but I’m guessing this is the case.

Another possible explanation is that this was a prototype logo that lost out to the now-familiar one.

Either way, it’s another fascinating piece of 1960s NFL memorabilia.

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Don’t forget to check out the rest of my Pennant Fever entries.

Now here’s a curious one. At a glance this just looks like an ordinary vintage Philadelphia Eagles pennant, right?

Attentive Eagles fans, however, might notice something different with this pennant. It features the short-lived white helmet with green wings design, which the team only used from 1969 through 1973. But it also has the Eagles wordmark that Philly didn’t start using until the 1973 season (at least according to Chris Creamer’s site).

That makes this pennant not only a rather unique specimen, but easy to date as well. Unless some printer really goofed, this could only have been produced in 1973, possibly early ’74 depending on when the white helmets were ditched.

Personally I like the white helmets, but that’s a topic for another post.

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Don’t forget to check out the rest of my Pennant Fever entries.