Quote:
Originally Posted by BWillie
(Post 15694076)
I agree, it is. It absolutely is. One is an achievement that may never be broken in Power 5 conference basketball. On the flip side, it's just a team winning a single elimination tournament.
|
Yeah, try selling that to non-kansas fans and see how it goes. Oh, sure, we only won one title during this stretch, but we won our division all these years in a row. Do baseball fans care that the Atlanta Braves won the AL East 11 straight times? Do NFL fans care that the Patriots won the AFC East 11 straight times?
Or do they talk about the Braves choking and only winning one title in all those years, and talk about how awesome the Patriots are for winning 3 SB in that timeframe? (And also point out things like the extreme homefield advantage Patriots/Brady received, or the expanded strike zone Braves starters got... similar to the extreme home court whistle at Allen Fieldhouse).
Which baseball team is perceived as having more success in the first 20 years of the 21st century - the Braves or the Giants? The Giants had a 5-year run where they won 3x. Meanwhile, the Braves won their division 10 times in that span and have zero World Series wins.
And then there's the "Shared title" component of the achievement...
What are those four asterisks?
Oh, well, four of the titles are shared.
But you were the 1 seed in the conference tournament those years, right (Indicating if there was a tie breaker, you would have won the league regular season title)?
Actually, we were the 2 seed 3 of those 4 times.
... ... Okay... Cool story, bro.
14 division/conference titles in a row is impressive, sure. But it's a "trivia" level accomplishment that is less important/memorable than winning the whole thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bearcat
(Post 15694106)
I'd personally rather enjoy the ride than solely the one game at the end of the year, because the latter makes for a pretty miserable sports fan existence... but, it's also pretty easy to see the differences between only caring about playoff/SB success versus NCAA championships.
One is a bunch of dumb college kids who have to win 6 straight in a tournament where only a handful of teams have won multiple titles over the course of 30-40+ years, against teams that are routinely capable of big upsets...... and one is a professional sport where the regular season is largely pointless, and once you hit the QB lottery, you're automatically put in a class of a few teams that may only need to win 3 postseason games per year, largely against teams that you have a distinct advantage over.
I personally don't solely care about SB victories, but the regular season is absolutely pointless at this point for the Chiefs, so I couldn't care less about beating up on shitty teams all year and going undefeated in the regular season.... just fast forward to mid-late January so we can watch the best versus the best in games that actually matter.
|
One could say exactly the same about college basketball. That the regular season is meaningless, that the team that is going to win in all likelihood is going to be a blue blood university with an elite all time coach. You'll have quirky outliers, but the sport is dominated by special "haves" classes who define the quality of their season on how they do once the Sweet 16 round kicks in.
I'm not a Super Bowl or bust guy or anything. But they trump any sort of regular season accomplishment for an NFL team and especially the Chiefs.
The only way the Chiefs going undefeated is significant is IF they complete the perfect season in the playoffs. THEN it becomes a monumental achievement.