Minnesota Sports Misery Rankings

As I turned the key in the ignition this morning, my radio came on and the first song I heard was Maroon 5's Misery and I thought to myself, how fitting. Just a day after the Vikings loss on Monday Night Football and a couple days after the Twins got swept out of the playoffs, "Misery" was a fitting song for the drive in this morning.



It also has inspired a new weekly post idea here at the Courtesy Wave. A lot of sites and sports writers have "Power Rankings". We don't need anymore of those, every expert from Tijuana to Tehran presenting their thoughts on who's the best of the best. No, we need something more defining of Minnesota Sports, therefore the Courtesy Wave proudly presents The MN Sports Misery Rankings. Here's how it will go and what teams will be measured. Minnesota is one of 13 markets to house all 4 of the major professional sports: MLB, NFL, NBA, & NHL. That gives us the Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves, and Wild respectively. Next is the Division 1 sports teams of the University of Minnesota: Gopher Football, Gopher Basketball, Gopher Hockey. There are 4 other D1 Hockey schools, Bemidji State, Mankato, Duluth, and St. Cloud, but they are considered more regional and only gather a city or alumni following usually, thus are left off the rankings.

Each team will find themselves in different categories of hope and despair and everything in between. All teams will be included in the rankings whether they are in season or not; an off season trade or signing can often effect the Misery Rankings. I will start with the team with the most hope and slowly dwindle down to the last team, leaving you in despair, just the way it should be.

EUPHORIC
None, a team would have to win a championship to reach this level. The state would effectively shut down if any team were to win one.

GLEEFUL
None. Teams in this category are championship contenders and not just playoff participants.

CONTENT
The Twins top the optimistic side of the rankings this week despite recently losing to the Yankees in the ALDS. The reason I have this team as keeping the fans content, is because they once again had a great regular season run and made the playoffs for the 6th time in 9 years. Although the Twins have not advanced to the world series since 1991, this ranking is about the current state of the Twins, who may be just a few key players away from taking the next step into Gleeful..but they could step down just as easily though. And even Mauer's ineptitude in the postseason will most likely be forgotten in time as Baby Jesus can do no wrong.

OPTIMISTIC
The Minnesota Golden Gophers Basketball team is coming off a 20 win season and back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances in just their 3 years under Tubby Smith. The start of the 4th year begins this Friday at Midnight madness when college teams can officially start practicing. You might be wondering why I put a Gophers Basketball team that loses its top scorer, Westbrook, top post man, Johnson, and a host of legal issues in the optimistic category, it all relates to one man, Tubby Smith. The man is a Messiah around these parts, booted out of Kentucky, we throw rose pedals at his feet and beg that we're not worthy to be in his presence...that's how hungry Minnesota fans are. This year, they bring a talented young team with Nolen back at the point and Hoffarber, Williams, Mbakwe (barring legal issues), and Iverson, this team could be headed back to the big Dance and even make some noise.

POTENTIAL OPTIMISM
The Gopher Hockey team always gives the state's loyal hockey followers reason to hope. U Hockey consistently pulls in the top talent around the country and world which gives the fans hope that the Gophers will light up Mariucci for another title run. However, they have fallen behind as teams in the WCHA have caught up to the Gophers and now the competition is just as good with Wisconsin, UND, and even UMD ahead of the Gophers in many pre-season rankings.

JURY'S OUT
The Minnesota Wild begun there season across the pond in Finland, unfortunately the team left their jockstraps at home, scoring only 1 point in 2 games against Carolina. Not even the 3 Finnish Wild players could help this team to a win, however 2 games isn't enough to make this team depressing yet, however, so they will teeter for now until the Jury comes back from lunch.

DEPRESSING
The Vikings come in this week in the depressing category after they're heartbreaking loss to the NY Jets on MNF, left the team at 1-3, even after the re-acquisition of Randy Moss. If I we're making this post 2 days ago, the Vikings would be in the Optimistic category after the Moss trade and a rested team off the bye. Well all of that energy was sucked out of Minnesota last night after Favre showed up in the 2nd half to play, but ultimately was too late to the party and threw the game costing pick late in the 4th quarter. The team was really hyped this year, Favre's last and all the key players back, this has definitely been a depressing first quarter of the season.

FLEETING HOPE
The Minnesota Timberwolves have become the laughingstock of the NBA after failed trades, draft picks, and free agent signings. But with bad teams, come high draft picks, which means the some of the best college players come to Minnesota (at least that's the theory). This year's team has 7 former top 10 draft picks, that's amazing in itself. However, a bunch have been bust material, some like Beasley and Love have a ton of upside. This team will not come close to contending this year, but they have just enough hope to give the fan base something to think about...at least until the 2nd week of the season.


MISERABLE
Congratulations to the Gophers Football team for topping (bottoming) out the first Misery Rankings here on the TCW. Actually, the term miserable is maybe going too light on these Gophers, pathetic, embarrassing, and painful, might better describe this years version of Gophers football. After beating Middle Tennessee on the road to start the season, its been all downhill, and a steep downhill at that, for the boys in Maroon & Gold. Since that squeaker of a victory over a Sun Belt team, the Gophers made history by becoming the first U team to lose 4 straight home games in 100 years, one of which came to FBS South Dakota...yep, the Coyotes, who got beat by North Dakota State a couple weeks later 38-16. The Gophers will not be favored in any remaining game and will be hard pressed to make any remaining game worth watching.

There you have it folks, the Courtesy Wave's first MN Sports Misery Rankings. I'll try to update this weekly, we can all "hope" that our "misery" will soon be lifted or at least relieved, even if briefly.

Until then, remember to dot your i's and cross your t's.

bsv
the Courtesy Wave