The college sports podcast Big Game Boomer this week released the “Top 50 Most Miserable Fanbases In All Of Sports,” and five Michigan teams made the list.
Top 50 Most Miserable Fanbases In All Of Sports pic.twitter.com/wJz2yppcBv
— Big Game Boomer (@BigGameBoomer) June 6, 2024
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Those miserable fanbases include the Detroit Lions in 10th, Detroit Pistons in 16th, Detroit Tigers in 29th, Michigan State University in 47th, and the Detroit Red Wings in 49th.
While the rankings did not include any methodology or analysis, Michigan sports fans know the reasons well.
At 12-5 in 2023, the Lions improved over recent years, but continued the team’s tradition of letting down fans when it counts with a 31-34 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the conference championship. That loss killed the Lions’ first shot at winning the league since 1957, before the championship was called the Super Bowl.
In the last decade, the Lions have had only five winning seasons, posting some of the worst records in the league in 2019 (3-12), 2020 (5-11), and 2021 (3-13). Since the Lions franchise launched in 1934, the team has racked up an overall record of 591-707-34, posting 36 winning seasons in 89 years, according to Pro Football Reference.
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The Pistons’ .471 win-loss record since the 1948-49 season is equally depressing, and it’s been especially bad over the last decade. Since the 2013-14 season, the Pistons have made only two playoff appearances, losing in the first round in both the 2015-16 and 2018-19 seasons.
Over that same time frame, the Pistons posted just one winning season, in 2015-16, when the team went 44-38. During the 2023-24 season, the Pistons hit rock bottom, winning just 14 of 82 games for a .171 win-loss percentage – the worst in the league and franchise history, data from Basketball Reference shows.
At Comerica Park, attendance at Tigers games has dwindled with the team’s record, as the team hasn’t posted a winning season since 2016, and only two since 2014, when Detroit lost the American League Division Series 0-3.
Overall, the Tigers have a .503 winning percentage since 1901, with a record of 9621-9522. The team has a scant 16 playoff appearances, 11 pennants, and four world championships across 124 seasons, according to Baseball Reference.
The Spartans have been equally as depressing, posting a 4-8 football record last season – the second worst in the Big Ten behind Indiana. While MSU basketball has fared better in recent years, neither team has claimed a championship in more than two decades.
In 125 seasons, Spartan Basketball has won 1818 games and lost 1155, ranking in the AP Poll just 27 times and winning the NCAA tournament on two occasions, in 1979 and 2000. Over 99 seasons of football, the team has a record of 602-410-30, winning just nine conference championships and three national titles, the last one in 1966, data from Sports Reference shows.
It’s a similar story for the Red Wings, who haven’t made the finals since the 2015-16 season, and haven’t won a championship since the team took home the Stanley Cup in 2008. Since that victory, the Red Wings have lost in the final once, in the semi-finals three times, in the quarter finals once, and during the first round in the team’s last three appearances. The team’s 2023-24 record of 41-32 was its first winning season since 2015-16, when the Red Wings were knocked out of the finals in the first round.
The Red Wings do, however, have an overall winning record across 97 seasons, going 3097-2683-815, with 212 overtime losses. That’s been enough to secure 11 Stanley Cups, third in the league behind the Canadiens and Maple Leafs, though the majority of those came more than 60 years ago, according to Hockey Reference.