Misery Index

The Misery Index is a way of gauging how miserable a fanbase is during a prolonged title drought.

Basically, if you win a title, you lose all claims at being miserable for a time, and the longer you go without a title, the more miserable you become. If you aren’t even in the championship matchup (World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup) you are more miserable still. Missing the playoffs entirely further compounds things as well. Even worse is when a divisional rival wins during your drought. Past glory can sooth the pain, but that only goes so far.

On this site, I plan to chronicle the pain and misery of the various championship droughts across the big 4 North American sports leagues, the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. At some point I might expand my efforts to other leagues, but for now most of my research has been towards those.