Now that Cubs have won, who is sports' longest-running loser?

Now that the long nightmare of ineptitude is over for Chicago Cubs fans, Cleveland supporters have inherited baseball’s "Loveable Losers" mantle. They haven’t won it all since 1948. How does that compare with the title droughts in other sports? Pretty bad.

Every hockey fan knows the Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967, but at least they had 13 before that. Their futility is almost rivalled by the St. Louis Blues. Things started well. Playing their first NHL game a few months after the Leafs’ last championship, the Blues made the finals in their first three seasons, losing every time. They haven’t been back since.

Plenty of NFL teams, 13 of 32 in fact, have never won a Super Bowl. One name stands out, though, because they hadn’t won a title for 20 years when the first Super Bowl was played in 1967. When the NFL incorporated in 1920, one of the inaugural teams was the Chicago Cardinals. The team moved to St. Louis in 1960, then to the Phoenix area in 1988 and brought home championships to neither.

The Cards were still based in Chicago when they beat the Philadelphia Eagles 28-21 for the 1947 NFL Championship on two long touchdown runs by Elmer Angsman, and another two scores by three-way threat Charlie Trippi. For a little perspective, it should be remembered that Trippi was a rookie sensation that season and he’s 93 now.

The Cards went 11-1 the following year, but were beaten 7-0 by the Eagles in the title game. In the 69 seasons since their last championship, the Cardinals have made the playoffs just eight times, four of them since losing in their first and only Super Bowl appearance in 2009.

That story is remarkably similar to the plight of the Sacramento Kings, one of the oldest NBA teams who joined the league two years after its 1946-47 opening season. Based in Rochester, N.Y., and called the Royals at the time, they were pretty good. They made the playoffs in each of their first six NBA seasons, visiting the finals four times and winning the whole thing four games to three over the Knicks in 1950-51. Coaching legend Red Holzman was the Kings point guard, but their real star was 6-foot-9 centre Arnie (Stilts) Risen, who was skinny-strong and unstoppable in the paint.

The Royals outgrew Rochester and moved to Cincinnati in 1957 and to Kansas City (playing some home games in Omaha) in 1972. They became the Kings there because K.C. already had a team called the Royals. After some horrible seasons, they were chased out of the Midwest and into a grateful-to-have-any-team Sacramento in 1985. And despite having Oscar Robertson, Mitch Richmond, Peja Stojakovic and Ricky Berry over the years, the Royals/Kings haven’t been back to the finals since 1951 and haven’t even made the playoffs since 2006.

It’s a bit different in soccer. The top leagues in most countries relegate less successful teams to lower leagues — if it happened in baseball, the Minnesota Twins might be sent to play in the Triple-A International League after their dismal 59-win 2016 season. So there are lots of teams that haven’t won the nations’ big prize in a while, but balm their fans with lesser championships. Typical of them are England’s Notts County, who haven’t won the FA Cup since 1894, or Rochdale, which has been around for 108 years without even coming close. Similarly, Freiburger FC hasn’t won the German championship since 1907, but has won smaller trophies repeatedly since.

And then there’s Dundee F.C. Not to be confused with the more successful Dundee United, the Dark Blues have made unsuccessful runs at the Scottish Cup every year since they last won on a second replay after two draws with Clyde in 1910.

But fans of Dundee and the Leafs et al can take heart in the story of Hibernian. The team fans call the Cabbage took the Scottish Cup in 2016, their first since 1902, ending the longest recorded championship drought in major sports history.