Loser City, Update

So the big debate in NYC this weekend, is over whether this is the worst Giants team in the franchise's 100-year-old history.

I think the question revolves around whether you want offense or defense. 

The 1966 Jints were actually slightly worse than even the very worst that this team can be. The 2024 "Bums in Blue," as my father used to call them, can fall to "only" 2-15 (.118), while the 1966 team went 1-12-1 (.107).

That '66 team was wretched. I made the first of all of three trips in my life to see the Giants live that year, at the O.G. Yankee Stadium. The fans were wonderfully out of control, singing endless choruses of "Goodbye, Allie/ We hate to see you go" to beleaguered coach Allie Sherman (always the man who was NOT Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry).  As I recall, somebody was even doing a brisk business outside the Stadium, selling pennants with "Goodbye Allie" on them.

That was a bad team, all right, surrendering 501 points in only 14 games. That included 72 points against the Washington Redskins, to this day the highest number of points scored in an NFL, regular-season game.  

That Giants team could at least score, though—263 points in all, compared to just 183 this year. And this year's squad seems bent on setting all sort of other franchise records: fewest interceptions by any Giants team, ever, most consecutive losses; most incompetent kicking game, etc.

This to go along with (yet another) Jets collapse on the same, hallowed Meadowlands grounds ("The Curse of Jimmy Hoffa"?). The local football season was over by Halloween.

But that's not the worst news. The New York Rangers, in one of the constant, roller-coaster dips and plunges of that franchise, have gone from having the best record in the NHL last year to what looks like a total collapse. 

The Knicks, having seized the hearts of all New York for a few, wonderful months last spring...of course decided to change everything, and are now playing that electrifying, 11-8 ball. Of the Islanders and Nets, we should not even speak. Ever.

It looks as though all our local hopes will have to be focused on the plucky New Jersey Devils. Yep, that's what we've come down to here in the city where nepotism never sleeps: the hope that a team named after a hallucination of swamp gas will somehow bring home a championship.

Until, that is, next February, when baseball starts again. Even here, our local losers are basically fighting over a single superstar, something that seems likely to spell nothing but regression.

I dunno. Think we can hold a ticker tape parade for Columbia's football team snagging one-third of the Ivy  title?  That's as celebratory as it's likely to get around here in Loser City.