The 29 most hopeless fan bases in professional sports

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CLEVELAND, OH – DECEMBER 13, 2015: Cleveland Browns fans hold up signs reading ‘HELP’ during a game against the San Francisco 49ers on December 13, 2015 at FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio. Cleveland won 24-10. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images/Getty Images) /

1. Cleveland Browns

Last championship: 1964 (AFL Championship)

Last winning season: 2007

With all due respect to the prolonged struggles of the Indians and the now-resolved futility of the Cavaliers, Cleveland’s football delegation is the standard bearer for sports futility. A once proud member of the AAFC in the 1940s and the pre-merger NFL of the 1950s and 60s, the original incarnation of the Browns won four straight AAFC titles and added on four NFL Championships under the leadership of coach Paul Brown and Hall of Famers Otto Graham and Jim Brown.

However, the Browns left their greatness in the pre-merger days of professional football, as they have never been to Super Bowl in their modern history. After spending most of the 1970s as a middling team in the AFC, quarterback Bernie Kosar helped to kick the Browns into competitive gear in the mid-80s, making the playoffs in five straight years. However, three times they were defeated by John Elway and Denver Broncos in the AFC Championship Game before eventually returning to mediocrity again.

Owner Art Modell had long been a reviled presence, but when he announced that he would relocate the Browns to Baltimore in 1996, he broke the back of one of the most proud fanbases in sports. Sponsors pulled their advertisements, protests were loud and proud, but none of it matter. The Browns soon relocated to Baltimore (where they were renamed the Ravens), drafted future Hall of Famers Ray Lewis and Jonathan Odgen the following spring and within five years, the core of the team that had left Cleveland won the elusive championship the city had not had in 36 years.

This further salted the wound of the abandoned Cleveland fans, and the prolonged success of the Ravens did not help matters at all. The wrong in voiding the team of NFL football was corrected when they were awarded an replacement/expansion franchise in 1999, whom picked up the heritage of the previous Browns. However, these rebooted Browns have regularly been among the worst teams in the NFL over the next 17 seasons, only making the playoffs once (2002) and otherwise posting 13 double-digit loss seasons.

Such a passionate fanbase never deserved the abandonment that Modell caused, and in the light of seeing a team that could have taken shape right where they stood go on to the title is the ultimate gut punch. Add in the never-ending search to find the next Kosar (which has unsuccessfully carried from Tim Couch to Brady Quinn to Johnny Manziel to now Robert Griffin III), there is very little inspiration that can be drawn from in Cleveland football. A lifelong enduring Cleveland Browns fan has seen a larger variety of persistent lows than any other fan can know, and for that they are the longest suffering fans of all.