Dork Age/Sports


 * Michael Jordan, the famed basketball player, playing professional baseball. Even he admits he wasn't that good and that it was mostly a chance to clear his head after his father's death. Tin-foil heads have a great conspiracy theory that states he was secretly suspended for a year for a gambling problem. There's no proof, but man, few people would be surprised.
 * NBA Commissioner David Stern refuses to even comment on that theory, not even to refute it. Please ignore the black helicopters...
 * Any relevance to Space Jam poking fun at this?
 * Also, Washington Wizards MJ, tragically immortalised in the otherwise outstanding NBA Street 2. What's worse, they even included Jordan 'Classic', from his Bulls days, who's a much better player than the Wizards Jordan.
 * Speaking of Michael Jordan, there was the seismic collapse of the Chicago Bulls after their second threepeat. Michael Jordan retired for the second time. Phil Jackson sat out the next season and resurfaced as the new head coach of the Lakers. Luc Longley, Scottie Pippen, Steve Kerr, and Dennis Rodman all left as well. Chicago wouldn't see the playoffs again until 2005.
 * Due to its extremely small market, the Edmonton Oilers have had this trope invoked often. The rare aversion in their history came, oddly enough, when Wayne Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988. At first, it began as a textbook Dork Age when the Kings beat the Oilers in the 1989 playoffs, but Edmonton brutally averted it by winning the Stanley Cup the following year with Mark Messier as the face of the franchise. The year following the Oilers' Cup win, Messier was traded to the New York Rangers, beginning one of two Dork Ages.
 * Beloved forward Ryan Smyth was the centerpiece of the second Dork Age. Just like Gretzky and Messier, the Oilers could not afford to keep Smyth, who was set to enter free agency at the end of the year. At the 2007 trade deadline, a year after he was the centerpiece of an improbable Cup run, Smyth was sent to the New York Islanders for prospects. The Oilers finished the 2006-07 season on a 2-16-1 slide, knocking them out of playoff contention. In the three ensuing seasons, the Oilers have missed postseason play each time, culminating in their 2nd worst record in franchise history.
 * In 1995, Montreal Canadiens goalie Patrick Roy demanded a trade after a major falling out with coach Mario Tremblay after Tremblay refused to pull him in a 11-1 loss to the Detroit Red Wings. Roy would end up winning two more Cups with the Colorado Avalanche, and the Canadiens still have significant goaltender issues.
 * Many NHL teams hit extreme slumps after success. For example, the Detroit Red Wings were better known as the "Dead Wings" after Gordie Howe retired (until Steve Yzerman took over...15 years later), the Chicago Blackhawks took two rebuilds to get back to mediocrity, and the Washington Capitals spend several years as a bottom feeder team before rebounding.
 * Following a disappointing 1992 season, the Chicago Bears decided to fire longtime head coach Mike Ditka and replace him with Cowboys defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt. A word to the wise, never bring up the Wannstedt era in a conversation with a Bears fan.
 * It didn't help Wannstedt when Jim Harbaugh walked after the 1993 season.
 * Nor did it help when Ricky Williams walked, ten years later. Still, his popularity among Miami Dolphins fans is likewise rather low. To be fair, Jimmy Johnson's desperate attempts to destroy Dan Marino and find a franchise running back resulted in several wasted drafts, and left the team's talent level thin.
 * If anything, the entire Jimmy Johnson era and legacy could be considered a dork age. Johnson's popularity resulted in legendary coach Don Shula's (wink) stepping down. Johnson's insistence that it would be his team, built his way, meant neutralizing Marino, the team's best player; and Johnson repeatedly wasted high picks on unworthy running backs such as John Avery and James Johnson. Not to mention, he brought in Cecil "the Diesel" Collins, who went to prison for probation violations before even playing a season. Then Johnson quit on the team, and hand-selected Wannstedt as his successor. And the Dolphins have been ordinary (at best) ever since.
 * After David Cutcliffe's first and only losing season at Ole Miss (the year after Eli Manning went to the NFL), he was pressured to fire his assistant coaches. Cutcliffe refused, so AD Pete Boone fired him and made Ed Orgeron the new head coach. Orgeron's overall record in three years was 10-25, including a putrid 3-21 in SEC play. In Coach O's final season, the Rebels did something no other team had done in over two decades: go winless in the conference.
 * The Toronto Blue Jays followed up on their back-to-back wins in the 1992 and 1993 World Series with four consecutive losing seasons (55–60 in 1994, 56–88 in 1995, 74-88 in 1996 and 76-86 in 1997). Longtime coach Cito Gaston was also fired by the management, and replaced by relative unknown Tim Johnston (who tried to motivate the players by lying about his service in the Vietnam War). Coupled with a severe attendance drop during those years (from which the franchise has never truly recovered) and the fact that they haven't even returned to the playoffs since then, it wasn't a good time to be a Jays fan in the late 90's.
 * The MLB in general suffered one after the 1994-95 strike.
 * In Football, any time a team is relegated or nearly falls (double if it occurs due to cheating instead of team incompetence).
 * Liverpool is currently experiencing one: Having been a Top 4 team in England (considered by many to have the best league in the world; that is saying something) for a long while, they finished 7th in the 2009 - 10 season. The 2010 - 11 season ended on a little lighter note when club legend Kenny Daglish took over managerial duties and made a late surge for 6th, but awful cup performances are a reminder that the club's 2005 Champions League victory is just a memory by now.
 * Most notable however is River Plate, an Argentinian club which got relegated for the first time in their 100+ year history (and 33 titles) after massive debt trouble and a sporting crisis which has plagued the club for the last 3 years. The fact that the club has housed many famous Argentine players and that rioting was the result of the whole thing speaks volumes.
 * The first five years of Jerry Jones owning the Dallas Cowboys netted two Super Bowl championships. Then Jones fired coach Jimmy Johnson for daring to demand credit for the championships, thus establishing Jones as the only man in charge - and the Cowboys have suffered ever since. They had enough talent for one more championship in 1995, but have won two playoff games since, with the wins 13 years apart.
 * When Tim Sylvia held the UFC Heavyweight Championship, it was considered to be the lowest point for UFC's heavyweight division. Not helping matters was the fact that all of the premier heavyweights (Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera, Josh Barnett, Mirko Cro Cop, Fedor Emelianenko, Fabricio Werdum, and Heath Herring) were all in PRIDE during the majority of his reign, while Randy Couture had dropped down to light heavyweight and then retired. Eventually, Couture came out of retirement and ended the dork age, winning the unanimous 50-45 decision against Sylvia.
 * The Toronto Maple Leafs had the Harold Ballard era. Ballard made a habit of trading off popular players in exchange for dirt nothing, firing coaches frequently, and generally pissing everyone off within earshot. Ballard went off the deep end by canceling a youth game at the Gardens because his grandson was slated to play in it. By the 80s, the Leafs were the laughingstock of the league all because of Ballard's actions.
 * Oh, Harold Ballard. Harold Ballard. The man who threw Foster Hewitt's gondola into an incinerator, took down a portrait of the queen to make more seating, starved the formerly successful Toronto Marlboros farm team into moving after nearly 60 years of fame, bankrupted the rival WHA club Toronto Toros thanks to his spitefulness, alienated iconic players such as Darryl Sittler and Dave Keon, and sent someone to pick up the company car of an employee who believed he would make the Order of Canada the day after he died. He was basically the white Stinkmeaner.
 * Green Bay was known as "NFL Siberia" from 1968, the year after Vince Lombardi retired as head coach, and 1992 when General Manager Ron Wolf brought in Mike Holmgren to coach, traded for Brett Favre, and signed Reggie White following the season. To give some perspective, they won five championships in Lombardi's final seven years and made the playoffs six straight times after signing Reggie White, including two NFC titles and a Super Bowl.
 * The Mike Sherman years definitely qualify as their latest Dork Age. In addition to being their coach, he was also given the mantle of general manager after Ron Wolf retired. To say this was a colossal mistake was an understatement; Sherman's scouting abilities were virtually nonexistent and resulted in such stellar draft picks as Ahmad "Highway 28" Carroll, Cletidus Hunt, and B.J. Sander. The latter was taken in the first round, and he was a punter. That Sherman traded up to get. In addition to that, photos surfaced of him asleep at the player combines, which only fueled the fire against him. While they posted decent records under Sherman and won the NFC North three times, they struggled in the playoffs. The Packers suffered their first home playoff loss under his tenure, a 27-7 asskicking at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons, and also their second, a 31-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings in 2005. The 2005 season resulted in a 4-12 record, the first losing season for the Packers since 1991, and resulted in Sherman's firing. Some argue that the seeds of Brett Favre's diva attitude were sown here as well; whereas Mike Holmgren wasn't afraid to smack him upside the head when he did something stupid, Sherman's coaching philosophy seemed to be "Brett Favre can do whatever the hell he wants." It's no coincidence that his interceptions trended higher in this period, culminating in a 29-interception season in 2005. When Mike Mc Carthy was hired, everyone rejoiced.
 * The Packers had a Dork Age between Curly Lambeau's departure and Vince Lombardi's arrival that nearly turned out to be a Franchise Killer. The Packers went through five different head coaches between 1950 and 1958 and posted their all-time worst record, 1-10-1 in 1958, just narrowly avoiding bankruptcy almost every season. So shaky was their financial situation that the league threatened to fold the franchise or permanently move it to Milwaukee (where they had been playing two "home away from home" games each season).
 * Gloriously averted after Brett Favre's "retirement." The departure of a long-time face of the franchise is usually one of the largest causes of Dork Ages in sports, but thanks to Aaron Rodgers and company, the Packers had arguably their greatest period of success since the Lombardi years. The Packers defeated the New York Giants (the same team that handed the Packers a loss in Brett Favre's final appearance in Green Bay) on December 26, 2010 and did not lose another game until December 18, 2011, racking up 19 straight wins including Super Bowl XLV, just three years following Favre's departure.
 * The Tampa Bay Buccaneers may be the kings of this trope in sports. Their image was cemented when they were winless for their entire inaugural season and part of the second, an NFL-record 26-game losing streak. This was partially due to a horrendous rash of injuries, as they were not provided medical information on players prior to the expansion draft, but also largely due to coach John McKay's decision to use younger players with potential, rather than older players who would be ready to retire by the time the team was good. McKay's strategy was successful: they made the playoffs in their fourth season, the quickest of any American major professional sports franchise to that point. But the 1982 players' strike divided the team and destroyed McKay's enthusiasm for coaching. Then a series of unproductive drafts coincided with the veteran players' aging and the emergence of the USFL, so the team went very quickly from being a championship contender to the worst team in the league. They finished with losing records for each of the 14 seasons from 1983 to 1996, and their constant coaching turnover resulted also in a constant turnover of players, with nobody ever in place for long enough to finish the rebuilding job. This streak included selecting Bo Jackson with the first pick in the 1986 draft, only to see him refuse to sign with the team and instead sign a baseball contract; and trading a 1992 first-round pick (which became the second-overall pick in the draft) for Chris Chandler, who played for less than one full season with the team. It was not until Rich McKay and Tony Dungy improved the team's personnel selection and coaching in the mid-1990s that their situation improved.
 * The New York Yankees in the 80s. Despite having the highest winning percentage in baseball for that decade, they failed to make the postseason after 1981 (in a two-division league; they once made the postseason eight times in 10 years out of a single-division AL) and were mostly known for owner George Steinbrenner's antics - mainly giving huge contracts to players who didn't perform and firing managers left and right. They finally hit rock bottom finishing dead last in 1990, with Steinbrenner getting banned from baseball for two years for hiring a con man to try and dig up damaging information on one of his own players. The suspension, however, allowed the front office to finally turn things around, unload the bad contracts and focus on player development, making the Yanks a playoff team by 1995 and champions again a year later.
 * The Washington Redskins are enduring one right now, and have been ever since executive meddler extraordinaire Daniel Snyder took over. Despite being the most profitable team in the league, the team has perenially underperformed due to Snyder's interference: the team has had 7 head coaches in 12 years, posted a losing record through 2000-2010 (86W-106L) and has constantly favored flashy style over substance on the field. Moreover, Snyder's moneygrubbing and intolerance of dissent has definitely rubbed fans the wrong way; Washington fans are the only fans in the nation charged to see their team in preseason, and since 2009 banned all signs from the stadium. Many Redskins fans eagerly await Snyder's departure, to put it lightly.
 * When the Walt Disney Company took ownership of the then-California Angels in 1997 (on the heels of owning/creating the Anaheim Mighty Ducks), they changed the team name to the Anaheim Angels (in order to carve a niche for Anaheim being the home of Disneyland and Disney's sports) and ditched the signature halo logo for a periwinkle blue color scheme with an angel wing tip for its symbol. This lasted for only a few seasons before reverting back to an updated form of the old red-and-white/halo template as Disney phased itself out of its sports experiment in the early 2000s. (And as for the Mighty Ducks, they won the Stanley Cup the first year Disney relinquished ownership and the organization had rebranded itself as the Ducks, removing all logos and references to the Disney property.)
 * Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles Dodgers also had a late-90s Dork Age. They had been a crown jewel of baseball along with the Yankees and Cubs, having been a family-owned operation under the O'Malley family for fifty years dating back to their days in Brooklyn. They were also the ultimate sign of stability in baseball, having only going through one managerial change in 46 years. In 1998, the team was sold to Fox, who operated the team for six years. Among the moves made during that tenure was
 * Having more managers in the fold (Bill Russell, Davey Johnson, and Jim Tracy) than the previous 46 years combined
 * Trading away face-of-the-franchise Mike Piazza, who continued his career as arguably the greatest offensive catcher in baseball history with the New York Mets and will undoubtably be elected to the Hall of Fame as a Met.
 * Adding another color (silver) to their color scheme and alternate uniforms, something that the other "classic" franchises (New York, Boston, St. Louis, Chicago) had not done.
 * Giving away huge free-agent contracts that became incredible busts; they made ace starter Kevin Brown the first $100 million man in baseball despite being 33 and having a history of injuries (which would derail his Dodger career) and gave large deals to an aging, injured, and ineffective Andy Ashby and unproductive Darren Dreifort, who would suffer a career-derailing shoulder injury shortly after his new deal.
 * Possibly entered another one in 2011. After the team made the playoffs in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2009, the divorce and antics of their owner, Frank Mc Court has appeared to derail the franchise. Attendance down significantly (first time in almost twenty years they did not draw 3 million fans), most of the 2011 season spent in the basement, filing for bankruptcy. It is definitely not a good time to be a Dodger fan.
 * A late-season Miracle Rally saw the Dodgers go from last-place and 14 games under .500 to a winning record and almost catching the Giants for 2nd, on top of monster seasons by Matt Kemp (who grew the beard and nearly won the Triple Crown) and ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw that could see both players sweep the coveted NL MVP and Cy Young Awards. This on top of the team not folding in the dog days of summer with nothing to play for while under new manager Don Mattingly (meaning they're on board with the skipper). Considering the Dodgers were once on-pace for the second-worst record in their LA history, the late flurry has actually turned the season into a modest success considering how much worse it could have been on top of their financial woes. With some promising young talent in Dee Gordon and Jerry Sands on top of their established core, hope may spring for 2012 for the Dodger faithful...
 * The Boston Red Sox after their infamous sale of Babe Ruth's contract to the Yankees in 1920. The team was awful throughout the 1920's and 30's, essentially serving as a farm system for New York, making several other one-sided trades to help strengthen the Yankees' dynasty. Even the most die-hard Sox fans would probably have trouble naming any notable players in the 20's. They didn't have another winning season until 1935, and didn't win the American League pennant until 1946. Another Dork Age occured in the first six years post-Ted Williams. One could argue it lasted until they broke the "Curse of the Bambino", but the Red Sox were relatively successful overall, just couldn't get a championship.
 * More recently, try telling a modern Sox fan the Red Sox sold out only a few games a year to watch a mediocre team playing in a falling-apart Fenway Park in the early to mid 80s. Then show them Roger Clemens' 20-strikeout game and point out all the empty seats. They will likely deny this ever happened.
 * From a national standpoint, the "Yankees-Red Sox" rivalry was non-existent from the 1978 playoffs until the ALCS in 1999.
 * The NFL's St. Louis Rams' downward spiral can be seen as a Dork Age for some. 2005 started the decline with a 6-10 season. After Mike Martz was fired following the 2005 season, the Rams hired Scott Linehan to be their head coach. They quickly jump to a 4-1 start, only to finish with an 8-8 record. However, things went sour. They finished the next two seasons with 3-13 and 2-14; with the defence dead in last both seasons. During the 2008 season, the Rams fired Linehan and replaced him with Jim Haslett after an 0-4 start. The architect of part of the Rams' Dork Age, Jay Zygmunt, resigned before the 2008 season was over and Billy Devaney takes over and eventually becomes GM. Steve Spagnuolo, hyped as being the next best head coach ever, was hired. Despite a dreadful 1-15, they kept Spags and drafted Sam Bradford to replace Marc Bulger, (who was released on April 5, 2010). They struggled early on in the 2010 season, going 0-2, then going 7-7 afterwards. However, they lose the key game against Seattle on the road, finishing 2010 with a 7-9 record. Offencive coordinator Pat Shurmur is hired by the Cleveland Browns and is replaced by Josh McDaniels. Fast forward to the 2011 season, they're picked to win the NFC West. They proceed by losing their first six games. Fan Dumb claims the dead-last numbers in offence is Bradford's fault. When in fact, the maligned O-line is to blame for not protecting him. They neglected to pick up any wide receivers, except for signing a washed-up Mike Sims-Walker (who they recently waived). Seems they built the team around Steven Jackson instead of Sam Bradford.
 * No one had it worse in the 1990s than the Dallas Mavericks - as in, no one had a worse wining percentage in that decade among all the major pro sports franchises. They missed the NBA playoffs for 10 straight years, in a league where eighth place gets you in. They were most known for trying to build around the trio of Jason Kidd, Jim Jackson and Jamal Mashburn and it failing due to them bickering over who got to date Toni Braxton. The owner who traded them off, Ross Perot Jr., cared more about building real estate around their upcoming new arena than winning. Finally, one Mavericks fan decided he could run the team better - and realized he had the money to back it up. The Dork Age ended when Mark Cuban bought the team from Perot in January 2000; the Mavs returned to the playoffs the next year and have not missed out since, finally winning it all in 2011.
 * When it comes to the Dork Age of Sports, Who Dey! Who Dey! Who Dey think gonna beat dem Cincinnati Bengals?! Twenty-one years without a playoff win. Three playoff games - three embarassing losses. A Who's Who List of Draft Busts and Questionable-at-Best Free Agent Pickups. A scouting department and coaching staffs full of Yes Men. A tortured fanbase foaming at the mouth for a better team. And the one constant in the last two decades of debacle? Mike Brown.