Being a sports fan in New York City. What team combinations have had the most success the past 25 years?

I was listening to Benigno and Roberts on WFAN on my 3 hour drive from New Jersey to Connecticut on Saturday afternoon. Joe and Evan, both Mets and Jets fans, were ranting with other Mets-Jets fans how that combination of sports teams to be fans of in New York City was probably the worst. Especially with the current Jets collapse after starting out 8-3 and the Mets’ two consecutive late season collapses, the heartbreaking is at an all-time high. Well, as a Giants and Yankees fan, it’s been the complete opposite for me. The Yankees made the playoffs 13 years in a row (and winning four championships), while the Giants just came off a stellar Super Bowl dream season, not to mention the 2000 run and this year’s 12-4 season. This led me to do a quick analysis of the different combination of teams of the four major sports that fans can follow in NYC, and which ones have the best happiness and least happiness. First, I will quickly review each team’s success the past 25 years (I chose 25 because I first became a sports fan of a NY team in 1984 with the Yankees, and it’s a nice round number for recent success). Then I will rank the combinations in order of success.

Success will be defined as follows:

ACCOMPLISHMENT	POINTS/OCCURRENCE
Winning season	2
Division winner	3
Playoff season	3
Playoff round won	5
Conference championship	15
Championship	20

Points explanation: To be clear, the team accrues points every time one of the accomplishments occur. For example, if the Giants win the Super Bowl this year, they would get points for every single accomplishment, not just the 20 points for winning the championship. That means a championship year for a football division winner would net the team 2+3+3+5(3)+15+20 = 58 points! That also means not all four sports championships are created equal, but they are pretty close, The reason for this is because the excitement and level of accomplishment increases up to the championship game. Usually when a team wins a championship, the fans are  relatively satisfied for the next few seasons. A division-winning playoff season coupled with a loss in the first playoff round would net the team 2+3+3 = 8 points. In essence, a championship is loosely equal to seven playoff seasons. Ties in football and the old ties in hockey are counted as non-games when calculating winning percentages.

So, here are the results of the nine New York City metro area sports teams and their successes the past 25 finished seasons. I will update this when the football, basketball and hockey seasons are finished with their 2008 seasons. That means I do not include the Giants accomplishments or the Jets collapse for this season in my analysis.

NEW YORK CITY METRO AREA SPORTS TEAM PROFILES
TEAM	RECORD	WIN PCT.	WIN YRS	DIV WIN	PLY YRS	PLY RECORD	PLY RNDS RECORD	CONF CHMP	CHAMP	SUCCESS POINTS
Yankees	2235-1741	.562	21	10	13	78-50	17-9	6	4	366
Mets	2087-1892	.525	16	3	5	30-24	6-4	2	1	136
Giants	215-182	.542	13	7	12	15-9	15-9	4	3	278
Jets	180-218	.452	10	2	8	4-8	4-8	0	0	70
Knicks	1005-1013	.498	13	4	16	89-86	18-16	2	0	206
Nets	882-1136	.437	10	4	13	52-59	10-13	2	0	151
Rangers	863-807	.517	12	3	15	70-76	14-14	1	1	183
Islanders	788-898	.467	10	2	12	41-62	8-15	1	0	117
Devils	918-752	.550	18	7	18	118-98	22-15	4	3	341

WIN YRS – years above .500, DIV WIN – years team won division, PLY YRS – years team made playoffs, PLY RECORD – playoff record, PLY RNDS RECORD – how many playoff rounds team won and lost, CONF CHMP – conference champions, CHAMP – championships

It’s not surprising the Yankees have had the most success the past 25 years. The Devils championship success in the 1990s make them a close second. Although the Mets had 16 winning seasons, they only made the playoffs five of those years because their records were probably closer to .500 than .600. The Jets by far are the worst team. They are the only ones to not even have a conference championship. Conference championships are a major key to a fan’s happiness. All fans hope for is their team to make it to the final round… to the World Series, Super Bowl, or Championship.

However, the success points by themselves don’t mean much because we can’t compare teams across sports. We need to calculate the total possible points for each team and each sport. In our six points categories, the maximum is 25 (example: 25 possible playoff seasons) except the possible playoff rounds won. The only sport in which playoff rounds won is dependent on the team is football, where there is the extra wild card round. If the team was involved in a wild-card game, then that’s another possible playoff round to be won. In non-playoff seasons, total possible playoff rounds is 3, discounting the wild-card round. From the total possible points each team could have accrued in the past 25 years, we can calculate a success percentage for each team.

The success percentage of the NYC sports teams in the past 25 years, from best to worst:

TEAM RANKINGS
RANK	TEAM	POINTS	TOTAL POSSIBLE POINTS	SUCCESS PERCENTAGE
1	Yankees	366	1355	.270
2	Devils	341	1575	.217
3	Giants	278	1490 (8)	.187
4	Knicks	206	1575	.131
5	Rangers	183	1575	.116
6	Mets	136	1355	.100
7	Nets	151	1575	.096
8	Islanders	117	1575	.074
9	Jets	70	1485 (7)	.047

The ordering stayed the same when we used success points except the Mets jumped ahead of the Nets because there are less total points in baseball than basketball (mostly due to playoff rounds). The Yankees effectively led all categories except the number of playoff seasons and playoff rounds won. However, unlike the other three sports, baseball is the hardest to get into the playoffs, even after the wild cards were introduced in 1995. The futility of the bottom four teams coincidentally have a team in each sport. That means a fan of the Mets, Nets, Islanders and Jets have been wallowing in the most misery for the past 25 years. The top four teams are also one in each sport. A fan of the Yankees, Devils, Giants and Knicks would be the happiest four-team fan in the area.

Now that we have a success percentage associated with each team, the fun part begins. We want to find the team combinations that give fans the most happiness. However, to be realistic, we realize that many fans are not hardcore or even big fans of all four sports. I know a lot of fans that are only into baseball and football, but not the other two. Or they are fans of other cities and teams (traitors) for some of the sports. To allow for combinations that don’t include all four teams, we will simply take the average success percentage of the teams involved.

Before giving the results of a lot of the possible combinations, let’s highlight the very popular baseball-football fans:

NYC HAPPY FAN RANKINGS FOR BASEBALL-FOOTBALL FANS
RANK	TEAMS	HAPPY FAN PERCENTAGE
1	Yankees, Giants	.229
2	Yankees, Jets	.159
3	Mets, Giants	.144
4	Mets, Jets	.074

Wow! If you are a Yankees-Giants fan you have been three-times happier than Mets-Jets fans the past 25 years. The funny thing is that if you are a Yankees-Jets fan or a Mets-Giants fan, the Jets and Mets pull down your overall fan happiness. Being a Jets fan pulls your Yankees fan happiness down by 41%, and being a Mets fan pulls your Giants fan happiness down by 23%. Or to be an optimist, the Yankees and Giants pull up the happiness of Jets and Mets fans. Hehe…

Here are the results of most of the possible combinations of being a NYC metro sports fan. There are too many total possible combinations to list, from 1-team fans up to 4-team fans, so I will make some assumptions in order to remove unpopular combinations. I will assume that multi-sport fans have to be at least a baseball AND a football fan. That means we will only allow combinations in which each must contain a baseball and a football team.

NYC HAPPY FAN RANKINGS
RANK	BASEBALL	FOOTBALL	BASKETBALL	HOCKEY	HAPPY FAN PERCENTAGE
1	Yankees				.270
2	Yankees	Giants			.229
3	Yankees	Giants		Devils	.225
4				Devils	.217
5	Yankees	Giants	Knicks	Devils	.201
6	Yankees	Giants	Knicks		.196
7	Yankees	Giants	Nets	Devils	.193
8	Yankees	Giants		Rangers	.191
9		Giants			.187
10	Yankees	Giants	Nets		.184
11	Yankees	Jets		Devils	.178
12	Yankees	Giants		Islanders	.177
13	Yankees	Giants	Knicks	Rangers	.176
14	Mets	Giants		Devils	.168
15	Yankees	Giants	Nets	Rangers	.167
16t	Yankees	Giants	Knicks	Islanders	.166
16t	Yankees	Jets	Knicks	Devils	.166
18t	Yankees	Jets			.159
18t	Mets	Giants	Knicks	Devils	.159
20	Yankees	Jets	Nets	Devils	.158
21	Yankees	Giants	Nets	Islanders	.157
22	Mets	Giants	Nets	Devils	.150
23	Yankees	Jets	Knicks		.149
24t	Mets	Giants			.144
24t	Yankees	Jets		Rangers	.144
26	Yankees	Jets	Knicks	Rangers	.141
27	Mets	Giants	Knicks		.139
28	Yankees	Jets	Nets		.138
29t	Mets	Giants	Knicks	Rangers	.134
29t	Mets	Giants		Rangers	.134
31	Yankees	Jets	Nets	Rangers	.132
32t	Yankees	Jets	Knicks	Islanders	.131
32t			Knicks		.131
34	Yankees	Jets		Islanders	.130
35	Mets	Giants	Nets		.128
36	Mets	Giants	Nets	Rangers	.125
37	Mets	Jets	Knicks	Devils	.124
38	Mets	Giants	Knicks	Islanders	.123
39	Yankees	Jets	Nets	Islanders	.122
40	Mets	Jets		Devils	.121
41	Mets	Giants		Islanders	.120
42				Rangers	.116
43	Mets	Jets	Nets	Devils	.115
44	Mets	Giants	Nets	Islanders	.114
45	Mets				.100
46	Mets	Jets	Knicks	Rangers	.099
47			Nets		.096
48	Mets	Jets	Knicks		.093
49	Mets	Jets	Nets	Rangers	.090
50	Mets	Jets	Knicks	Islanders	.089
51	Mets	Jets		Rangers	.088
52	Mets	Jets	Nets		.081
53	Mets	Jets	Nets	Islanders	.079
54t	Mets	Jets		Islanders	.074
54t				Islanders	.074
54t	Mets	Jets			.074
57		Jets			.047

By far, a pure Yankees fan has had the most happiness the past 25 years in NYC. This is followed by the Yankees-Giants fans not interested in basketball or hockey. Throw in the Devils hockey fans with that combination and you are just as happy. The best four-team combo, unsurprisingly, is the top four successful teams, the Yankees, Giants, Knicks, and Devils. My combination of the YGKR is ranked 13th in happiness. If I had been an Islanders fan and not a Knicks+Rangers fan, I would’ve just been as happy. At first glance, this might not make sense since the Islanders success percentage is much lower than the Knicks or Rangers, but because I would not be invested in a fourth sport and team (hockey), the success of the Yankees and Giants keep me very happy even with the Islanders lack of success. The Knicks and Rangers haven’t had enough success to override that extra sport disadvantage. Interesting…

On the flip side, the Mets and Jets dominate the bottom half of the rankings. Their city rivals’ (Yankees and Giants) success coupled with the fact that you can’t be a Mets-Yankees or a Jets-Giants fan (those that are should be forced to move to a one-team city) give their fans plenty to be sad about. If you are solely a Jets fan, you have it worst; being only  happy 4.7% of the time the past 25 years. And for Joe and Evan of WFAN, well, you two have the second worst team combo.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this little exercise. If you have any comments or suggestions, please leave a comment below (You will be anonymous). Or leave a comment on what team combo you are. Sorry I couldn’t put all the possible combinations on a chart. There are too many to list. And frankly, how many Nets-Rangers fans are there (without being fans of baseball and football)?

To finish up, please vote for the teams you are fans of below. Of course, you can pick multiple teams.

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