Thursday, May 2, 2013

How the Philly sports world ended in 2012

I don't know if you noticed, but Philadelphia hasn't had a great sports year.  This is accentuated by the recent NFL draft in which the Eagles picked in the top 5, and the current Phillies who are losing 12-2 to the Indians right now.  I spent enough time looking over the Phillies before the season started, and I'll have plenty of time to look at the Eagles later.  For right now, I think it's a good idea to point out just how bad 2012 was for Philly teams in the four major sports.

After all, this was the first season since 1994, and only the fourth since Philly has housed a team in each  league, that none of the Phillies, Eagles, 76ers, or Flyers made the playoffs.  This coming after a run of five seasons in which at least three of those teams made the postseason.  A problem with getting caught up in playoff appearances, of course, is that there are different playoff criteria in each league (the NHL allows more than half its teams into the playoffs, while MLB has twice changed their rules to move all the way up to 1/3).  Additionally, there have been substantial changes in the structure of leagues since the Flyers entered the fray in 1967, with division realignment and wild card teams and all that.  So let's table the playoff thing for now, because it's not quite convincing enough.