Audience Alienating Era / Sports

As most professional and college sports teams are Long Runners, it's rare to find a team that hasn't had at least one of these.

A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples shouldn't be added until five years after the era begins. Please also try to avoid Complaining About Shows You Don't Like.

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Association Football/Soccer

• In Football, any time a team is relegated or nearly falls (double if it occurs due to cheating instead of team incompetence). Among the English teams:
  • Liverpool had 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 and needed a late surge under new manager (and club legend) Kenny Dalglish to finish sixth the following year. That and awful cup performances just made the club's 2005 Champions League victory seem like a distant memory for a lot of supporters; however, the club's second place finish in 2014, just two points behind champion Manchester City, was the first sign that the Audience-Alienating Era was at an end. A year later, they hired Jürgen Klopp as manager, and took off from there—making the Europa League finals in 2016 (lost), making Champions League finals in 2018 (lost), 2019 (won), and 2022 (lost), winning the Premier League in 2020 (and coming within a point of victory in 2019 and 2022) and the FA Cup and League Cup in 2022, as well as pursuing the infamous “Quadruple,” ie winning all four (4) English trophies in a single season (Liverpool ended up winning two (2), the League and FA Cups), cementing their exit from the Audience-Alienating Era. Most Liverpool fans will likely blame the decline on owner Tom Hicks, who admitted he bought into the club just to help finance his two American sports clubs, the NHL's Dallas Stars and MLB Texas Rangers. He promised a new stadium at Stanley Park and never delivered; his son had to resign from the board of directors after sending a fan an email with the words "Blow me fuck face." Hicks and his partners were brought before the House of Commons, who claimed the club was being "drained by their greed". Ultimately, Hicks declared bankruptcy and had to sell off all three clubs, dealing the soccer club in 2010 to the Fenway Sports Group (better known as FSG), owners of the Boston Red Sox.
  • It seems as though this is the case for the blue half of Liverpool (Everton, that is, not the River Mersey) ever since the Turn of the Millennium, as they've been struggling to recreate their past successes since then. 4th is the highest they've finished, and the 2009 FA Cup final is the closest they've come to winning silverware in that time. Since a near miss with the Champions League in 2014, the club has largely been stuck in mediocrity, largely due to their present owner Farhad Moshiri throwing impressively high amounts of money on players that would underperform, along with hiring and firing coaching staff almost every year giving absolutely no chance for anything to gel. The increasing probability of a new stadium in the near future does have some fans optimistic, however.
  • Manchester United:
    • While fans feel quite justifiably that they're in this following the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, it's doubtful that things will get quite as bad as they did after their other legendary manager, Sir Matt Busby, retired in 1969. His immediate successor, Wilf McGuinness proved severely out of his depth, and after Busby briefly held the fort again for six months, the club appointed the more experienced Frank O'Farrell. However, O'Farrell failed to address the club's ageing squad and instead busied himself quarrelling with George Best, eventually getting sacked after 18 months with the club bottom of the table. The next manager, Tommy Docherty temporarily papered over the problems by filling the squad with experienced journeymen, avoiding relegation that season, but everything finally came crashing down the season after that, resulting in United being relegated just six years after winning the European Cup. In an ironic twist to make matters worse, they were relegated after a loss to Manchester City, with a goal from United legend Denis Law nonetheless. Fortunately, Docherty managed to end the Audience-Alienating Era immediately after that by jettisoning most of the older players and building a new, youthful squad who took the club straight back up and resulted in a mostly successful rest of the decade.
    • Ferguson's success was followed by several very unsuccessful managers including David Moyes, his handpicked successor, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, a club legend who is generally agreed to be a very nice bloke but completely out of his depth, with his era reaching its nadir when arch-rivals Liverpool came to Old Trafford, promptly raced into a 4-0 first half lead without getting out of second gear, added a fifth goal immediately after. This was apparently just to secure Mo Salah's hat-trick, because they then spent the entire second half making United chase them all over the pitch without showing any particular interest in scoring again. This was followed by an even more dismissive defeat by Manchester City, and a 4-1 hammering by Watford, who were later relegated, and Solskjaer's firing. His temporary replacement, Ralf Ragnick, didn't do much better with both Liverpool and City casually walking all over them - again - and United racking up their single lowest points total in Premier League history, only reaching 6th place because West Ham dropped points, and finishing with a goal difference of 0 despite having the 3rd highest scoring player in the league. His succesor, Erik Ten Hag, has had... mixed results, successfully imposing his authority by sidelining and booting an ageing and embittered Cristiano Ronaldo, and initially had a string of strong results, making a statement by beating an admittedly reeling Liverpool 2-1. The downturn in fortunes later in the 22-23 season was more or less summed up by what happened when they went to a by now pitifully out of form Liverpool, who had a misfiring frontline, an ageing midfield, and a porous defence. Liverpool promptly spanked them 7-0, their worst league defeat since the 30s, and Manchester United were having a dissapointing 2023-24 season, where they were eliminated from European football completely after propping up a supposedly favourable Champions League group despite scoring 12 goals - they conceded 15 and their Cameroun keeper Andre Onana was unduly shaky on several occasions, leading to them earning just 4 points.
  • Manchester City weren't a serially successful side before their 2008 takeover, although they still had a decent trophy cabinet and league record. Their most notable A.A.E lasted at its broadest definition between their League Cup victory in 1976, and their FA Cup victory in 2011 (when the effects of the new owners really began to show), although the period that most fans who remember the time will give you is from 1981, when they lost the FA Cup final to Tottenham in quite epic fashion, to 1999, when they had fallen into the third tier for the first time in their history. Their season in the third tier wasn't exactly smooth sailing either; hopes of even making the play-offs looked dead and buried by the end of 1998, before an incredible run of form saw them rocket to 3rd at the end of the season, qualifying them in the play-offs. City reached the final despite an early scare against Wigan Athletic, where they found themselves 2-0 down to Gillingham^note Although, to be fair on them, they were just about to enter their golden age. towards the end of the game. Incredibly, City scored twice going into added time and took the game to penalties, which they won. It was this incredible victory over Gillingham that many fans say their A.A.E ended, although others will mention the period after 2008 because, well...
  • Wolverhampton Wanderers, after being one of England's most successful clubs in the 1950s and doing quite well for the following two decades, hit this hard in the mid-1980s, enduring three successive relegations between 1984 and 1986. They rose up the leagues again in the early 1990s, but kept stumbling around in the second-highest tier for quite a while, not really emerging from their Audience-Alienating Era until 2009, when they at least graduated to the status of being a yo-yo club, bouncing between the first and second tiers, before super-agent Jorge Mendes collaborated with a Chinese takeover in 2016 which allowed the team to become a consistent Premier League regular from 2018 and onetime Europa League quarter finallist.
  • Leeds United have been in one for so long that most would argue that it's ceased to be an Audience-Alienating Era and simply become their new status quo. After being a highly successful club in the 1960s, 1970s and 1990s, they were nearly sent into bankruptcy by massive financial mismanagement in the early 2000s, getting them relegated from the Premier League in 2004 and then from the division below it, the Championship in 2007. This nearly resulted in them being sent out of business altogether, only avoiding do so thanks to some Loophole Abuse due to the Football Association's insolvency laws being so ill-defined at the time.^note (had they tried it nowadays they'd have been demoted to the Northern Premier League, six divisions below the Premier League) They eventually got back into the Championship three years later, but have since been mostly floundering around trying to avoid being relegated again. Worse still, their reputation had been rendered so utterly toxic that no reputable owner would go within ten miles of the club, resulting in them ending up with a succession of shady owners who further wrecked their reputation until a somewhat respectable owner ended up buying them in 2017. Then, just when it looked like they had turned the corner in the 2018-19 season, most of which they spent at the top of the Championship, they utterly imploded in the final months, missed out on automatic promotion, and then got thrashed in the promotion play-offs. They finally returned to the Prem in 2020 after finishing atop the Championship, and after a barnstorming first season, they narrowly avoided relegation in 2022 and suffered the drop in 2023.
  • Arsenal FC in London seem to have been struck with this over the last decade and a half (as of 2021). Their fortunes typically come in waves, with high peaks, and midtable trenches, but to their credit, they have never been relegated out of any league in their history. In 1996, the club hired Arsène Wenger, who immediately catapulted the club to success after a tepid few years, including going an entire campaign unbeaten^note the famous "49 undefeated" streak of Premier League games, in the middle of which Arsenal played a full season and went 26-12-0 and finished first, to go undefeated for the second time in English history, the first since the early early days of the game, and the only team thus far in the Premier League era to do it and making a Champions League Final (which they lost). Following the Champions League Final defeat, they began building a new stadium, aiming to truly take their place among Europe's elite. Ever since, however, they have struggled mightily to return to the top, and many genuinely wonder if it was the stadium, and the costs associated with it, that played a large part in Arsenal's struggles, especially since Arsenal at one point had a reputation for never buying world-class talent. Wenger guided Arsenal to 4th place finishes with metronomic regularity (until 2013/14, after which they've finished everywhere around 4th) and 3 FA Cup wins in 4 years^note 2014, 2015, and 2017 before he stepped down at the conclusion of the 2017/18 season. His final two seasons also saw Arsenal finish outside the Top 4 for the first time in decades, and behind rivals Spurs for the first time in 22 years. Arsenal then hired Unai Emery, who seemed to be taking Arsenal back to the top. They started strong with an unbeaten run in all competitions, but then lost steam as Emery's communication issues and problems in the locker rooms caused the players to lose faith. They made a Europa League Final but were embarrassed by rivals Chelsea, and following a long string of draws and defeats, Emery was shown the door, to be succeeded by Mikel Arteta. Arteta immediately also seemed to have Arsenal going in the right direction, with an FA Cup win in his first half-season. However, then came another long string of draws and defeats, raising questions as to whether or not he would be sacked, but despite Arsenal missing out on Europe for the first time in more than 20 years, Arteta was given time and shown faith by the ownership, and Arsenal have slowly become the monsters they were in the Wenger days once more, playing beautiful attacking football and looking like an unstoppable force against nearly every team they play against. Despite falling just short of Manchester City who were en route to a treble-winning season, hope remains high given their steady improvement, but it remains to be seen if Arteta will get them across the threshold and deliver them to the Promised Land of trophies once again.
  • Their rivals Tottenham Hotspur however have a history that seems to be full of these, to the point where the word "spursy" has (at least in England) become slang for something or someone that fails to live up to expectations. Some people will say that, technically, they've been going through one for over 60 years, since their last league title in 1961, but of course that's contentious, as they have for the most part been a formidable side - they've just never been able to win the title. There are however at least two periods where this was especially the case:
    • They began to crumble after their manager Bill Nicholson called it quits in 1974 after 16 highly successful years, and Terry Neill - a former Arsenal player - was chosen as his replacement. It went about as well as you'd expect (although not as badly - he only left because Arsenal were after a new manager). Two years later, in somewhat of a panic, the board then put their faith in Keith Burkinshaw, a man who had just come off a disastrous spell at Newcastle United and, unsurprisingly, with the team continuing to disintegrate, they were relegated at the end of the season. The board did continue to back Burkinshaw however, and this was rewarded when he took them back up the following season and gradually rebuilt the side into one that would have a much more successful time in The '80s.
    • The second was The '90s; specifically, between 1992 and 2004.^note Well, close enough! At the beginning of the decade, eccentric owner Irving Scholar's days were numbered after a long history of dodgy (to put it lightly) practices during his ownership of the club; among other things they included overspending on players, failed attempts to branch into other markets and making illegal payments to players (which would get the club in legal trouble later on), and the club was pissing money harder than an incontinent bladder. When it was revealed that Scholar had sneaked a loan from Robert Maxwell in order to fund the transfer of Gary Lineker from Barcelona, manager Terry Venables had had enough, and in 1991 launched a successful joint-bid with Alan Sugar to buy the club. Things however would start going south once Sugar increased his control and controversially ousted Venables after a heated meeting, which tarnished his reputation among the fanbase. Many star players left (Paul Gascoigne went to Serie A, while Gary Lineker went to Japan before promptly retiring) and their replacements would either end up as disappointments or were otherwise just substandard fodder (in large part due to Sugar being tighter than a constipated seagull's anus). In the climate of the newly-formed Premier League where to achieve success would primarily require great spending, Tottenham became trapped in a cycle of mediocrity, and occasionally found themselves fighting to avoid the drop. The only time they qualified for Europe during this period was by winning the League Cup in 1999. Though Sugar eventually lost interest completely and sold the club to the ENIC group in 2001, they remained largely mediocre until the arrival of Martin Jol as manager in 2004, who went on to take the team into the European places which has since then become more or less a constant.
    • There was a brief one between 2007 and 2009, when Martin Jol was sacked (technically during his last game - a statement from the club was accidentally published at half time) after a bad run of form and was replaced by Juande Ramos, who was only able to record mid-table finishes before promptly being sacked himself after overseeing some of the worst results in the club's history. His replacement, Harry Redknapp, went on to take them into the Champions League and it's been smooth sailing for them ever since. Ramos did win them another League Cup, however.
  • The award for the "biggest fall from grace" in English football has to go to Sunderland after World War II. Calling them a sleeping giant these days would be an understatement; they're effectively braindead. Before the crazy painter-turned-dictator decided to unleash his war machines on Poland, the Wearside club had been a generally strong outfit in the league, usually finishing in the upper half and bagging six league titles - oh, and an FA Cup in 1937 too. While the first few years after the biggest deathmatch in human history looked okay, they decided to start throwing incredible amounts of money at what they saw as the best players in the hope of hoovering up further success, completely ignoring factors such as team chemistry. Unsurprisingly, their efforts bombed and bombed hard, to the extent that they were relegated in 1958 for what was the first time in their history, and it took them 6 years to rebuild and return to the First Division. They've spent the majority of their time outside the top flight ever since, and have mostly finished in the bottom end of the table in the seasons when they have been in there. Their best achievement since then was a surprise FA Cup victory in 1973... when they were playing in the second division. Their worst periods in that time were between 1985 and 1995, when they were mostly in the lower end of the second division (not to mention dropping as low as the third!), and after 2017 when they nosedived from the Premier League to the third division (League One) in record time and were trapped there for 4 years, which saw them throw two play-offs to Charlton Athletic and Lincoln City (the latter of whom were in the non-professional National League in 2017) before getting lucky the third time in 2022. Of course, the second AAE hasn't ended yet as they've still got to return to the Premier League, but it seems as though the worst has passed.
  • Nottingham Forest went through one not long after losing their legendary manager Brian Clough in 1993, resigning as the team dropped out of the top division for the first time since 1977. His successor Frank Clark quickly rebuilt them and took them to third in the Premier League in 1995 (their best placing since 1989), but they soon began to drop and it was after he left at the end of 1996 when their A.A.E. really began. They were relegated again at the end of the season and, despite coming back up again, were promptly sent packing at the end of the season after that - this time for good (or 23 years, as it turned out). Their lowest point came in 2005 when they were relegated to League One - the third tier - for the first time since 1951, which a former European Cup/Champions League winner had never done before. They spent 3 years in the division before regaining their senses and returning to the Championship in 2008. The next 14 years saw two failed attempts in the play-offs and a decay into being a middle player shortly thereafter until 2022, when another play-off campaign saw them strike gold and and return to the Premier League where many people, especially older fans who remembered the glory days, say they belong.
• In Scotland, Rangers F.C. went through this in the 2010s after being relegated from the top division for the first time in their history. In 2012, they entered financial difficulties, had to be bought out by a new holding company and were sent to the Scottish Third Division. They returned to the Scottish Premiership in 2016, and had a slow and steady recovery for a few years, but then came former Liverpool midfield legend Steven Gerrard, who launched them to success in the 2020–21 campaign, in which they completed an unbeaten league season and finished 25 points clear of eternal rival Celtic. Said season led to Gerrard crossing Hadrian's Wall to take over Aston Villa, and Celtic reclaimed the crown in 2021–22, though Rangers were a close second.
• On the South American side, historic team River Plate from Argentina 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 then-latest 3 years (starting in the second half of 2008 which saw them have an abysmal performance in the national league, culminating with the relegation in the last week of June 2011). The fact that the club has housed many famous Argentine players and that rioting was the result of the whole thing speaks volumes. The club returned to the top division the following year (and did so by winning the second division's tournament instead of merely securing a promotion berth among the top positions), and since then they have enjoyed a slow but steady recovery that, under the helm of club idols Ramón Díaz and later Marcelo Gallardo, was eventually rewarded with numerous trophies in the competitions, including two Copa Libertadores.
• The 1990 FIFA World Cup, filled with draws, underperforming teams (both European champions Netherlands and perpetual favorites Brazil fell in the first round of the playoffs) and low goalscoring. Rule changes were imposed afterwards to improve the game (forbidding the keeper from handling the ball on back-passes, preventing time-wasting and defensiveness; 3 points for a win instead of 2 to discourage draws).
• Italy had two such stretches, the post-war one that only ended when they were runners-up in the 1970 World Cup (low points include a plane crash in 1949 that killed many star players and being eliminated by North Korea in the 1966 WC), and one which started in 2010 and is only ending in 2021: in the World Cup, the defending champions got last place in their group and didn't even win a game ^note worse, their group consisted of teams that seemed to be easy opposition on paper; while second place in the 2012 Euro raised hopes, the Azzurri crashed and burned in the group stage of the 2014 World Cup, couldn't beat rivals Germany in the 2016 Euro quarterfinals, and missed the 2018 World Cup, the first time they hadn't qualified in 60 years. But they were lucky enough to snag their first Euro since 1968 after recovery, which seemed to mark the debut of a surge in power. However, Italy's second straight failure to make the World Cup in 2022 means the AAE isn't over yet.
• The oft-victorious Germany team had shades of it for a decade starting in 1994, owing to chaos in the DFB, rampant egoism in German football and over-reliance on aged players: in the World Cup, aside from 2002 final, it was two straight quarterfinals falling to dark horses; in the Euro tournament, the 1996 title was followed by a first round exit... and then in 2004, the Germans failed the continental tournaments on adult, under 19, and under 21 levels (the first, even drawing Latvia 0-0; the last as championship hosts). A revamp in personnel and player development (which also led to increased numbers of children of immigrants playing for Germany^note Particularly with Turkish-descendant players their decision whether to play for Germany or Turkey (which has to be taken early in their career as it is no longer possible to play for the senior soccer team of two different countries) is often surrounded by much media-brouhaha and prior to ca. 2010 most Germany-born players of Turkish descent decided to play for Turkey - and some still do.) ensued, and until 2018 Germany hasn't missed the semifinals in either tournament, even winning the World Cup in 2014. Their early elimination in the 2018 World Cup and a poor performance in the first edition of the UEFA Nations League (resulting in their relegation) started raising alarms, though. More alarms were raised when they were well-beaten by England in the Euro 2020 round of 16 and then being eliminated early again in the 2022 World Cup, and losing many of their friendlies between than and the Euro 2024 tournament they will host, leading to manegerial changes.
• While the Domenech era (2004–10) of the French national soccer team started strong (they reached the 2006 World Cup Final, only losing in the penalty shootouts to Italy), it went downhill since. France fell during the pool phase both in 2008 and 2010; the 2010 World Cup was marked by many scandals (players' strike, insults, a handball goal in the qualifiers...) which greatly affected the team's reputation. While things seemed to slightly improve in the 2012 Euro, it wasn't until the arrival of manager Didier Deschamps when the team truly recovered, reaching quarterfinals in the 2014 World Cup, being runner-ups in their hosted 2016 Euro, winning the 2018 World Cup, and losing on penalties in the 2022 World Cup final.
• While the England national team has had wildly fluctuating fortunes over the years — in particular, a habit of doing well in qualifying tournaments, and then totally bombing in the actual tournaments — four eras stand out as indisputable Audience-Alienating Eras:
  • 1972–78, comprising the latter two years of World Cup-winning manager Sir Alf Ramsey's tenure as manager, and the entirety of Don Revie's term. The team failed to qualify for any tournament during this period, resulting in Ramsey being sacked, and Revie's tenure ending in disgrace when he agreed to take over as manager of the United Arab Emirates national team while still contracted to England, earning him a lifetime ban from football in his home country. On top of that, hooliganism started to become a major problem at England internationals.
  • The latter part of Graham Taylor's tenure as manager. The team qualified for Euro 92 well enough, but were simply shambolic at the tournament itself. The qualifying tournament for the 1994 World Cup somehow managed to be even worse, with an accompanying TV documentary made in the course of the tournaments giving Taylor the image of someone who was completely out of his league in the job. Not surprisingly, the team failed to qualify for the tournament, and Taylor quickly resigned.
  • The year 2000 in its entirety is generally regarded as the absolute lowest ebb of postwar English football. After an awful performance at Euro 2000, England opened their 2002 World Cup qualifiers with a thrashing by Germany in the final match at the original Wembley Stadium, resulting in Kevin Keegan (who made Taylor look like a model of a good England manager) resigning. The FA's head of coaching, Howard Wilkinson then stepped in and oversaw an even worse performance against Finland the following week, only managing a goalless draw. For a subsequent friendly against France, the FA gambled on former youth coach Peter Taylor, who it also became obvious wasn't cut out to manage the national team.^note (Though he did make the crucial decision to give the captaincy to David Beckham, who would go on to be widely regarded as second-only to World Cup winner Bobby Moore as the best-ever England captain) After that, the FA made an even bigger gamble and appointed the country's first non-English coach, Sven-Göran Eriksson, which was widely seen by the press as an admission that the English coaching system was so broken that the country could no longer produce good coaches. Regardless of this, Eriksson's appointment finally got things going again, and the team recovered to top their qualifying group, ushering in five years of mostly solid performances.
  • As soon as Eriksson left, however, England fell straight back into an Audience-Alienating Era that lasted a full decade. Assistant coach Steve McClaren was appointed as Eriksson's replacement, but a thoroughly disastrous Euro 2008 qualifying campaign in which England imploded repeated chances, particularly against Russia, where they lost after leading, and Croatia, where they only needed to draw, and rallied from 2 down (the first goal they conceded was from a howler from keeper Scott Carson, who was making his debut appearence for the national team after good form at club level, the second when the defense was carved open, but a penalty helped them to rally back) to level, only to concede a winner shortly after levelling, and got overtaken by Russia despite the latter's poor loss in Israel and scraped win in Andorra after the win v England, saw him sacked after barely a year. Another foreign coach, Fabio Capello was then hired, and oversaw a much stronger performance in the 2010 World Cup qualifiers, only for the side to just barely stumble through an easy group and promptly be obliterated 4-1 by Germany in the first knock-out match. Despite most of the press demanding that he be sacked and replaced by Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp, Capello remained in charge for the Euro 2012 qualifiers, which again saw England win their group, only for Capello to resign a few months before the tournament after mouthing off against the Football Association. The FA replaced him not with Redknapp, but with experienced journeyman Roy Hodgson, who managed a surprisingly decent performance at Euro 2012, only to oversee disastrous performances at both the 2014 World Cup (in which they failed to win a single game and finished bottom of their group) and Euro 2016 (where they again struggled through a theoretically easy group, and promptly lost in the knock-out rounds to Iceland, the smallest team in the competition), resigning during the post-match press conference. Sam Allardyce was next to take on the job, only to be forced out after just 67 days following a corruption scandal, leading to youth coach Gareth Southgate^note (whose only other managerial experience was managing Middlesbrough a decade previously, where he took over a team that had actually been doing well under the aforementioned Steve McClaren, promptly got them relegated, and was sacked shortly into the following season) being thrown the job as basically the only person who wanted it. Under Southgate, however, England surpassed rock-bottom expectations to make the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup, followed by a loss on penalties to Italy in the Euro 2020 final, leaving a glimmer of hope that the Audience-Alienating Era may be at an end. But then came the 2022–23 Nations League, in which the Three Lions were relegated from Group A after going winless in their six group matches, including a 4–0 loss to Hungary at Molineux (Wolverhampton Wanderers). This was England's worst home loss since 1928. However, they had a decent showing in 2022's World Cup, where they scored 9 goals across 2 of their group games, and another 3 in their last 16 match, and were unlucky to lose to France after Harry Kane missed a second penalty in the quarter finals.
• The Brazil national team has had two World Cup tournaments widely regarded as Audience-Alienating Eras:
  • The first is their shambolic defence of their title in 1966, in which they won just one game and exited in the first round. This one is at least chalked up to the extremely dirty tactics of their group rivals (which left star player Pelé injured and barely even able to play), but as the only tournament in-between 1958 and 1970 which they failed to win, it stands out as a real low point.
  • The second is the 1990 tournament, where they only succeeded in winning probably the easiest group in the tournament, and were promptly taken apart by deadly rivals (and eventual finalists) Argentina in the next round. Though the 1966 tournament was officially Brazil's worst World Cup performance, 1990 is usually seen as the low ebb for the country, due to the extremely defensive, midfield-heavy tactics the coach tried to employ, which were seen as the antithesis of the traditional Brazilian style. Like 1966, this performance also suffers from coming right before their victorious 1994 team.
  • They also struggled for form after being knocked out of 2022's Quarter finals by Croatia, their 4th exit at this stage in the previous 5 world cups. 2023 saw some of their worst results ever, with losses in 5 of their 9 matches that year, including 3 in a row in their 2026 World Cup Qualifiers, and a struggle regarding who to have as a long term manager.
• If the Cleveland Browns were European and played soccer, they might be 1.FC Nürnberg. One of the finest teams in all of soccer during the 1920s and still pretty damn good up to the 1968 championship (their ninth), they managed to do what no team had done before or done since - they were relegated as reigning champions. Among the things they screwed up after their ninth championship was trading the league's leading scorer Franz Brungs against his express wishes - it was then believed that a new squad ready to tackle the coming European games had to be assembled and there was no place for Brungs anymore. The result was one of the strongest teams ever to be relegated from the Bundesliga... but relegated they were. The years after that were painful attempts to get back into the first division, which they only managed once they had given up on it - only to get relegated promptly thereafter. They proceeded to buy players that - as 1968 coach Max Merkel observed - would not be worth the price a butcher would ask for them and proceeded to humiliate and embarrass their fans in every way possible, despite a brief respite in the 1980s when a young team made it to the UEFA Cup and the DFB-Cup final (which they lost to Bayern München). However, in 2007 the team seemed to have finally caught a break. Lead by beloved coach Hans Meyer, they made it to the Cup Final and won it this time. With a bright future ahead, a team was assembled that could tackle the European games to come.... (notice a pattern?) Only to manage something which has also not been done by any other German team before or since: They were relegated as reigning cup champions. Solid work boys, solid work. Basically everything since (and including) 1969 has been a giant audience-alienating era and unlike other examples, there seems to be just no end in sight. Fans have taken to the phrase "Der Glubb is a Debb - Aber ich mooch nan" ^note dialect for: "The Club (Nuremberg is often referred to as simply "Der Club" which in Franconia is pronounced with a G) is an idiot - but I still love it"
• Among Spanish teams, Real Madrid suffered one due to Laser-Guided Karma after they refused to renew the contract of Vicente Del Bosque (their coach from late 1999 to 2003), who had helped them win two Spanish leagues and two Champions League trophies. During the following three years, the team entered a dark period without winning any major title, forcing their president to resign in early 2006. While the next president seemed to put things back to greatness (the club won the Spanish league twice in a row), a series of institutional scandals put the club at the risk of a legal relegation, which led to that president resigning in turn during January 2009. This, coupled with a series of curb-stomp defeats against Liverpool (0-1 and 4-0 in the Champions League Round of 16), longtime rivals Barcelona (3-1 and 2-6 in the Spanish league, helping the said rivals win literally everything during that year while Madrid continued with their slump), and surprisingly Alcorcón (4-0 in the first leg of their Copa del Rey tie, followed by an insufficient 1-0 victory in the second leg), put the club in a very difficult situation that only improved with better coaches (José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti, and somewhat surprisingly Zinedine Zidane) in the following years. Tellingly, after the club recovered past the dark years, they won an impressive catalogue of trophies, including three UEFA Champions League cups in a row.
  
  Another factor behind Real's malaise during that time period was their penchant for hiring and firing managers almost every other year. Additionally, Real's insistence on spending big money mostly on high-profile offensive players (e.g. David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy) while somewhat ignoring their defense (as seen by how they easily let go of key defensive midfielder Claude Makélélé) negatively affected their on-field performance.
• Belgium fell victim to this from 2004 to 2012, not only failing to qualify for the European Championships of the era, but also missing out on their first World Cup since 1978 in 2006 and getting defeated by Estonia and Armenia in the away matches of the 2010 qualifiers (they finished fourth both times).
• The Netherlands has one which started in 2012 and hasnt truly been alleviated: in the 2012 Euro, the Clockwork Orange fell in round 1 without even winning or drawing a game; while third place in the 2014 World Cup raised hopes, they missed the 2016 European Championship, the first time they hadn't qualified in 32 years, losing to the Czech Republic, surprise package Iceland and Turkey. They didn't fare better in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, coming third after eventual champions France and Sweden. In Euro 2020, they won all three matches in one of the weaker groups, going down to the Czech Republic in the round of 16. In 2022's World Cup, they did a bit better, eventually losing to Argentina on penalties after a bad tempered quarter final after convincingly winning their group and beating USA in the last 16.
• Italy's top-division football (Serie A) has undergone a slow decline after the 2006 Calciopoli Match-Fixing Scandal that led to the enforced relegation of perennial powerhouse Juventus. Despite the relative success of the Milan-based clubs in the late 2000's (with AC Milan winning the UEFA Champions League in 2007 and Inter following suit in 2010), the league gained a nasty reputation as a corrupt league full of cheaters and match fixers due to the aforementioned scandal. This (and the increasing dominance of the English Premier League and Spanish La Liga) subsequently led to players and agents having second thoughts about moving to Italian clubs, which consequently resulted in said Italian clubs paying stupid amounts of money just to acquire decent to good talent. Once the Milanese clubs' dominance ended in The New '10s, most Italian clubs ended up in dire straits financially, which then led to them selling star players just to balance the books. This not only reduced the quality of play in Serie A, but also led to the bankruptcy of many teams (such as the likes of Parma and Reggiana). By the middle of the 2010's, Serie A had become a second-rate league filled with young players angling for a move to England or Spain and older players who were past their prime.
  
  Ironically, Juventus overcame their Calciopoli-induced AAE to become THE top club in Italy in that timespan. Juve's spell in Serie B forced them to turn to youth development as the crux of their team-building, which resulted in their relative financial health compared to the other top-tier Italian clubs unpunished by Calciopoli. Said financial health allowed the Bianconeri to create a dominant team, which ended up winning EVERY SINGLE Serie A title from 2012 through 2020 and acquiring big-name stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo in multi-million Euro deals without getting into crippling debt. Time will tell whether Juve's excellence will bring Serie A back to the forefront of European football, but their rise has coincided with a few other Italian clubs (most notably Napoli and Roma) rising up to challenge their dominance, spelling perhaps a bright future for Italian club football. And then Inter won the 2021 scudetto, signaling a comeback for the Milanese clubs that was further cemented with Milan's 2022 win and Inter's run to the 2023 Champions League final.
• English club football had a minor audience-alienating era in the late 80's, which started with the 1985 Heysel-induced ban from European competition and lasted up to the establishment of the Premier League in 1992. During that time period, hooliganism was rife, stadiums were crumbling, stars were lured to the Spanish and Italian leagues, and football tactics had regressed to the primitive long ball "over the top". The nadir of this era was the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy, which resulted in the death of 97 Liverpool fans.^*94 on the day, with others a few days later, in 1993, and in 2021. That incident led to the enforced renovation or replacement of the crumbling stadia, and the subsequent crackdown on hooligan activity. The AAE finally ended when the top tier of the Football League broke away to form the Premier League, which resulted in an uptick in finances and quality of football in the English club football scene.
  
  Don't tell this to Liverpool fans, though, as they were the top team in England during that time period (that being said, Heysel and Hillsborough also happened in that same timeframe). Likewise, the end of that AAE coincided with Liverpool's fall from grace in the 1990s.
• The United States Men's National Team found itself in one as of late. On the back of a Round of 16 elimination to Belgium in extra time and a Copa América Centenario 4th Place finish, and with a Gold Cup victory in 2017 everything looked set for the USMNT to springboard to future success. Unfortunately, then came the final matches of The Hex, the final round of qualification for North America's slots for the 2018 World Cup. On the final matchday, the US lost 2-1 away to Trinidad and Tobago while their two rival teams also lost to their competition to put the US out. The US did make the ensuing Gold Cup Final in 2019, but lost to rivals Mexico 1-0. Later that year, in the CONCACAF Nations League, the USMNT went to Canada, then ranked 75th in the world, and were utterly embarrassed, losing 2–0 in a match that was nowhere near that close. They did get their revenge against their northern neighbors in the return match in the States, winning 4–1, and went on to win the whole shebang, taking down Mexico in the final after extra time.^note This first match was a harbinger of the rise of Canada men's soccer to CONCACAF contention, which saw them top the final round of 2022 World Cup qualifying. With a strong youth movement, the USMNT looks to have exited this AAE, winning the 2021 Gold Cup (again taking down Mexico in the final) and returning to the World Cup in 2022.

Australian Rules Football

• Several Australian Rules Football clubs have them:
  • The Brisbane Bears' early period, where the team was based on the Gold Coast, had the awful "angry koala" jumpers, and was consistently on or near the bottom of the ladder.
  • Carlton in the 2000s, after the discovery of major salary cap violations forced the club into a rebuilding period. As of 2012, the club seems to be emerging from this period.
  • Collingwood's "Colliwobbles" between 1958 and 1990, including Grand Final losses in 1964, 1966, 1970, 1977, 1979, 1980 and 1981.
  • Essendon in the seventies - some fans use "seventies Essendon" as a derogatory term to refer to a poor performance by the team. This audience-alienating era ended when Kevin Sheedy took over as coach. They had another in the 2010s because of a doping scandal, leading to them being kicked out of the 2013 Finals, and most of its players suspended for several years. This spiraled into their first Wooden Spoon since 1933 in the 2016 season.
  • Melbourne from 1965 to 1988. When Norm Smith was controversially sacked as coach in 1965, he predicted the club would never win another premiership. They did manage to make the Grand Final again in 1988 and 2000, though, but it wasn't until 2021, after a 57-year drought, that the Demons finally won a premiership and posthumously proved Smith wrong.
  • For Richmond, from when the club made the 1982 grand final until they unexpectedly won the 2017 premiership. In that period, they were seemingly permanently mired in the bottom half of the ladder, through an endless succession of coaches. Since then, they've gone through a golden age, including two back-to-back premierships in 2019 and 2020.
  • Adelaide was the team Richmond famously defeated in 2017. They won the minor premiership in 2017, but after their loss, the team slipped badly, going a whole year without a single win, and in 2020, they bottomed out on the ladder and got their first Wooden Spoon in their history. Averted with the women's team, which won two premierships during this time.
• Victorian teams as a whole went through an Audience-Alienating Era in the first half of the 2000s. 2001-2006 saw none of the state's teams win the premiership and in 2006 for the first time ever there were no Victorian teams in the final four.

Cricket

• Australia had an Audience-Alienating Era in the mid-80s. Stars Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh retired at the end of the 1983/84 series, and many of the remaining established players were banned for taking part in a rebel tour of South Africa a year later, leaving new captain Allan Border to pick up the pieces. The young team struggled for a while before unexpectedly winning the 1987 World Cup, and then regaining The Ashes in 1989.
• On the other hand, the 1989 Ashes marks the beginning of England's Audience-Alienating Era, which lasted throughout the 90s, with many only regarding it as ending when they finally regained the Ashes in 2005. The low point was probably the 1994/95 tour of Australia — organisers saw England and fellow tourists Zimbabwe as such weak competition that they included an "Australia A" side — essentially an Australian second XI — in the World Series Cup, which beat the tourists out to make the finals. One English newspaper referred to this English team as "Dad's Army".
• The West Indies (a composite team made up of players from various Caribbean Commonwealth Nations such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, St. Kitts, Anguilla and British Guyana) were a feared dominating powerhouse ever since the 40s when these island nations became independent dominions. They had a long line of feared pace bowlers coupled with aggressive strikers of the ball. They were almost invincible in both Test and One Day versions of the game, consistently beating teams at home and away tours and winning both the inaugural Cricket World Cup in 1975 and its successor in 1979. Even though India defeated them in a shocking upset to win the 83 World Cup, the “Windies” cricket team was still seen as a top contender. But after a poor showing in the Australian World Series in 1985 followed by an ignoble exit in the Reliance World Cup in 1987, the Audience Alienating Era began for West Indies cricket. Their ‘92 World Cup campaign fared poorly, they lost the Frank Worrell trophy to Australia at home in 1994, never regaining it since, and after briefly qualifying for the Semifinals in the 96 World Cup, they have dropped to being a middle of the pack team, which has fared poorly in World Cups ever since. Their domination in Test Matches ended in 2002 when India defeated them on their own grounds. Worse off, interest in playing cricket has dwindled, with more youth being attracted to basketball. Those who do play the sport routinely blow off international match obligations to instead compete in cash heavy leagues such as the IPL (Indian Premiere League). Retired players largely blame the corruption, incompetence and mismanagement by the West Indies Cricket Board for the decline in their sport.

Handball

• The German national team (which is just as much a world power in handball as it is in soccer) after their win of the 2007 World Cup. It seemed like a culmination of three lost finals (2002 European Championship, 2003 World Cup and 2004 Olympics) and a continuation of the 2004 European Championship victory. And then Germany flunked to fifth, eleventh, fifth and not even qualified^note  They did get a totally bogus "wild card" because the International Handball Federation could not afford to lose out on the German market - Germany ultimately placed seventh in World Cups and fourth, tenth, seventh and not even qualified^note  No Wild Card this time in European Championships. Until they made a few adjustments, hired Dagur Sigurðsson from Iceland as their manager and managed in 2016 to get an Olympic bronze and a Dark Horse Victory in the European Championship. But everything afterwards showed this brief glory was a fluke, losing to Qatar in the round of 16 at the 2017 World Cup, an embarrassing early exit at the 2018 European Championship, and finishing only fourth at home in the 2019 World Cup.^note Although the bronze medal match was held in co-host Denmark.

Major League Baseball

• American baseball went through one in The '50s, as the only place where it wasn't in a sorry state was New York City. The minor leagues were collapsing due to the availability of major league games on television, old stadiums were growing increasingly decrepit, the dominance of New York teams (particularly the Yankees)^note Of the ten World Series held in the '50s, eight were won by teams from New York (six by the Yankees, one by the Giants, and one by the Dodgers), and only the last one of these, in 1959, did not feature at least one NYC team. The only years when this wasn't the case were 1957, when the Milwaukee Braves beat the Yankees, and 1959, when the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Chicago White Sox — and just two years earlier, they had been the Brooklyn Dodgers. was causing fans outside New York to tune out, some teams were still refusing to integrate long after Jackie Robinson had broken down the color barrier, and the sport had no real presence (other than the aforementioned minor leagues) in the fast-growing "Sun Belt" of the South and the West Coast. All of this gave football, both professional and college-level, enough room to build itself up as a serious rival to baseball's status as "America's pastime". This ended in The '60s once teams (led by the Giants and the Dodgers) started moving to the South and West and giving the sport a real nationwide presence, along with the Yankees' own A.A.E. meaning that other teams, especially in the American League, now stood a chance. Of course, much like how the aforementioned Liverpool fans look back fondly on the '80s as a golden age for English football when their team was king, New York sportswriters — and documentary filmmakers — are still likely to remember The '50s as baseball's "golden age" precisely because of the Yankees' dominance. And if the Yankees didn't win, then the Dodgers or the Giants probably did.
• The Boston Red Sox after their infamous sale of Babe Ruth's contract to the Yankees in 1920, producing the infamous "Curse of the Bambino". One could argue that it was one long Audience-Alienating Era from then until they broke the Curse in 2004, but the Red Sox were relatively successful overall; they just couldn't win the World Series. However, there were three times when it definitely seemed as though the Sox were cursed:
  • After they traded the Babe, the Red Sox were awful throughout the 1920s and '30s, essentially serving as a farm system for New York by making several other one-sided trades that helped strengthen the Yankees' dynasty. Even the most die-hard Sox fans would probably have trouble naming any notable players in the '20s. They didn't have another winning season until 1935, and didn't win the American League pennant until 1946.
  • Another, shorter-lived Audience-Alienating Era occurred in the first six years after Ted Williams retired in 1960.
  • Finally, from a national standpoint, the "Yankees-Red Sox" rivalry was non-existent from the 1978 playoffs until the ALCS in 1999. Try telling a modern Sox fan that, in the early-mid '80s, the Red Sox sold out only a few games a year to watch a mediocre team playing in a falling-apart Fenway Park. Then show them Roger Clemens' 20-strikeout game and point out all the empty seats. They will likely deny this ever happened.
• Despite being one of the most storied teams in American sports, the New York Yankees have two periods that many fans would like to forget.
  • Starting in 1964, the Yankees' long-running '50s dynasty quickly collapsed. While some have blamed CBS buying a controlling stake in the team, there were two major factors in their decline: First, in 1960, Charlie Finley bought the then-Kansas City Athletics from the estate of Arnold Johnson, who had moved the team from Philadelphia after the 1954 season. Johnson was widely accused of operating the A's as an effective Yankees farm club, allegedly allowing the Yankees to develop their young talent in a major-league environment before getting the players back in sweetheart deals.^note Historic evidence for this is sketchy, but it is known that under MLB rules of that day, the Yankees held the major-league rights to Kansas City, since their top farm club had been based in that city. The Yankees moved the minor-league team to Denver, and when the A's came to KC, didn't ask for one cent of the large indemnity they could have demanded, though this was likely because Johnson owned both the Yankees' and the Blues' stadiums (the latter of which was expanded and renamed Municipal Stadium for the A's) at the time he purchased the club. Finley immediately ended the "special relationship" between the A's and Yankees. The coup de grâce was delivered in 1965 with the introduction of the MLB draft, making it even harder for the Yankees to replace their aging 1950s superstars by simply buying up every hot young talent. They finished 1965 in the second division (i.e. in the bottom half of the standings), and the following year they finished dead last in the American League. Longtime announcer and "Voice of the Yankees" Mel Allen was also fired in 1964 to save money. Things got slightly better in the ensuing years, but it was only when George Steinbrenner took over the team in 1973 that it became a contender again.
  • The second A.A.E. was 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, unloading the bad contracts and focusing on player development, making the Yanks a playoff team by 1995 and champions again a year later.
• The '70s had a somewhat cosmetic version of this due to:
  • The replacement of many of the classic "jewel box" ballparks, such as Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Crosley Field in Cincinnati, etc. - although admittedly many of them had become decrepit and/or obsolete – with multipurpose stadiums often described as "concrete ashtrays".^note The later backlash against these hideous monstrosities would give us a slew of beautiful ballparks to replace them in the mid-late 90s and the early 00s, so it worked out in the end. Except for the Oakland A's, who are still stuck in their hideous monstrosity, and now have one foot out the door to Las Vegas.
  • The prevalence of first-generation artificial turf - easier to maintain than grass (and a requirement in domed stadiums)^note Not so much anymore, the latest trend in stadium design (started with State Farm Stadium in Arizona) is a retractable field that can be rolled out into the parking lot when it's not in use to grow the grass under natural light. However this is quite expensive to build, and is of no help to domed stadiums that already exist, but harder on players' bodies and not quite the right shade of green.
  • The uniforms. While the move from wool flannels to double-knit blends marked a quantum leap in performance, several teams went with pullovers, beltless pants, and more colorful uniforms overall. The most infamous would be the Houston Astros' orange rainbow jerseys, often referred to by fans as "Tequila Sunrise" or "Rainbow Guts". Though, Nostalgia Filter has kicked in recently, as the rainbow jersey is actually a popular choice for teams below the MLB level to emulate.
• The whole of The '90s was this:
  • 1990 started off with a lockout that cut into much of Spring Training. Fay Vincent, who became the commissioner after the sudden death of A. Bartlett Giamatti^note father of actors Paul and Marcus Giamatti in September 1989 and oversaw the lockout, was forced out of office by the owners (among them Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig, who would subsequently replace Vincent as commissioner, albeit on an "acting basis" at first) two years later.
  • In 1994, the outdated two-division setup (the year prior, the Florida [now Miami] Marlins and Colorado Rockies joined MLB as expansion franchises) was tossed in favor of the current three-division and a wild card format (which was problematic within itself at first, because the Divisional Series matchups/seedings were initially predetermined instead of determined by winning percentages). Unfortunately, for the 1993 San Francisco Giants, they won 103 games yet came one game short of the Atlanta Braves (who were always since 1969, quite mysteriously, in the NL West despite being the Southernmost MLB franchise on the East Coast). Thus, had the three divisional format been implemented the year prior, then the Giants would've easily won their divisional title.
  • The '90s were also, depending on your point of view, an era of little parity or competitive balance when compared to The '80s, with (at various phases during the decade) the Oakland Athletics, Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Indians, and New York Yankees dominating the American League and the Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves shortly thereafter dominating the National League.
  • The '90s hit its collective nadir with the 1994 strike, which wound up leading to the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years^note To put that in perspective, the World Series has been played through two world wars and two global pandemics (one of the latter after the strike ended). The only other time it was canceled was in 1904, when the National League's New York (now San Francisco) Giants refused to play the American League's Boston Red Sox, because Giants owner John T. Bush regarded the AL as inferior. Keep in mind this would have been only the second World Series and that only two years beforehand the American League was a minor league called the Western League. Still, the backlash against this led to a formal agreement that the champions of both leagues would play each other at the end of every season, thus giving us the World Series we know today. (and marked the beginning of the end for the Montreal Expos franchise, who had the best record in MLB in 1994 and likely would've been a World Series contender).
  • To make matters worse, during the period, MLB entered a revenue sharing joint venture with ABC and NBC (after their previous four year long television billion dollar television deal with CBS wound up costing the network approximately $500 million) called The Baseball Network. The Baseball Network was problematic because it emphasized the regionalization of the first two rounds of the postseason (meaning that they would be played simultaneously, yet the entire nation couldn't watch them or have much of a choice in regards to which game you could watch). More to the point, the first half of the regular season had no nationally televised network TV coverage (only picking up after the All-Star Game). Plus, since the Baseball Night in America (the branding for The Baseball Network's regular season prime time telecasts) games held exclusivity over every market, it most severely impacted markets with two teams: For example, if Baseball Night in America showed a Yankees game, this meant that nobody in New York could see that night's Mets game and vice versa. Further hampering The Baseball Network was that it was implemented in 1994, and thus critically damaged by the strike, finally being dissolved after the 1995 season, as MLB soon partnered with Fox, which it has remained with ever since.
  • Finally, there was the "home run derby" era of the late '90s and early '00s, with players such as Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds at the forefront. Initially, this was seen as the end of baseball's A.A.E., with the sport rising to heights of popularity perhaps not seen in decades; millions of people were tuning in to watch superstar athletes race to shatter home-run records. However, things turned around quickly once it was revealed where this sudden surge in athleticism was coming from: steroid use so rampant that it triggered a Congressional investigation. Everyone in baseball, along with many fans, now treats that era as one of the most disgraceful episodes in baseball history due to the fact that many of its biggest stars were revealed to have been either doping or engaging in other forms of cheating (like Sammy Sosa's corked bat^note Which really isn't cheating at all, since it actually gives you a competitive disadvantage as it just makes the bat lighter. The whole concept violates basic physics. It's the idea that you have a competitive advantage (assuming you don't actually know that a corked bat does more harm that good) that makes it work. Regardless, it's still against MLB's rules and any player caught with one will face a lengthy suspension, in addition to being soundly mocked by fans and people within the league), with MLB officials turning a blind eye due to the fact that the sport was popular again.
• The Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, and proceeded to not make the playoffs again until 2015; every single one of the other 29 MLB franchises made the postseason at least once in that timespan. They followed up the two championships with four consecutive losing seasons (55–60 in 1994^note strike-shortened season, 56–88 in 1995, 74–88 in 1996 and 76–86 in 1997). Longtime manager 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 only been starting to recover from) and the Expos leaving Montreal and an entire country only having one MLB team, it wasn't a good time to be a Jays fan in the late 90's (or in the first fifteen years of the 21st century, for that matter).
• 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.) For what it's worth, though, it was under Disney's ownership that the Angels built the team that won the World Series in 2002. While many fans cheered the Mouse-Ears selling to Arte Moreno that year, Moreno has since wrecked the team by trying to make them the Yankees of the West Coast, giving the front office the edict to always sign the best player in free agency each year (in addition to the debacle over the city of Anaheim suing the team to keep their name with the team, forcing them to be called the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim until 2016). This led to them dumping proven veterans like Vlad Guererro and Torii Hunter in order to eventually sign expensive contracts with declining superstars like Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton. After two injury-plagued years that saw the latter fail to produce close to the numbers he had in Texas and admitting to a drug relapse, Moreno basically shunned Hamilton completely in the 2015 preseason, and the Angels eventually handed him back to the Rangers, getting nothing in return and agreeing to still pay more than 80% of his remaining contract, which still had three years left. With the financial strain of that and the six more years on Pujols' deal and a depleted farm system, the Angels could very well be in for another longer Audience-Alienating Era, despite them also having two of baseball's best players, Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. After everything, even the most die-hard fans will agree that things were better under Disney, even if they don't like the Disney-era logo, as Disney at least tried harder to make a competitive team out of the Angels, as evidenced by the aforementioned 2002 World Series win.
• Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles Dodgers also had a late-'90s Audience-Alienating Era. 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:
  • Having more managers in the fold (Bill Russell, Davey Johnson, and Jim Tracy) than the previous 46 years combined (Walter Alston, Tommy Lasorda).
  • Trading away face-of-the-franchise Mike Piazza, who continued his career as the greatest offensive catcher in baseball history with the New York Mets and was 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.
  • 2011 almost brought another. After the team made the playoffs four times from 2004–09, the divorce and antics of owner Frank McCourt appeared to derail the franchise. Attendance dropped below 3 million for the first time in almost twenty years, and most of the 2011 season was spent in the basement, filing for bankruptcy. However, a late-season Miracle Rally saw the Dodgers go from last place to a winning record; then 2012 saw the team finish second and sold to a group including L.A. sports legend Magic Johnson; with a new TV deal pumping serious cash into the franchise (though fans generally hate the deal itself for preventing most of the L.A. area from actually seeing Dodgers games on TV), the Dodgers have proceeded to dominate their division ever since, eventually winning the World Series title in 2020 during a COVID-19 altered season.
• Following their heartbreaking loss to the Atlanta Braves in Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series, the Pittsburgh Pirates saw superstar Barry Bonds and ace pitcher Doug Drabek leave in free agency (after Bobby Bonilla walked the previous year), and the team that had won the National League East three straight years would not have another winning season or playoff appearance until 2013.
• Almost the entire history of the Philadelphia Phillies is an Audience-Alienating Era. They have finished in the second division 75 times in 130 seasons, including 27 last-place finishes. They have lost more games than any other franchise in professional sports (the Washington Generals don't count). In their history, they have won only two World Series, seven National League pennants, and appeared in the playoffs only 14 times. Their later flicker of hope — winning the 2008 Series, and returning to the playoffs the following three years (including having the best record in all of baseball in 2011) — ended when they finished in third in their division in 2012, fourth in 2013, and last in 2014, with the cherry on the cake coming in 2015 when they finished the season with the worst record in all of baseball.
• The Philadelphia Athletics went through two Audience-Alienating Eras following bursts of World Series success. The first was the result of the short-lived upstart Federal League poaching players from existing rosters, and A's manager and co-owner Connie Mack refusing to get into a bidding war, resulting in a first-place team in 1914 that had won three of the previous four World Series to fall to dead last in 1915, and the next six seasons after that. The Athletics did not have a winning record again until 1925, which marked the end of the Audience-Alienating Era, as they put up winning records again for seven years straight, culminating in back-to-back World Series wins in 1929 and 1930, and a third straight appearance in 1931 where they pushed the St. Louis Cardinals to seven games.
  
  Unfortunately for the Athletics, The Great Depression would usher in a new Audience-Alienating Era, one they would never recover from in Philadelphia. The financially strapped A's sold off their star players, and by 1935 they were in last place again. The A's built up the outfield wall along 20th Street to keep the houses across the way from siphoning away their already-dwindling attendance, but this "spite fence" only served to worsen the relationship between the team and the fans. Connie Mack's declining health and the passing of Jack Shibe didn't help matters either, and the Phillies moving into Shibe Park in 1938 failed to significantly boost the Athletics' revenue, as they too had attendance problems. Mack, who had managed the team since its debut in 1901, was finally forced to step down after the disastrous 1950 season, eventually selling Shibe Park to the Phillies, and the A's to Arthur Johnson before he passed away in 1956. The A's woes continued in Kansas City (as noted in the Yankees section above), even after Charlie O. Finley purchased the club (and shopped it around to multiple cities), as their fortunes did not turn around until their arrival in Oakland.
  • Finley's decision to outfit the A's in white shoes in 1967, combined with the colorful Kelly green and gold uniforms implemented a few seasons earlier, led many contemporary ballplayers to consider this a sartorial Audience-Alienating Era for the A's. However, they weren't laughing when the A's won three straight World Series in the early 1970s. Nevertheless, the white shoes were retired once Finley sold the team, and the A's gradually returned to more traditionally styled uniforms.
• The Houston Astros went through one in the late 2000s and early 2010s, starting shortly after their sole World Series appearance to date in 2005. Years of signing aging players to large deals, overvaluing a few mediocre free agents, not spending on the draft, and trading away prospects left the team with an aging core incapable of competing and no help in the minor leagues. After a prolonged decline, the team was finally sold in 2010 (with the league forcing the new owner to move the team to the American League after over five decades in the National League, a move which angered many long-time fans). Things only got worse, as the new front office decided the only way to rebuild was to trade off anyone worth mentioning, which further disappointed fans, who had grown attached to the leaders on the rather weak rosters. After that, the team went on a record streak of three straight seasons with the worst record in baseball, losing 324 games from 2011-2013 (and picking up the three #1 draft picks that went with it). There were other minor issues along the way, like trouble negotiating a television contract that left most of the surrounding area unable to see games; unknowingly drafting an injured player first overall (due to teams not having access to medical records before the draft) and not signing him as a result; and having their central database hacked and some of the results leaked. Thankfully, the end of the Audience-Alienating Era came in 2015, with the team making the playoffs as a Wild Card team (after having just come short of the AL West division championship), their top prospects (acquired thanks to fire sale trades and good draft positions from their tanking) making a splash in the majors, the television contract finally working out for more fans to view the games, and a still-strong minor league system. Even the hacking was resolved, with it being tied to members of the front office of their former NL rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals. And then in 2017, they won their first World Series crown. However, it was later revealed that coach Alex Cora, and (at the time player) Carlos Beltrán engaged in technology-based sign stealing sullies this to a degree.^note Sign stealing itself is not against the rules; teams who manage to get a runner to second base will often try to do this. However, using technology to do so in real time (in the Astros' case, analyzing the live video feed) is very much prohibited. Both Cora and Astros manager A.J. Hinch (the latter of whom failed to stop the players from cheating whenever he had the chance) would be suspended for the 2020 season, until both found work once again, as Hinch would go on to manage the Detroit Tigers and Cora would be reinstated as the Red Sox's manager.
• The Minnesota Twins have had a succession of dark ages interspersed with periods of true brilliance. Their pre-move incarnation, the Washington Senators, were so legendarily bad through much of their existence (with the exception of The Roaring '20s, in which the franchise won its first - and for six decades only - World Series championship), that San Francisco sports writer Charley Dryden once quipped, "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League." The novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant was written riffing on the team's legendary badness, and made into the musical Damn Yankees. After their move to Minnesota at the end of the 1960 season, the team rapidly rose to prominence, winning the American League pennant in 1965 before losing the World Series in seven games to the Los Angeles Dodgers. They won the newly-formed AL West twice before this period of prominence came to an end, but end it did, and the team's longest audience-alienating era in Minnesota (and the worst uniform in its history) lasted from 1971 until 1984, a period in which arose the team's lasting nickname, the Twinkies. This era marked some of the most shamefully bad play in the franchise's history and ended when the notoriously stingy Griffith family sold the team to local banking magnate Carl Pohlad. 1993 marked the beginning of its second audience-alienating era, which lasted until 2000, which was denoted by a number of fading stars with origins in the Twin Cities (which wasn't all bad - Hall of Famers Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor each had reasonably productive years in Minnesota and bagged their 3000th hits wearing Twins pinstripes, but it also brought several infamous loads to the Metrodome), forcing it to rely for the majority of its pitching and run production on players who really should have spent a lot more time developing in the minors, and the third one began in 2011, peaking with MLB's worst record in 2016 after what appeared to be a ray of light with a competitive 2015. For a time, it looked like the competitive 2015 season was indeed a harbinger of better things, as the Twins grabbed a wild-card berth in 2017, with Molitor being named AL Manager of the Year. However, they finished under .500 in 2018 and a mile out of playoff contention, after which Molitor was shown the door. But just when it seemed that the Audience-Alienating Era was coming back, the Twins won 100 games and their division in 2019, only to get swept by the Yankees in the ALDS.
• The Detroit Tigers had their Audience-Alienating Era from 1989 to 2005. For starters, the Tigers only had two winning seasons (1991 and 1993), and none at all from 1994 to 2005. Heck, they didn't finish beyond 3rd place in the AL East (which they were a part of until 1998) and the AL Central. After 1995, manager Sparky Anderson would retire, depriving the Tigers of one of the best managers in franchise history, if not in Major League Baseball. Then, the team reached its nadir in 2003, when they finished with an abysmal 43-119 record, one of the worst records in all of MLB history^* The good news was that they avoided becoming the worst team in modern MLB history by winning 5 of their last 6 games . Fortunately, the team gradually got back on their feet and would go on to win the American League pennant twice in 2006 and 2012, as well as the AL Central four times in a row from 2011 to 2014. But after they were swept by the Orioles in the 2014 ALDS, their losing ways made a comeback - only one winning season since (2016), and never finishing higher than 2nd (as of 2022). And then there was that Epic Fail of a season they had in 2019, where they were once again one of the worst teams MLB has ever seen, ending with a 47-114 record^note That's 161 games if you're keeping count - The Tigers and the White Sox had a late-season game against each other that got rained out. Due to both teams already being eliminated from postseason contention, the game was never made up. - and if that wasn't bad enough, they tied the 1939 St. Louis Browns by losing 59 of their games at home, more than they did in 2003!
• After winning the 1985 World Series, the Kansas City Royals didn't make the playoffs again until 2014, with their nadir coming in the mid-2000s. However, all the pain eventually paid off when the they won the World Series again in 2015 (the 30th anniversary of their previous championship, at that). And many hoped they make the Playoffs again; however, they fell off the track midseason when the Indians got hot, taking 1st place in the AL Central, and the Royals would end up eliminated from playoff contention. They haven't reached the postseason at all since.
• The Chicago Cubs were in a 108-year championship drought, having not won the World Series since 1908 until finally winning it all in 2016 and, up until 2016, hadn't won a National League pennant since 1945. Such highlights include:
  • Blowing a nine-game lead in the newly christened NL East to the New York Mets in 1969, a team that was the poster child of bottom feeders since their inception in 1962.
  • After crushing the San Diego Padres in Game 1 and having the bullpen clamp down on San Diego in Game 2 of the 1984 NLCS, the Padres managed to fight back, and defeated the Cubs in Game 5. The highlight of this is a ground ball that went through Cubs star Leon Durham's legs, opening up the door to four Padres crossing the plate.
  • In Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS, then-manager Dusty Baker left the starting pitcher Mark Prior on the mound in the top of the 8th. After Steve Bartman infamously deflected a Luis Castillo foul ball from Moisés Alou's glove, the Marlins rallied and scored due to (among other things) a fatigued Mark Prior and an Alex Gonzalez error, taking the lead from the Cubs and winning the game (and, ultimately, the series).
  • However, 13 years later, the Cubs' 71-year pennant drought finally ended on October 22, 2016, when they won the NLCS against the Dodgers in 6 games.
  • On November 2, 2016, the Cubs beat the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in extra innings after coming back from a 3-1 deficit, plus an array of late-game boners on the part of manager Joe Maddon that allowed the Indians to tie 6-6 and force the extra innings in the first place. Coincidentally, this means they went through a situation similar to the previous champs, the Royals, in that they had endured a long drought before making the playoffs one year and winning the Losers' Series^note so named because the Cubs and Indians were the biggest Memetic Losers of their respective leagues the next.
• And Chicago's other team, the White Sox, suffered this for forty years after the "Black Sox" scandal in 1919, when several players threw the World Series in order to collect on gambling bets; eight players (most notably "Shoeless" Joe Jackson) were banned from the sport for life, and the team would not win another pennant for forty years. While the team went back to being good in the '50s and early '60s, including beating the Yankees for the American League Pennant in 1959, they fell back into this from the late '60s through the '80s, with the "Disco Demolition Night" debacle in 1979 being a low point and only a division title in 1983 salvaging the era; there were talks of moving the team to Denver or Tampa. The White Sox went back to quality in the '90s and '00s, culminating in them breaking the "Curse of the Black Sox" and winning the World Series in 2005. The '10s, however, seem to have seen them slide back into an Audience-Alienating Era, with losing seasons every year since 2013, including 100 losses in 2018. However, the team has been rebuilding since 2016, arming themselves with quality prospects and free agents, and once baseball comes back after the COVID-19 Pandemic, could go back to being quality... But then in the 2020-21 offseason, team owner Jerry Reinsdorf went over General Manager Rick Hahn to hire former manager Tony La Russa. Fans were not happy about this move^note La Russa managed the White Sox in the early 1980s, and was fired by then-general manager Ken "hawk" Harrelson. Jerry Reinsdorf has since called La Russa's firing his "greatest regret". but the White Sox won the AL Central Division in 2021, allaying some concerns. When the 2022 season started, the White Sox were sluggish out of the gate, and La Russa's issues became glaring. La Russa's age, and the ten years he had not managed baseball had caught up to him (he would ultimately step down due to health issues) and the White Sox finished at .500 for the year. Fans were angry, chanting "Fire Tony" and even bringing a sign calling for Reinsdorf to sell the team.
  
  Unfortunately, 2023 would get worse. Once again, the White Sox did not spend money in the offseason, only acquiring Andrew Benetendi and Mike Clevinger, the latter of whom was being investigated for *domestic abuse*. Popular fan convention SoxFest was cancelled. And when the season started, the Sox stumbled out of the gate, going 8-21 in March and April, including losing ten straight games. A fan called into a radio station going on a ten-minute speech to criticize Reinsdorf, Hahn, the manager he hired, Pedro Grifol, team president Kenny Williams and the rest of the team. Later that year, fan-loved third baseman Jake Burger was traded by Williams. After that, Kenyan Middleton, a pitcher who'd been traded to the Yankees, divulged that the team had no "culture" to speak of, describing a "no rules" clubhouse attitude. Fans were not happy. In mid-August, Reinsdorf fired Williams (who had joined the organization in 1992 as a scout) and Hahn, making it look like the famously loyal Reinsdorf had changed. Instead, he hired from within, as he usually did. Want to know how bad it was? Reports of the team moving were met with a collective "meh".
• The entire history of the Seattle Mariners falls into this category, largely down to their unique distinction of being the only team in MLB that has so far never played in a World Series (or won a pennant for that matter). While this is somewhat understandable given that there are only five teams in MLB that haven't been playing for longer,^note Blue Jays, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Rays and Rockies those teams have all reached the Fall Classic at some point, with the Blue Jays, the Diamondbacks and the Marlins even winning it (twice, in the case of the Blue Jays and the Marlins - the Blue Jays even won theirs back-to-back). They've only made the playoffs five times, their most recent one in 2022 being their first in 21 years - in which time every team in not just MLB but ALL of the major North American sports leagues took part in at least one playoff game - even the Cleveland Browns and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Mixed Martial Arts

• 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 most of the premier heavyweights (Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira, 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. On top of that, Frank Mir had not fully recovered from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. With those factors in mind, Sylvia's reign was most known for lack of top flight competition and less than exciting fights that often went the distance. Two things ended this audience-alienating era: one, the UFC debut of Mirko Cro Cop in February 2007. Two, Randy Couture's victory over Sylvia a month later.
• The entire Japanese MMA scene is a shadow of what it was before PRIDE disbanded. Rumors of Yakuza involvement and match fixing kept UFC from its original plan of running PRIDE as a separate organisation, most of the international fighters moved to the American organisations (UFC and Strikeforce) and none of the smaller Japanese promotions (DREAM, DEEP, Shooto, Pancrase, Rizin, ONE FC) reached similar level of popularity and prestige as PRIDE.
• UFC middleweight division from 2008 (Silva vs. Côté) to 2010 (Silva vs. Maia). Despite Anderson Silva being the best MMA fighter in the world at the time, UFC really struggled to find good competition for him. This period was marred by bouts against grapplers who refused to engage Silva on the feet, even to take him down. Silva meanwhile was showboating and waiting for opponents to engage (since he is known as a counter-fighter). Result? Boring 5 round fights (except against Côté, who injured his knee in the 3rd) with little to no activity and crowds turning against Silva. The audience-alienating era ended when Chael Sonnen became the no. 1 contender, unleashed some of the most vicious trash talk and self promotion ever seen in the UFC and then almost backed it up by beating up Silva for over 4 rounds, before getting caught in a triangle choke in the 5th. After that Silva's opposition improved (most notably with a Sonnen rematch and a dream bout with Vitor Belfort), but his showboating finally got the better of him when he lost the title after getting KO'd by Chris Weidman.

Motorsports

• The 2001 season of the British Touring Car Championship is an easy contender for the worst in the series' modern history. The excesses of the much-loved 90's Super Touring era came to a head as unsustainable costs brought an end to heavy manufacturer support for the series, and this coincided with an ill-fated buy out of the BTCC by an American company who didn't understand the series' intricacies. As the 2001 season was also the first under a new set of regulations, this led to a very poor quality of racing that did much to kill the BTCC's popularity from its 90's highs. The return of Alan Gow as the BTCC's chief executive in 2003 led to a slow return to form, but it's generally agreed that it took until the NGTC-era in the 2010's for the series to fully re-establish itself as the top flight of British motorsport.
• NASCAR:
  • While the NASCAR Cup Series seemed to hit its peak in popularity around the start of the 21st century, many seemed to think it's been in an Audience-Alienating Era since shortly thereafter, due to a number of events:
    • Anticlimactic finishes for the championship: From 1998-2003, only one season (2002) didn't end with the champion clinching before the last race, and four of six titles ended with a 200+ point blowout, causing people to lose interest toward the end of the season due to the string of Foregone Conclusions. This reached a peak in 2003 when Matt Kenseth at one point accumulated a 436-point lead (which eventually dwindled to 90 points over Jimmie Johnson by the end of the year, but was still 228 the week before the end, in a system that gave 180-185 points to the race winner) - while winning only one race the whole year (Las Vegas). This led to a major format change that caused a Broken Base in the form of…
    • The Chase for the Cup, now officially known as the "NASCAR playoffs", beginning in 2004, which includes a points reset to bunch the top ten drivers in points (then the top twelve starting in 2007, then the top ten plus the two winningest from 11th-20th from 2011 to 2013, and since 2014 the 16 drivers with the most race wins in the 26-race "regular season"^note or, if fewer than 16 drivers win races in that stretch, all race winners plus enough points leaders without a race win to fill out the 16-spot field) together in order to try to encourage tighter battles for the title. While the actual points margins have certainly been smaller, fans in general (especially older ones) feel that the whole setup is artificial and goes against the nature of racing, and it has only heated the argument as to whether or not NASCAR should increase the number of points for a win to give wins much more prominence over consistent top ten finishes. This was ultimately addressed by NASCAR before the 2014 season, with its announcement that playoff spots would now be determined mostly by race wins. The resulting "elimination" system has been praised for creating more competitive racing, but it's also been polarizing for making it so that one bad race in the playoffs can effectively end the season of someone who's had a stellar year up to that point—in fact, on two separate occasions^note Joey Logano in 2015 and Denny Hamlin in 2018, drivers have seen their championship hopes end because they were intentionally wrecked by someone who had already been eliminated and were themselves angry about having their seasons ended by their target.
    • The subversion of the sport's traditional feeder system thanks to the rise of "Buschwhacking", the act of competing simultaneously in both the NASCAR Cup Series and its second-tier feeder series (today the Xfinity Series, previously sponsored by Busch from 1984 to 2007, hence the name "Buschwhacking"^note Hilariously the most prominent Buschwhacker (and current record holder for most Xfinity series wins) is named Kyle Busch). In prior years the logistical issues with attempting serious runs in both championships made it rare, but in 2001 Kevin Harvick made history by doing just that and simultaneously winning the Busch Series and earning Rookie of the Year in the Cup Series, proving that it was possible. Harvick's 2001 season was forced into doing that by unfortunate circumstances,^note he was elected to be the successor to the late Dale Earnhardt Sr., but also had to fulfill his contractual obligations to his Busch Series sponsors, but later drivers would fully commit to Buschwhacking and from 2006 to 2012, every Busch/Nationwide Series champion was also a full-time Cup Series racer. This broke the feeder system by throwing rookies straight into uncompetitive races with top-tier talent, stifling the rise of new drivers for almost a decade before the rules caught up to restrict Buschwhacking.^note Example: The three-year run from 2010-12 that saw Kevin Conway (finished 35th in points), Andy Lally (33rd), and Stephen Leicht (45th, only entered 16 races and DNQ'd in 4 of them) win Cup Series Rookie of the Year, more or less by default. None of the three ever got a ride with what could be considered a major team and Lally won the award despite announcing he would leave NASCAR at the end of the season, before the votes were counted. Later winners Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (2013), Brett Moffit (2015), Daniel Hemric (2019), and Cole Custer (2020) are also viewed as major busts, going into the 2023 season Stenhouse is the only one with a full-time ride (albeit on a low-tier team) in the Cup Series. Both Moffitt and Hemric, however, would later win championships in the lower divisions. In fact, the prominence of Buschwhacking can be directly linked to the lack of parity era that followed it (see below)—when the Buschwhackers started to retire, the drivers tapped to fill their seats were woefully unprepared. With the feeder systems finally stabilized, drivers like Tyler Reddick, Ross Chastain, Chase Briscoe, and others were able to spend more years in Xfinity and be instantly competitive when they moved to Cup, although unprepared rookies like Harrison Burton and the revolving Front Row Motorsports #38 seat show that the problems caused by Buschwhacking haven't truly gone away.
    • The dominance of Jimmie Johnson. Jeff Gordon has been a polarizing figure for his career for being a California transplant coming in and winning, but at least he would occasionally crack a smile, show charisma and make it look like he might actually have some good ol’ boy in him - and even if fans disliked him they at least had someone to boo. Johnson (whose car is owned by Gordon) has been a politically correct milquetoast personality that Madison Avenue loves but has never been popular with racing fans that prefer characters. Add that to him taking advantage of the aforementioned Chase format to win five consecutive championships (breaking Cale Yarborough’s record of three straight) and holding six as of 2015 to put him just one behind legends Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt (he'd later win his seventh), and he made racing boring for quite a few old guard fans. Although, Jimmie is slowly getting respect by the fans after he started to not win constantly, as fans slowly started to realize that no matter what, Jimmie will be remembered as one of NASCAR's greats. Wanting a new challenge and a lighter schedule, Johnson would move over to the IndyCar series in 2021... but had little success there and returned to NASCAR as a team owner and part-time driver in 2023.
    • Several rules changes, with the biggest perhaps being the “freeze the field” rule that immediately halts racing the instant a caution flag comes out rather than allowing drivers to race back to the line first^note This was obviously done for safety reasons, allowing drivers to race back to the line at full speed under caution kind of defeats the purpose of putting the race under caution. Freezing and slowing the field immediately also allows medics and track crews on the track faster, rather than having to wait until all the cars come back around. This led to NASCAR having to make even more changes to try and avoid a race ending under yellow, finally agreeing to add the “green-white-checker” rule (the race is extended past the scheduled # of laps to allow two last laps of racing if needed). While this has been the best possible option to ensure fans got to see an actual race finish, it still irked some fans who felt such conditions “cheapened a race win coming longer than the actual # of miles ran.
    • The "Car of Tomorrow", which was introduced in 2007 with its splitter replacing the front bumper and rear wing replacing the spoiler; the new car was among several new safety mandates NASCAR introduced after Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 (which sadly may have been the incident that spiked NASCAR's popularity in the early 2000s). Despite doing its job as far as safety - no one has died in a crash after four died from 2000-01 - drivers complained about its handling and fans complained about boring racing as a result; not only that, but the rear wing turned out to be a horrible idea, as on three separate occasions in 2009-10, it acted like an actual wing, providing enough lift to completely render the roof flaps useless and send a car flying; the wing was ultimately replaced by the old spoiler five races into the 2010 season, which preceded a redesign of the Car of Tomorrow in 2011 with a cleaner, more rounded nose and a one-piece splitter^note Which still didn't fix the main problem with the splitter, that being that if a car goes into the infield grass the splitter goes straight into the ground in a pretty violent collision, especially if the ground is soggy from rain. Best case it just tears up your front end, worst case it pitches the car upside-down. This video provides a few examples. Rather than fixing the car they're looking at the grass instead, Charlotte Motor Speedway installed artificial turf in 2018; 2011 ultimately came to be known as the greatest season in The New '10s. The car was announced to be discontinued as of 2013, replaced by the more-similar-to-a-road-car-looking Generation 6 cars, which itself was replaced by the Next Gen car in 2022 (it was going to debut in 2021, but then COVID-19 happened).
    • Taking races away from the older, classic tracks in the South in favor of trying to expand the sport’s exposure across the country. North Wilkesboro and Rockingham were completely removed from the schedule (the former in 1996 and the latter in 2004), while Darlington and Atlanta were cut down to one race weekend each (Darlington in 2005 and Atlanta in 2011, though both got their second dates back in 2021). Quite a few of these moves only led to lower attendance numbers at the newer tracks once they got extra dates (giving a second date to California, including the Labor Day race held in Darlington for years, may have been the biggest disaster; though when California is reduced to one race only (the spring one), it's been mostly a success; Darlington eventually returned to its traditional Labor Day date in 2015, and held three races in 2020 due to COVID-19 messing with the schedule) and alienated fans who loved racing at the shorter, unique tracks over the cookie-cutter 1.5-to-2 mile tri-ovals that have gradually taken over the schedule.
    • Too much emphasis on downforce. The continually-rising amount of downforce in the car led to procession races; i.e. races when one car took the lead and stayed there until the next pit stop stint, a restart caused by a caution period, or said car finished the race. Then NASCAR tested two new downforce packages (one low, one high) in 2015 after it became apparent that the normal 2015 package (which tend to go to high) was a mess. The races with the low-downforce package were met with extremely positive reviews. Those with the high-downforce package? Extremely negative reviews. Despite NASCAR originally insisting on the high-downforce package, they relented and went to the low-downforce package in 2016, which we can say has been a huge success so far. Given NASCAR is now willing to reduce even more downforce, this might be a starting step for NASCAR to remove itself from its A.A.E.
    • And 2021 saw major schedule changes. Speedweeks (the lead-in to the Daytona 500) was cut back from two weeks to one. Two intermediate tracks (Chicagoland and Kentucky) lost their NASCAR dates in all three national series. The Nashville market, which had been wanting a race for decades, got its date as one of two Dover races moved to Nashville Superspeedway, making its Cup debut. The 2021 season featured six road races, with the Indianapolis race and one of the Charlotte races moving from ovals to the respective tracks' road layouts (which started in 2018), while Road America returned to the Cup schedule after a 65-year absence and Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas made its NASCAR debut in all three series; with that, the Indianapolis road course and COTA become only the second and third tracks in America after Watkins Glen, respectively, to host all three of the NASCAR Cup Series, IndyCar, and Formula One. Finally, the spring race at Bristol saw the track covered by dirt, making that race the Cup Series' first dirt race since 1970.
    • In one of the best examples of truly poetic irony, Texas Motor Speedway lost its All-Star Race date in 2023 to... a reopened and repaved North Wilkesboro Speedway^note It was reported that Fox demanded the race be moved out of Texas, as the 2022 running was an unmitigated disaster that got terrible ratings, probably not helped by the fact that fans (and many within NASCAR) hate Texas Motor Speedway to begin with. This move was met with near-universal acclaim from fans, although the decision to axe Road America, which recorded six-figure attendance in both its years on the Cup calendar, for a first-time-ever street course race in Chicago proved a lot more controversial, though the Chicago weekend itself was a success (despite rain shortening both the Xfinity and Cup races) with the Cup race seeing a memorable finish with Supercars import Shane Van Gisbergen winning on his Cup debut, becoming the first driver in 60 years to win a Cup race on their debut.
  • NASCAR teams that drift into Audience-Alienating Eras tend not to recover - see Morgan-McClure Motorsports, for example, rising stars of the early nineties who lost Sterling Marlin after a mediocre 1997 season - and only posted one more top ten points finish before shutting down 10 years later (though they ran 1 race in 2009 and attempted 2 more races that year and 1 more race in 2010).
  • Roush Fenway Racing. Problems include slowly slipping performance through the late 2000's that's become a landslide in the last couple years, major drivers abandoning the team,^note and just to make matters worse, both of the biggest examples, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards, fled to the same team, Joe Gibbs Racing major sponsors following suit,^note Just in 2015, they had to absorb the loss of Subway to Gibbs with Edwards and the loss of 3M to Hendrick Motorsports and highly touted Young Gun drivers who prove to be epic busts at the Cup level.^note Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won back-to-back championships driving for Roush's Xfinity Series team but would be outperformed by his now-former girlfriend Danica Patrick, herself considered a major letdown in Cup competition, and is better known for his relationship with her and his frequent crashes (to the point he received the derogatory nickname "Wrecky Spinhouse" from fans) than for any accomplishments as a driver, aside from getting two wins in 2017; Trevor Bayne gained mountains of hype after taking the part-time Wood Brothers team to Victory Lane in the 2011 Daytona 500 but struggled just to maintain a top 30 points position in his first full year of Cup in 2015 An owner who seems more concerned with micromanaging every other owner in his manufacturer (Ford) camp than actually overseeing his in-house teams, and is known for embarrassing, even borderline-racist, statements about rival teams and manufacturers, along with unconfirmed reports of cheating? Check. Rebellion against said micromanagement by the out-of-house teams? Check.^note The biggest of these, Roger Penske's team, basically just switched (from Dodge, a switch that ultimately killed Dodge's participation in any NASCAR series outside of Canada, which fans are still lamenting and hoping the Next Gen car will precipitate their return) to save a few million dollars on engine development, and is now busy convincing lower-level Ford teams to defect from Roush's aero and chassis packages to his own, with Wood Brothers (in 2015) and Leavine Family (in 2014) defecting from Roush to Penske; though they lost Leavine Family to Chevrolet in 2016 as a result of a merger between them and Chevy-user Circle Sport. The next biggest, Richard Petty, absorbed the Yates team that had co-developed the Roush engine package, but got fed up with lack of results and began doing chassis and aero work independent of either Roush or Penske in 2015 and eventually switched to Chevrolet in 2018. Penske still buy engines from Roush, though, and it certainly wouldn't be surprising if the increase in engine failures from Penske satellites like the Wood Brothers (who had been a full Roush satellite in 2014) was more than a coincidence. It seems like far longer than the 14 years it's been since Roush was able to post back-to-back championships (with Kenseth in 2003 and Kurt Busch in 2004) and seemed on the verge of knocking off Rick Hendrick and Chevrolet to re-establish Ford as NASCAR's top manufacturer. In 2022, it was thought that a co-owner/driver deal with former Cup champion Brad Keselowski could bring Roush back to prominence... only for him to struggle in races and get hit with a massive 100-point penalty that ended his championship hopes as soon as the season began.
  • Joey Logano is a former Cup Series champion and is widely considered to be one of the elite drivers who is always in championship and race winning contention every week. But he had a miserable start to his Cup career driving the #20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota between 2009 and 2012, managing only two wins in four years and five poles, missing the Chase every single year, being involved in several horrific wrecks and getting into arguments and fights with respected veterans. Logano was only 18 when he signed with Gibbs in 2009 (and is the youngest driver to ever win a Cup race), which probably goes a long way towards explaining much of the above. After being let go by Gibbs, his 2013 signing with Penske was treated with open scorn from fans who thought such an obvious bust did not deserve another high-profile ride. It was only from the 2014 season onwards, when he started to churn out multiple wins a year, that he rose to the top of NASCAR (and could have had another championship in 2015 if not for a series of unlucky incidents outside his control). Still, the rocky start to his career has rightly made teams a lot more hesitant to hand full time Cup Series rides to people that are too young to purchase alcohol.
  • Clint Bowyer would really like to forget 2016. In the wake of Michael Waltrip Racing shutting its doors over the Spingate scandal, the 15's charter was bought out by backmarker team H Scott Motorsports. This wouldn't have been a problem if not for Bowyer's contract, which forced him to drive the car even if its charter moved to a different team. The result was an abysmal 27th place finish in the final standings, no wins, no top fives, and only three top tens. Bowyer would move to take over the 14 for Stewart-Haas Racing the next year, successfully putting the Audience-Alienating Era to an end.
  • 2015-2019 were known for having a severe lack of parity in NASCAR. With many popular and successful drivers like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth, and Jimmie Johnson retiring, many of the top teams turned to young drivers from their developmental programs to take over the cars, many of whom were barely in their twenties. In advertising, NASCAR hyped these young drivers up as the stars of the future, similar to the Gillette Young Guns campaign of the 2000s; the problem was, they just weren't performing on the track. While future Cup Series champion Chase Elliott blossomed into a legitimate superstar, including a championship in 2020 and an undefeated winning streak on the road courses from 2019 to 2021 (and even he took quite a while to notch his first win before breaking out), the same can't be said for his contemporaries, many of whom underperformed^note Kyle Larson had a breakout year in 2017, but followed it up with an abysmal one the next year, Austin Dillon managed only two wins (the 2017 Coca-Cola 600 and 2018 Daytona 500, the latter coming almost 20 years after Earnhardt's victory in the 500, as well as 17 years to the day of Earnhardt's death; he later managed to get a third win in a more convincing fashion in 2020 at Texas) and an average finish of 18 in six years with RCR, with many cynical fans speculating that the only reason he stayed in the car was because he was Richard Childress's grandson, Ryan Blaney won at Pocono in 2017, but consistently failed to live up the the hype afterwards, with his only subsequent wins coming under screwy circumstances (for example, his win at the Charlotte Roval in 2018 came after Martin Truex Jr. and Jimmie Johnson spun coming to the finish), however he did win the 2023 Cup Series title, Matt DiBenedetto became memetic for his ability to nearly win with subpar equipment, only to fall just short at the last second, and it took William Byron 3 years to win a race., had their careers eclipsed by off-track incidents^note Bubba Wallace became much better known for his activism than anything related to his career, and the aforementioned Larson lost his ride, his sponsors, and got banned from NASCAR for a year for inadvertently saying a racial slur on a Twitch stream, but got a second chance at Hendrick Motorsports and had a good year in 2021 with consistent finishes and a win at Las Vegas., or were just plain busts^note Ricky Stenhouse Jr. got fired from Roush Fenway Racing after seven years of wrecks and poor finishes, aside from a two-win season in 2017, Erik Jones was let go by Gibbs after four unremarkable years that saw him never make it past the first round of the playoffs (though he did manage to win the Coke Zero 400 in 2018, the Southern 500 in 2019, and won the 2020 Busch Clash with a seriously-damaged front end, though that particular race was infamous for being a wreckfest that only saw six cars finish period), Daniel Suárez was fired by both Gibbs and Stewart-Haas after failing to win with either (and in the case of SHR, never making the playoffs either), and Daniel Hemric achieved notoriety after being fired from Richard Childress Racing and sent back down to Xfinity even after he had won 2019 Rookie of the Year, and fans just weren't interested in watching NASCAR and the media hype a bunch of drivers who were struggling to stay on the lead lap most of the time while veterans like Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., and Joey Logano (by this time, Jimmie Johnson's performance became so bad, Lowe's left the team after 2018, and Johnson himself retired after 2020, only to turn up in IndyCar the next season running all races except the oval tracks). It was only after Elliott's 2020 breakout season and championship, as well as a freeze on development in the lead-up to the introduction of the Next Gen car, that parity started to return to NASCAR, as young drivers ^note Michael McDowell at the Daytona 500, Christopher Bell at the Daytona road course, William Byron at Homestead-Miami and Richmond, and Kyle Larson at Las Vegas won six out of the first seven races in 2021. It would later be followed up by Byron putting together one of the longest top-10 streaks in NASCAR history (11 in a row), Blaney putting together his first multiple-win season with four dominating performances, and Larson finally making good on his potential by winning the championship with a spectacular 10-win season, signifying that the youth movement was truly there to stay. 2022 followed it up with 19 separate race winners, tying the season record, including from drivers like Jones and Suárez who were previously written off as busts. It's safe to say that parity is truly back in the sport.
• MotoGP:
  • Valentino Rossi's time with Ducati. It was hyped so much by the public, but turned out to be a massive failure. Zero victories, just 3 podiums in 2 seasons, pretty high crash rate (unusual for Valentino), and sometimes battling against Aprilia CRT's^note  CRT/Open class bike tend to be slower than even the slowest Factory bikes (right now is the Marc VDS Honda), except if you are Aleix Espargaro is pretty embarrassing for the legend. Fortunately, once he returned to Yamaha, after one year of adapting back, we can say that he's back to the top.
  • The 800cc engine era. Manufacturers dropped out left and right; with Ilmor's project imploding before the 2007 season even reached halfway, Team KR quietly folding in 2008, Kawasaki stopped racing there in 2008 as well (although Marco Melandri and Forward Racing [then Hayate Racing] ran the Kawasaki's for one last season in 2009), and Suzuki announced a sabbatical at the end of the 2011 season; leaving only Yamaha, Ducati, and Honda still competing by the end of the 2011 season. Rossi's injury in 2010 and subsequent poor form in Ducati mentioned above also hurts them as well. The condition was so bad that in 2012, MotoGP only effectively had 12 manufacturer bikes remaining on the grid^note 2 Repsol Hondas, 1 LCR Honda, 1 Gresini Honda, 2 Factory Yamahas, 2 Tech 3 Yamahas, 2 Factory Ducatis, 1 Pramac Ducati, and 1 Cardion AB Ducati, with the rest are filled with somewhat-hopeless backmarkers from the then-recently introduced CRT class. This changed for the better when Ducati's Loophole Abuse on the Open Class rules in 2014 actually helped the sport, because this means any manufacturer who participated in MotoGP can have more freedom in their bike development depending on their results the previous season so they could catch up to the main factory bikes (which many considered to be Yamaha and Honda). In addition, a shake-up in the tires (from Bridgestone to Michelin) as well as a ban on manufacturer-specific ECUs helped bringing a closer competition as well. The result? Manufacturers are joining one-by-one (Suzuki returned in 2015, Aprilia quietly returned in 2015, and KTM made their debut in 2017); and the 2016 season saw a whopping 9 different race winners and 4 different manufacturers winning at least one race during the season; with some saying 2016 to be one of the best seasons ever.
• Formula One: Since late 2012, constant debates on "man versus machine" began deeming the motorsport an audience-alienating era with DRS (Drag Reduction System) technology providing "fake overtakes" as well as the domination of Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel, who won four world champions in the controversial "best cars" by 2013. The backdrafts, however, started went out of control in 2014 with the hybrid V6 turbo engine, which failed the huge expectation from the sport: The engines are too quiet, the cars are significantly slower, and the domination reign simply changed to another team (in this case the Mercedes team headed by Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, though Red Bull has shown signs of catching up, and the AlphaTauri-Honda team managed to get a win in 2020). YouTube comments cannot shut up on how bad the sport is compared to the golden age of the 80s, which doesn't help when drivers and the elites themselves are not happy with the technology over-assisted cars providing "boring" races.
• Open wheel racing in North America:
  • The Split, in which Tony George founded the Indy Racing League to compete with Champ Car in anger over how much control the richest teams had over the league. The rivalry between the two leagues got vicious until Champ Car reunited with IRL following their bankruptcy. It was only in the late 2010's-about ten years after the merger-that people felt the effects of The Split were no longer affecting IndyCar.
  • Despite celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis 500, the nadir of this audience-alienating era is generally agreed to be 2011, which had, amongst other issues, inconsistent officiating, excessive crashing, a gimmicky double race at Texas^note After the first half of the race, which awarded half points, the drivers did a blind draw for their starting position in the second race that left the points leader mired in the back while second place in the points managed to win in the second half, an idiotic attempt to restart the race a New Hampshire despite the fact that it was wetter than when they originally flew the rain yellow^note and this was the drivers' and team owners' opinion of the restart, not just the fans. It also led to the briefly memetic double bird from Will Power resulting in a five-car wreck as soon as the green waved, and finally the ill-fated race at Las Vegas which was canceled after a massive accident (many would say the worst in American motorsports history) that killed Dan Wheldon (who had won the Indianapolis 500 earlier that year), injured several other drivers, and brought IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard under intense scrutiny for thinking going back to Las Vegas, which had been reconfigured in 2007 specifically for NASCAR, and then allowing 34 cars to race (for comparison, the maximum field size for the Indy 500 is 33) AND allow so many one-off entries driven by young drivers who had no experience at Las Vegas, was a good idea. This fatal crash, along with another incident in 2015 where Ryan Briscoe flipped at Auto Club Speedway, has led to IndyCar phasing out all ovals of over one mile, save for Indianapolis itself, from the schedule, which has the unfortunate side effect of permanently removing several historic tracks with deep ties to the series such as Pocono and Michigan from the schedule completely.
  • IndyCar saw its trademark oval races decline in The New '10s thanks to poor attendance, racing that was either seen to be boring or dangerous (such as Dan Wheldon's fatal crash at Las Vegas), and tracks reconfiguring for NASCAR in a way that made them unsuitable for open-wheel racing, but the nadir is widely considered to be 2021, which had just four oval races at three tracks^note less than a quarter of the schedule, (Indianapolis itself, Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway in St. Louis) which were the only oval tracks that had consistently made money over the last decade. And even of those three, Texas suffered from having the controversial traction compound PJ1 slathered all over it in an attempt to provide more competitive NASCAR racing, which hampered the IndyCars badly; the declining turnout there seemed to indicate that it, too, will leave the schedule after its contract is up in 2022. While 2022 saw a possible sign of improvement with the news that fan-favorite oval Iowa Speedway is set to return to the schedule, the IRL days of ovals making up half or more of the schedule is long gone, and many fans see it as an inevitable that the Indianapolis 500 will eventually end up as the only oval race on the schedule. Of the fifteen oval tracks that made up the 2003 IndyCar schedule, only three remain, and many historic tracks such as the two other legs of the Triple Crown (Michigan and Fontana, and with the latter's planned reconfiguration into a half-mile short track, it's doubtful if open-wheel racing will ever go there again) have been dropped completely. Fans tend to note with some irony that an organization descended from the Indy Racing League, which was designed to emphasize oval racing and homegrown talent, has essentially become the same as CART that it split off from—a road- and street-course heavy series dominated by Formula One transplants.

National Basketball Association

• When talking about Audience-Alienating Eras, no team has arguably dealt with them for the longest time in the NBA than the Los Angeles Clippers. The tragic thing is they weren't always in such an age; back when they played as the Buffalo Braves, they were considered a pretty respectable team, with future Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo and Ernie DiGregorio both winning Rookie of the Year Awards in back-to-back seasons and three straight playoff appearances, including a first-round series win in 1976, making them look like they would have a bright future in Buffalo. Unfortunately, Executive Meddling of the highest order is the cause of (one of) the longest Audience-Alienating Era(s) in NBA history, starting with new ownership (by technical trading of ownership with the Boston Celtics) leading to them forcing a move out of Buffalo and into California instead. With immediate moves to force the team's decline, including the removals of McAdoo and DiGregorio, the Braves were given permission to move out of Buffalo and go to San Diego in 1978 to become the Clippers that we know today. However, while they had a rough start in San Diego, their nightmare only truly began once the team was sold to the most reviled owner in NBA history: Donald Sterling.
  • Sterling has had a truly infamous history of racism involved with his business ventures. Despite that, he was encouraged to own an NBA team by his friend Jerry Buss and gained ownership with the Clippers in 1982. However, he immediately degraded the Clippers' value in his first year of ownership despite Blatant Lies on wanting to make the Clippers a team that they'd be proud of, and other team owners almost forced him out immediately. Unfortunately for Clippers fans, David Stern did not take his ownership problems seriously throughout his entire tenure in the NBA despite multiple complaints all over the league. In fact, Sterling forced the team to move to Los Angeles for the purpose of an ill-fated in-city rivalry with Buss' Lakers in 1984, which succeeded due to results of the Oakland Raiders moving to Los Angeles earlier on. Once in Los Angeles, the Clippers' woes continued going on there still, with their last few seasons in Buffalo (starting in the 1976-77 season) going into the 1990-91 season in Los Angeles second only to the Sacramento Kings' playoff drought (which lasted from the 2006-2007 season to 2023) for the longest playoff drought in league history. In fact, the team's last few seasons during that drought also had them hold the distinct honor of having Lakers Hall of Fame legend Elgin Baylor as a team executive there. Strangely enough, despite the Clippers never really even getting to the Conference Finals in his run, Baylor continued working with the Clippers until 2008, only leaving either because of retirement or because he could no longer handle Sterling's (racist) crap any longer than he already had to^*(In fairness to Baylor as an executive, he did win an Executive of The Year Award in 2006 due to the surprising nature of the Clippers being a competitive team in the 2005-06 season, to the point where they took the injured Phoenix Suns to seven games in the Western Conference Semifinals after only making it to the Playoffs three time since their moves from Buffalo to San Diego and then Los Angeles. However, it should be pointed out their success that season was completely in spite of Sterling's garbage involving his ownership.). Their failure was so well-known to the public eye that they not only forced a rule change like the NBA Draft Lottery to occur in the first place in order to avoid forcing the worst team in the NBA to get (arguably) the best talent coming into the NBA (like Patrick Ewing, for example), but were also easily the Butt-Monkey of basketball jokes in media pieces like The Simpsons and Family Guy by that point in time.
    • Even their time trying to escape the Audience-Alienating Era has been met with executive problems, with or without Sterling in mind. Their first scrappy claws out of it came when they were lucky enough to get the #1 pick in 2009 to select the high-flying athletic star power forward Blake Griffin to join the team. While he couldn't give them immediate success due to a season-ending injury occurring in a preseason game during his first season in the NBA, his official rookie season got eyes popping for the Clippers immediately due to his insane-looking slam dunks against his victims at the time combined with him using his body to destroy both ends of the court there, which helped lead to him being a Rookie of The Year winner (the team's first in L.A. after having three winners in Buffalo and only one in San Diego) and an immediate star in his NBA career. Then after ignorantly trading away their #1 pick in 2011 (which became Kyrie Irving) due to them foolishly thinking it wouldn't fall into a #1 selection at the time, the Clippers were given a lucky break in the 2011 lockout after a trade with Chris Paul going to the Lakers failed due to "basketball reasons", which eventually led to them getting Chris Paul in a trade that actually did materialize in their favor. With the addition of CP3 from New Orleans, the Clippers suddenly turned from a surprisingly good team to an immediate championship contender, even taking over talk shows that used to cover the Lakers on a constant basis at one point. Combine that with improved results from 2008 second-round pick DeAndre Jordan also having dunking highlights comparable to Blake Griffin's, and it was there that "Lob City" was born. However, the Clippers couldn't truly escape from Donald Sterling's shadow until a leaked, racist conversation with his mistress came out during the 2014 NBA Playoffs, which prompted team protests on the court against the old man before new commissioner Adam Silver took the drastic measure of permanently banning Sterling from the NBA for life (a measure never taken before in the NBA and hasn't been taken since as of June 2023). Once Sterling was officially replaced by current Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer, the team's competitive perception changed permanently as well... at least in terms of them no longer being perennial losers. In terms of competitive playoff success, they never could break past the second round of the playoffs during their "Lob City" era and even thought they were going to have another Audience-Alienating Era once that era waned away (with the worst of "Lob City" occurring in 2015 by the Clippers blowing a 3-1 series lead and one of their losses coming from an incredible late comeback by Houston) before their unexpected success after Chris Paul and Blake Griffin's exits led to them getting a new dynamic duo of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George leading their way going forward. While they didn't surpass the second round of the playoffs yet again in the 2020 NBA Bubble by blowing yet another 3-1 series lead (thus making it 50 years without a single conference finals appearance), they finally managed to break through that barrier a year later in 2021 when they replaced Doc Rivers (who was their most successful coach at the time due to being with the "Lob City" Clippers) with Tyronn Lue as their new head coach. In fact, Clippers fans can have a legit claim where if Kawhi Leonard wasn't injured during their semifinals series against the Utah Jazz, they not only would have beaten the Phoenix Suns (who were escaping an Audience-Alienating Era of their own in that time, as seen below), but also could have won the 2021 NBA Finals over the Milwaukee Bucks, if not remained as competitive against them as the Suns were to them.
• Michael Jordan, the famed basketball player, playing professional baseball. Even he admits he wasn't that good (though he made it to the AA level, something most pro baseball hopefuls never achieve) and that it was mostly a chance to clear his head after his father's death, a process not fully completed until he helped classic Looney Tunes characters triumph over the diabolical Mon-Stars. 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 few people would be surprised. Also, Washington Wizards MJ, tragically immortalized 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.
• There was the seismic collapse of the Chicago Bulls after their second three-peat, with the aforementioned Jordan retiring for the second time, Phil Jackson sitting out the next season and later resurfacing as the new head coach of the Lakers. Luc Longley, Scottie Pippen, Steve Kerr, and Dennis Rodman all left as well, and the Bulls wouldn't see the playoffs again until 2005.
• The New York Knicks have been in a Audience-Alienating Era since 1973, the last year they won the championship, especially since they have only made the NBA Finals twice in a 40+ year span. But the years following that last Finals trip in 1999 have been especially lean. The Knicks have only made it past the first round of the playoffs once since 2001, missing the playoffs 10 times in that span. They have brought in the likes of Lenny Wilkens, Larry Brown, Isiah Thomas and even Phil Jackson to turn things around, and yet things just seem to get worse and worse. Jackson’s first year as team president saw them hit rock bottom, as their 17 wins in 2014–15 were the fewest in franchise history - for a team that dates back to the NBA's founding, including the early years where they played at least 20 games fewer in a season than they do now. Not helping is Jackson's Born in the Wrong Century attitude, as he repeatedly made statements on how teams could not win titles if their offense revolves around three-point shooting. Knicks fans facepalmed as four of the top five 3-point shooting teams made the conference finals (with the fifth team, the Clippers, knocked out the previous round) with the title going to the Golden State Warriors, led by MVP Stephen Curry, who broke his own record for most 3s made in a season, as well as setting a new playoff record.
• The '90s in general were this for any team who weren't the Chicago Bulls, Houston Rockets, and San Antonio Spurs, but no one had it worse than the Dallas Mavericks - as in, no one had a worse winning percentage in that decade among all the major pro sports franchises. They missed the playoffs for 10 straight years, in a league where eighth place gets you in the playoffs. They were most known for trying to build around the trio of Jason Kidd, Jim Jackson and Jamal Mashburn (who were nicknamed "The 3 J's") and it failed 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 Audience-Alienating Era ended when Mark Cuban bought the team from Perot in January 2000; the Mavs returned to the playoffs the next year and would not miss out again until 2013, finally winning it all in 2011. The heart and soul of the Mavs in the Cuban era, Dirk Nowitzki, retired in 2019, but the Mavs stayed relevant by picking up Luka Dončić in the 2018 draft^*He was actually drafted by the Atlanta Hawks, but the Mavs traded for him on draft day. and getting him a running mate in Kristaps Porziņģis in 2019 and then Kyrie Irving in 2023.
• The '90s were also unkind to several NBA teams fashion-wise, with the popularity of screenprinting; the sublimated dye process allowing teams to create graphic-laden jerseys without excessive amounts of embroidery, or less durable heat-transferred vinyl appliques. However, the Screen Fever led to some designs not well-received in the long run...^note It should be worth noting that thanks to a heavy case of Nostalgia Filter, some of these uniforms have seen the light of day again at the end of the 2010s and the early part of the 2020s.
  • The Philadelphia 76ers adopted this star-laden look◊ that was more fitting for an All-Star team. (The actual All-Star jerseys◊ from that time weren't that far off, either.) Another team that experimented in the early 90s: the New Jersey Nets◊, whose tie-dye road jerseys only lasted one season.
  • In 1996, the Detroit Pistons switched their primary colors from the Blue and Red of the Bad Boys era to a Teal and Burgundy combination◊ that was (at the time) loathed by the fanbase. And that's not even getting into the very gaudy logo that Detroit used at that time. Pistons fans derisively refer to this era (1996-2001) as the "Teal Era".
  • The Golden State Warriors underwent a drastic style change after being purchased by Chris Cohan in 1997, abandoning the Blue and Yellow they had worn since they moved to the Bay and utilizing an Orange and Navy Blue color scheme. Unsurprisingly, fans cheered when new owner Joe Lacob announced the return of Blue and Yellow in 2010 ^note  The Warriors' improved fortunes after the return of the new colors probably helped as well . That being said, the second iteration (worn from 2001-2010) of the Orange-and-Navy jerseys (nicknamed the "We Believe" Jerseys due to their association with the Dubs' upset of the Mavericks in the 2007 playoffs) has been viewed more favorably among the fanbase; so much so that the Warriors revived said jerseys during Golden State's last game at Oracle Arena. ^note  The first iteration (1997-2001) has less fans, in part due to a gaudy, thunderbolt-filled design that just screams "Screen Fever".
  • After their 1995 championship, the Houston Rockets replaced the plain red, white, and yellow look that the team sported during most of their history with an drastically different navy, red and silver aesthetic that featured weirdly pinstriped jerseys (oft-compared to pajamas!) and a logo that featured a snarling cartoon rocket.◊ Fans didn't miss that look very much after the team introduced a more stylish red and white look during the Yao Ming era.
  • Fans of the Utah Jazz had endlessly debated over the Jazz's decision in 1996 to abandon the music note logo that they had worn since the very beginning in favor of a logo that emphasized the Wasatch mountain range.◊ Supporters of the logo change note that the many iterations of the "Mountain" logo are more emblematic of Utah, while opponents have bemoaned that said logos had no "Jazz" elements in them. Perhaps in response, the Jazz returned to using the Music Note logo in their Jerseys in 2010, before completely abandoning the Mountain logo and making the Music Note the primary logo in 2016.
  • Cleveland Cavaliers fans weren't too keen on the team changing their colors from wine and gold to orange and blue in 1983. The 1995 switch to black and light blue was received more poorly, in part due to the horrible uniforms that the Cavs wore during that time period. The return of wine and gold was celebrated in 2003, although the arrival of LeBron James may have played a factor into that.
  • Among some of the other questionable looks of the 90s: Atlanta◊, Milwaukee◊ (just a third jersey, thankfully) and Toronto◊.
• Prior to this, the NBA had an Audience-Alienating Era for most of The '70s. Unlike the '50s and '60s which were dominated by the Boston Celtics, the '80s, which saw the epic Lakers vs. Celtics rivalry and the rise of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan, and the '90s, which was the decade of the Chicago Bulls, the '70s did not have a single dominating team standing out from the rest. Many times, you never knew whether a team would be eliminated in the first round of the playoffs or go all the way to the Finals, and overall, there was too much parity for comfort. Then there was the lack of exciting, highlight reel-quality players outside of Julius Erving and David Thompson (many were instead on the rival ABA before it merged with NBA in 1976). And Thompson, Spencer Haywood, and Marvin Barnes were among many NBA players with known drug problems in a decade when cocaine use among athletes was in vogue; the NBA being a league of cokeheads didn't sit well with a lot of fans.
• Los Angeles Lakers:
  • One down period for the Los Angeles Lakers was the early to mid 90's. After the "Showtime" team effectively disbanded with Magic Johnson's HIV-induced retirement, the Lakers went from being a Championship contender to an also-ran in the Western Conference. Despite having young stars such as Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Vlade Divac, and Cedric Ceballos, the Lakers were first or second round playoff fodder, with the proud franchise even missing the playoffs in 1994. Acquiring Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in 1996 put the Lakers on the upswing, but the A.A.E. only truly ended when Phil Jackson was hired and the Lakers won the 2000 NBA Finals.
  • A more severe dark age started in The New '10s, and lasted until the dawn of the next decade. After winning 2 championships with the Kobe Bryant-Pau Gasol-Phil Jackson core, the aging Lakers started to fall behind in a competitive Western Conference that featured both veteran contenders (e.g the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs) and young, promising squads (the Oklahoma City Thunder and L.A. Clippers). After the NBA blocked the Lakers' attempt to trade for Chris Paul, the Lakers took a page out of the Miami Heat's book and built a "superteam" by bringing in superstars Dwight Howard and Steve Nash through trades in 2012. The experiment backfired spectacularly; the Lakers had chemistry issues among their teammates, most notably between Bryant and Howard, which had them struggle en route to an 8th seed in the playoffs and got swept by the San Antonio Spurs. (And to make it worse, longtime owner Jerry Buss died that season.) The next season was a lot harsher, as Dwight Howard left for Houston, Kobe and Steve Nash were out for almost the entire season thanks to injuries, and the Lakers ended up missing the playoffs for the first time since 2005. The pain train just kept chugging on for the Lakers as The New '10s continued; superstars (e.g. Pau Gasol) left, an aging Kobe Bryant struggled with injuries, co-owner Jim Buss and GM Mitch Kupchak filled the once proud franchise with scrubs (e.g. Ed Davis, Ronnie Price) that would've been cut from past Laker squads, and the Lakers kept missing out on the playoffs. The 2015-16 Lakers ended up posting their worst record in franchise history, 17–65, though retiring star Kobe Bryant went out in style with a season-leading 60-point performance in his final game. While Kobe's retirement did give the Lakers a huge amount of cap room, his salary came off the books at the exact time that the league's huge new TV deal gave many teams lots of cap room as well, rendering the Lakers' advantage moot. Things started to go on an upward trend when Jim Buss and Kupchak were finally let go by Jim's sister and co-owner Jeanie and were succeeded by Hall of Famer Magic Johnson. After improving to 35 wins, the Lakers managed to get LeBron James in free agency, but another season out of the playoffs proved that the Lakers weren't out of the woods just yet. The acquisition of Anthony Davis did put an end to the Lakers' misery, with them returning to the Playoffs in 2020. However, it wasn't all roses for the Lakers that season, as Kobe died in a helicopter crash. And their return did coincide with the COVID-19 Pandemic starting around that time, though they were confirmed in for the Playoffs that season before COVID-19 questioned whether they could even play again that year.
    To make matters worse for Lakers fans, the Lakers' most recent decline coincided with two perennially tortured California teams, the Los Angeles Clippers (commonly mocked by many as the "other team" in L.A.) and the Golden State Warriors, becoming perennial powerhouses. The Clippers, who already had young stars Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, rose to prominence once they obtained Chris Paul and took the league by storm with their high-flying "Lob City" offense. Once the Lob City era ended, the Clippers built quietly around a younger squad before signing Kawhi Leonard and Paul George and becoming a contender once again. The Warriors slowly built their team thru the draft and free agency (culminating in the blockbuster signing of Kevin Durant in 2016), and later became known for their high-scoring perimeter offense (which featured "Splash Brothers" Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson) and an underrated yet suffocating defense, which would lead to the Dubs upstaging both L.A. teams by dominating the league and winning the title in 2015, 2017, and 2018 (with all wins coming against LeBron himself!). If the Kings' youthful yet promising team ever gotten its act together, then the Lakers could have ended up being the butt of jokes in the State of California. However, 2020 had the Lakers return to the playoffs and made it all the way to the Finals, eventually securing their 17th championship title in their history by defeating the Miami Heat in six games; thus, the Lakers' Audience-Alienating Era of The New '10s appears to finally have ended.
• For the Phoenix Suns, their age was also in The New '10s, though that lasted until arguably the period of the COVID-19 Pandemic due to more serious factors relating to team management at the time (mainly with Executive Meddling). After Steve Kerr resigned from his general manager position (later being replaced by a duo of Lance Blanks & Lon Babby) and then failing to get Amar'e Stoudemire to re-sign with the Suns on a five-year deal for $100 million (provided he met special benefits warranting the full deal) for a similar deal being fully guaranteed by the New York Knicks, the Suns failed to make Steve Nash's final years with the formerly Seven Seconds Or Less-defined Suns competitive, to the point of deciding to trade him to the rivaling Los Angeles Lakers for two first round picks and two second round picks. After finishing what appeared to be their worst season yet at the time in the 2012–13 season (led by Goran Dragić, defensive small forward P.J. Tucker, and not much else of worthwhile note), the Suns fired general manager Lance Blanks and replaced him with Ryan McDonough, who previously was an assistant general manager of the Boston Celtics during their last championship in 2008. Initially, their age was thought to have ended with a few key moves (notably trading for defensive point guard Eric Bledsoe, center Miles Plumlee, and shooting guard Gerald Green) and Channing Frye returning after a health scare with his heart improving the Suns from a 25–57 record to a 48–34 record (though still missing the Playoffs despite the improved record), with it not even being such an age at all. However, a few misguided decisions the following season afterward (letting go of Channing Frye and going after Isaiah Thomas while also deciding not to trade Eric Bledsoe after holding out for his own good deal) led to the Suns deciding to turn over nearly their entire roster from that season going into February 2015, which led to their darkest time in franchise history.
  • While the Suns did select a surprise superstar shooting guard in Devin Booker (who actually started out as a Sixth Man for the University of Kentucky in their 2014-15 season), the misguided moves and trades they did in that period of time led to serious discontent within the organization, to the point of the general management even making bold statements favoring the Suns and dissing the dissuading players in question that wanted out due to the situation they were in. Their decisions in the NBA Draft didn't help things out either, with some players like Alex Len and Josh Jackson only being decent at best (with Josh Jackson having serious legal issues both before and during his time in Phoenix), and others like Dragan Bender & Marquese Chriss being busts that flamed out hard there. In fact, their rosters were so bereft of veteran talents that they set multiple records for youngest rosters ever in NBA history... though their results really weren't anything to run home toward. By the end of the 2018-19 season, which had them selecting right multiple times in the first round for once (at least, as right as they could be) with Deandre Ayton at #1 (their first ever #1 pick) and then trading up for Mikal Bridges at #10 after previously trading his draft rights with the Suns to Philadelphia back in 2015 for the 2018 draft, they not only had their newest second-worst record ever at 19-63 (after previously having seasons of 23 wins, 24 wins, and 21 wins by that point with Devin Booker around), but had their worst five-season stretch ever, had a coaching carousel of seven different head coaches that lasted seven seasons long, and even fired Ryan McDonough to then have two interim general managers working together for the rest of that season before it even actually began (eventually leading to former Suns player and then-interim general manager James Jones being the permanent general manager for them going forward).
  • Ironically enough, it was that same season that sewed the real seeds of improvement there, starting with them trading for Kelly Oubre Jr. (who wasn't even their original target at the time^*[Originally, the Suns planned for a three-way trade which featured them gaining Dillon Brooks & Wayne Selden from Memphis in exchange for Trevor Ariza returning to Washington and Kelly Oubre Jr. going to Memphis before a mix-up between Dillon and Mar'Shon Brooks led to Memphis being cut out altogether, leading to the Suns getting Oubre and Austin Rivers for Ariza instead.]) that season. His positive attitude helped quell the problems that team had within, which led to James Jones firing head coach Igor Kokoškov and replacing him with Philadelphia 76ers assistant coach Monty Williams going forward. Even after failing to move up into the Top 2 yet again, Jones made a bold trade down to select Cameron Johnson (a 24-year-old senior guard/forward with injury concerns from North Carolina) at Pick 11 and Dario Šarić from Minnesota for the 2019 draft. Jones then capped it off with more trades that led to them getting Australian center Aron Baynes and a defensive point guard in Jevon Carter, which helped get them the money to sign leading, playmaking point guard Ricky Rubio in free agency. The Suns saw some good improvement in March 2020, going 26-39 (already their best season in five years) before the COVID-19 pandemic almost ended their promising season prematurely. When they were given the chance to play for the Playoffs that year in the 2020 NBA Bubble, they made what appeared to have been an underwhelming bench guard signing at the time with Cameron Payne and in spite of very poor expectations held with their prior history in the 2010s, they became the only team to be undefeated in that setting, with Payne performing better than expected and most of the players there improving significantly in those games as well. While they still missed out on the Playoffs that year, leading to a decade-long drought, their efforts in the Bubble was enough to have Chris Paul be convinced to join the Suns, with Jae Crowder also being interested during free agency that year. By that season, the Suns not only improved to be in the Playoffs for the first time since 2010, but also were the second-best team that season, becoming the first team ever to make it to the NBA Finals after missing out on the Playoffs for a decade or more, and were an ill-timed Dario Šarić injury away from earning their happy ending by winning their first ever NBA Finals championship in 2021. While the pandemic has led to many problems for many people and teams, the Suns can say they actually benefitted from it in the long term. Even when team owner Robert Sarver was being investigated and after the investigation came to light on him being a Faux Affably Evil Slime Ball behind the scenes, they still managed to continue the good times since then, with the first season after the NBA Finals appearance giving them a franchise-best 64-18 record (despite starting the season out 1-3 at first) and the second season leading to the Suns getting new team owners in brothers Mathew and Justin Ishbia on February 7, 2023 and then acquiring superstar forward Kevin Durant two days later.
• Given that the Golden State Warriors have been the NBA's best (and most hated) team since the middle of The New '10s, it's tough to remember that they were a complete joke from 1975 to 2015. The Warriors were actually a decent to good team during their early years (first in Philadelphia until 1962, then in the San Francisco Bay Area since then), boasting three Championships (in 1947 ^note The first ever NBA (then known as the BAA) championship, 1956, and 1975), and NBA legends such as Joe Fulks, Al Attles, Wilt Chamberlain, Nate Thurmond, and Rick Barry. In the years following the 1975 Championship, though, it was constant pain for Warriors fans, as the Dubs turned into one of the league's whipping boys thanks to constant playoff misses, bad draft choices (e.g. Joe Barry Carroll and Chris Washburn), and uninspired player transactions (the team let go of Robert Parish, who became a key member of the 80's Celtics' dynasty). There was some respite in the late 80's and early 90's, as the fast-paced Run TMC trio wowed fans with their lightning-fast play and high-octane offense. Unfortunately, the end of the Run TMC era ushered in an even darker period from 1994 to 2012 when the Dubs missed the playoffs every season except for a one-off cameo in 2007 (known as the "We Believe" Warriors). Despite some bright spots (the aforementioned "We Believe" team and their upset of the first-seed Mavericks, the presence of studs such as Antawn Jamison and Jason Richardson), that period was filled with crappy draft picks (Joe Smith over Kevin Garnett, Todd Fuller over Kobe Bryant etc.), poor personnel decisions (huge contracts given to scrubs like Erick Dampier and Andris Biedriņš, signing past-their-prime players like Terry Cummings and John Starks), and several controversies (Latrell Sprewell choking his coach, Monta Ellis getting into a moped accident). The Warriors fans' suffering would come to a close as the Warriors ended up getting a much-needed ownership change, while smartly using key draft picks (mostly earned from near-constant suckitude) on building blocks such as Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green. Such a transition ended up bringing the Dubs back into the playoffs in 2013, and a further coaching change with Steve Kerr taking over by 2015 reaped five NBA Finals appearances, four championships, an NBA record for regular-season wins, an NBA playoffs record, and Kevin Durant for three of those titles, ensuring that the stench of the Dubs' 40-year long Audience-Alienating Era is dead and gone.
• The storied Boston Celtics also had quite the dark age of their own once the star-studded Larry Bird-led teams of the '80s fell apart. The A.A.E. began on a tragic note, as Bird's would-be successor Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. The Celtics would still remain competitive for a while, but Larry Bird's numerous back and foot issues would start to plague the team as they fell from a Title Contender to an also-ran. Boston would drop like a stone once The '90s started rolling: Larry Bird retired in 1992, promising young star Reggie Lewis died in 1993 due to heart issues, aging stars Kevin McHale and Robert Parish left the team, and a gutted Celtics team would miss the playoffs for the first time in 1994. The Celtics then spent the middle part of the decade retooling their roster with younger players, with some panning out (Dino Radja, Dee Brown, David Wesley, Rick Fox) and some flopping (Eric Montross, Eric Williams, Dana Barros), but could never quite get over the hump in a stacked Eastern Conference, culminating in the team losing a franchise-record 67 games in 1996. While the playoff misses continued as the 90's drew to a close, the Celtics seemed to be on the way to renewed glory under renowned college coach Rick Pitino, sporting younger stars like Paul Pierce, Chauncey Billups, and Antoine Walker. While the likes of Pitino and Billups ended up as relative disappointments, Pierce would end up becoming the Celtics' newest franchise player. His rise to stardom coincided with the team crawling back to respectability in the 2000s, culminating in Boston finally winning their 17th championship in 2008 once Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, and Ray Allen arrived.
• The Philadelphia 76ers have had three distinctive Dark Periods in their history, following mostly the same pattern (Sixers lose stars, try to rebuild, then succeed once they stumble upon a star player).
  • After Wilt Chamberlain was traded to the Lakers in 1967, the Sixers spiraled downhill as star players Chet Walker and Billy Cunningham followed suit, which led to the team missing the playoffs for the first time ever in 1972. Next season saw the team reach new lows, as a depleted Sixers squad containing a past-it Hal Greer and a bunch of nobodies posted a 9-73 record, which stood for the longest time as the worst ever season record in NBA history. Philly bounced back to playoff contention shortly afterwards, signing George McGinnis, drafting Darryl Dawkins, and hiring Gene Shue as coach. The Sixers then acquired Julius Erving from the Nets after 1976's ABA-NBA merger, which brought the team back into the ranks of the NBA's elite.
  • While Erving's retirement didn't hurt the Sixers too much due to the emergence of Charles Barkley, Barkley's own trade to the Phoenix Suns brought the team down to mediocrity throughout the mid-90's. Said period was characterized by constant playoff misses, free agency disappointments (e.g. Scott Skiles, Charles Shackleford, an aging Orlando Woolridge), draft busts (Shawn Bradley over Penny Hardaway, Sharone Wright over Eddie Jones), and ugly, star-laden uniforms. Philadelphia would only climb back to respectability soon after they drafted Allen Iverson first overall in 1996.
  • After failed attempts to rebuild in the post-Iverson era left the Sixers as an Eastern Conference also-ran in the early New Tens, new Sixers GM Sam Hinkie proceeded to do the unthinkable and spent the 2013 offseason trading away star player Jrue Holiday and letting go of other key veterans, intending to build the 76ers from scratch with youth. Hinkie's plan (nicknamed "The Process") was to have the team constantly struggling, which would earn the Sixers high draft picks that they would then use to draft a youthful and talented core of players for the future. Unfortunately, the plan didn't quite work out as well at first, with 2014 draftee Joel Embiid and 2016 draftee Ben Simmons missing significant time due to injuries (Embiid missed what should have been his first two seasons, while Simmons missed his original rookie season), while the other picks (Nerlens Noel, Michael Carter-Williams, Jahlil Okafor, Markelle Fultz) wound up as relative disappointments. The Sixers' continued ineptitude and lack of progress led many to believe at that time that "The Process" was a failure, which may have contributed to Hinkie's resignation in 2016. "The Process" finally paid off once Embiid and Simmons overcame their injury issues and made their long-awaited debuts in 2016 and 2017, respectively, as the two of them became All-Star talents and subsequently brought the 76ers back into playoff contention in 2018.
• The Portland Trail Blazers' "Jail Blazer" era of the early to mid-2000's is considered to be this by Blazers fans. At the start of the "Jail Blazers" era (after they blew a 16-point lead against the Lakers in Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals), the Blazers played host to players with frequent off-the-court troubles such as Rasheed Wallace, Qyntel Woods, Zach Randolph, Darius Miles, Bonzi Wells, Ruben Patterson, and Damon Stoudamire. While the team remained successful at first, fans weren't receptive to the frequent legal troubles of the teams' stars. Portland attempted to improve the team's image by trading away the troublesome Wallace and Wells in 2003, but that only served to mire the Trail Blazers in mediocrity while the on-and-off the court issues of the remaining "Jail Blazers" (e.g. Patterson, Randolph, Miles) continued to alienate fans. It wasn't until the latter part of the decade that Portland's fortunes improved; by that time, many of the "Jail Blazers" had left, and the Blazers would proceed to build around talented AND relatively trouble-free young stars such as LaMarcus Aldridge, Brandon Roy, and most notably Damian Lillard.^note  That being said, the Blazers did commit one of the most infamous Draft day fuck-ups around that time, selecting Greg Oden over Kevin Durant in 2007.
• The first incarnation of the Charlotte Hornets ended on a case of this that happened not because of a bad team, as it reached the playoffs all three years, but controversy: owner George Shinn was accused of kidnapping and rape in a highly publicized trial that was broadcast nationwide on Court TV, and while the criminal charges were dropped, cases of sexual harassment and extramarital affairs were revealed in the process. With that to tarnish his image and quite a few questionable business decisions (including not being willing to shell out money for players or a new arena deal), the public turned on him and stopped going to the Hornets games in protest, and a team that sold out nearly 9 seasons straight now was the lowest-attended, at times with barely a thousand people present. Ultimately Shinn saw no choice to keep control of the team other than moving it to New Orleans. (The NBA has since treated the team after the move as the start of a separate entity, now known as New Orleans Pelicans, with a new Charlotte team, first called Bobcats, upon receiving the Hornets name back also getting its history.)
• Even the NBA Draft itself isn't immune to the occasional A.A.E., as exemplified by the infamous 1986, 2000, and 2013 Drafts.
  • The first round of the 1986 Draft started out strong, as talented yet injury-prone center Brad Daugherty went first overall to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The next selection, however, was Len Bias, who infamously died of a cocaine overdose shortly after getting selected by the Boston Celtics. The rest of the first round also featured other players whose careers were ruined by substance abuse, such as Chris Washburn, William Bedford, and Roy Tarpley, which led to the '86 draft being nicknamed "the Drug Draft". Likewise, the first round also suffered from the relative lack of All-Star caliber talent; Daugherty and 24th-overall pick Arvydas Sabonis were the only All-Star selections from the first round, and Sabonis was the only first-rounder in '86 who got inducted into the HOF. ^note Even then, Sabonis' induction was mainly due to his work outside of the NBA. In an ironic twist of fate, most of that draft's best players were selected in the later rounds; Mark Price, Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman, Kevin Duckworth, and Jeff Hornacek were second-round selections, and the late Dražen Petrović, also a Hall of Famer, lasted until the THIRD ROUND. (To put that last selection into perspective, the draft now has only two rounds, though with the league having expanded since then, the Petrović draft slot now translates to the very last one in the current draft.)
  • While the 2000 Draft didn't have the drug issues of '86, it is still considered by many to be the worst NBA Draft Class of all time. The first pick was Kenyon Martin, who was a solid, All-Star caliber forward, but wasn't a transcendental talent like most first-round picks. Most of the higher picks in the first round wound up as colossal busts, as exemplified by the players selected with the second to fourth picks: Stromile Swift, Darius Miles (of "Jail Blazers" infamy), and Marcus Fizer. Additionally, the draft was bereft of top-tier talents; some of the most accomplished players from that class were either talented but injury-ravaged (e.g. Jamaal Magloire, Michael Redd), or were just above-average role players at best (e.g. Mike Miller, Jamal Crawford, Hedo Türkoğlu). It's worth noting that when Sports Illustrated made a list of the worst NBA draft busts in the modern era, the entire 2000 draft class was included as the 6th biggest bust. It's also worth noting that as of Jamal Crawford's retirement in the early 2020s, it's likely to be the only draft year in NBA history to not have a single player be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as an NBA player. (For reference, the lowest amount of players put in for the Hall of Fame in one draft year was 1952, with the last first round pick that year, Clyde Lovellette, being the only player that year to be named an All-Star, never mind a Hall of Famer.)
  • The 2013 Draft might be considered with the same infamy as the above examples in a few years' time. While 2013 draftees Victor Oladipo and three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert blossomed into legitimate NBA stars, Giannis Antetokounmpo exploded into mega-stardom as a two-time MVP and one-time DPOY, and the likes of CJ McCollum and Steven Adams also have had decent careers, the rest of the draft was comparatively underwhelming. The lottery picks (1st-14th spots) consisted of duds such as Alex Len, Ben McLemore, Nerlens Noel, and Trey Burke. The Rookie of the Year award was won by Michael Carter-Williams... who flamed out HARD after a brilliant rookie season and is now a bench-warmer for the Orlando Magic. The biggest mistake of that draft, however, was first overall pick Anthony Bennett, who found himself out of the league four years after the draft and is now considered by many to be the Worst Number One Pick in the NBA's history (over the likes of notable busts like Greg Oden, Kwame Brown, Michael Olowokandi, and LaRue Martin). To make matters worse: the flops listed above all went off the board while Giannis was still available; the future MVP and champion ended up falling all the way to the 15th pick!^note These teams' decisions to pass on Giannis, while certainly very bad in hindsight, were more excusable when placed in context. While his athletic gifts and basketball potential were undeniable, he was still playing on what was a relatively unknown team in Greece's second division. While Greece's top flight is known as a very good European league, its second league is considered semi-pro at best; in this story aired in 2018 on 60 Minutes, his agent likened that league to YMCA (i.e., recreational) basketball. And Giannis wasn't even averaging double-figure points there at that time.
• The NBA as a whole had another case lasting for about a decade after Michael Jordan's second retirement from the Bulls following the 1998 season. Along with the league's marquee name being gone, the lockout and shortened season the very next year sapped a lot of fan enthusiasm right away. Add to that the league going through a phase of very physical, defensive-minded gameplay and snail-like pacing that many found dull; atop its other issues, that 1998-99 season also saw the average per game score dip down to 91.8 points per team, a record low for the shot-clock era and the lowest average since 1953. By 2003-04 it was still a tepid 93.4 PPG. There was also a sense that the league was trying too hard to find and promote the next Jordan, with LeBron James in particular getting touted heavily for this role even before he joined the league. The 2007 finals limped to their lowest TV ratings since before the league's resurgence in The '80s. Once again it fell to the Lakers-Celtics rivalry to jump-start the league, with their 2008 finals pairing almost doubling the previous year's ratings. Some rule changes to encourage more offense also helped the league recover.
• The NBA All-Star Game has been in one arguably since Michael Jordan's retirement, and especially after the retirement of Kobe Bryant, the last major star who really took the game seriously. The Nielsen ratings tell the tale: the game regularly averaged double-digits throughout The '90s, but the 2000 game (minus Jordan and the first ASG after the 1998-99 lockout) fell to a 6.9 rating, and the game has never come close to double-digits again, exacerbated by the game moving from NBC to TNT in 2003. The last time the game exceeded a 5 rating was in 2011. While the ASG was never really meant to be a serious display of competitive basketball, any attempts to play defense have disappeared, as have any real shows of athleticism, since players don't want to risk injury, so the ASG has devolved into a 48-minute shooting and dunking contest with players jogging up and down the court and then standing around while the other team has the ball, no longer hiding their lack of interest, with scoring reaching astronomical levels. In fact, the game itself has long been overshadowed by the other All-Star weekend activities (like the dunk and three-point competitions). The NBA, recognizing how bad things have become, has tried a bunch of gimmicks to Win Back the Crowd, but they've all failed.
  • After the 2017 edition saw both teams combine for 122 three-point attempts, 83 dunks, and 374 points (West beat East 192–182, a year after the West won 196–173), the NBA dropped the Eastern Conference vs. Western Conference format in 2018 and instead designated two captains (LeBron James and Stephen Curry in that first year), who would choose their teammates a week before the game. While the game was more competitive and lower-scoring (Team LeBron won 148–145), the deluge of three-pointers continued, except they missed a whole bunch more than they made (the teams went a combined 36 of 123 from beyond the arc). Also, some fans complained about the team-picking format, since it was hard to keep track of who was supposed to be on which team.
  • In 2019, the players somehow came to the conclusion that the problem was they weren't shooting enough three-pointers! This year, they combined for a record-shattering 167 three-point attempts (out of 275 total field goal attempts). That means a three-pointer was shot every 20 seconds over the course of 48 minutes.
  • In 2020, the NBA introduced a new innovation, the "Elam ending", a system devised by a college professor, which involved turning off the clock in the fourth quarter and instead having the teams play until one of them reached a target score. While generally well-received, some observers found it gimmicky and confusing.
  • While the tweaked ASG limped along the next few seasons, it hit an absolute low point in 2023. This time, the NBA decided to switch to having the captains choose their teams right before the game, playground-style, which led to an awkward incident involving reigning league MVP Nikola Jokić.^explanationJokić thought he was the last player remaining and walked over to join LeBron James' team before James could make an announcement, except Lauri Markkanen of the Utah Jazz was also remaining, making it look like Jokić was dissing Markkanen in a game that Markkanen's team was hosting, though Jokić said he hadn't seen Markkanen. Players complained about introductions and pregame ceremonies dragging on too long. LeBron James didn't bother showing up for the festivities until around 24 hours before game time. Several All-Star selections couldn't play due to injury, the gameplay was still uninspired (the losing coach, Michael Malone, called the 184–175 contest "the worst basketball game ever played"), and ratings plummeted to 2.2, an all-time low.
  • For 2024, the league went back to an East vs. West format and dropped the Elam ending, hoping that a Revisiting the Roots strategy would improve things. It didn't. East beat West 211–186, marking the first NBA game to see a team score 200 points. The Eastern All-Stars fired 97 three-point attempts (making 42), while the Western team added 71 to set a new combined mark of 168. By this point, even NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged that things had gotten ridiculous, saying "To the Eastern Conference All-Stars: You scored the most points. Well, congratulations," in his postgame announcement. In the aftermath, there was lots of talk about how to save the game (financial incentives for the players and a USA vs. international format both mentioned as possibilities), with some people saying the game wasn't even worth saving and should just be dropped.

NCAA Men's Basketball

• If ever there was a Tough Act to Follow in sports, it's being one of the successors to John Wooden, who retired as the head coach of the UCLA Bruins in 1975 after 620 wins and 10 national championships. His immediate replacement, Gene Bartow, came in for the inevitable criticism, but did pretty well for himself, going 52-9 in 2 years before getting hired by the University of Alabama at Birmingham to start their basketball program from scratch. His replacement, Gary Cunningham, kept up a similar pace, with a 50-8 record in two years. But Cunningham, who felt more comfortable as an administrator than as a coach, suddenly quit to become an athletic director at an NAIA college in Oregon. In the eight seasons after that, they went through three head coaches, only won two Pac-10 championships, and only once got past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. That time was under future Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown in 1979–80, the season after Cunningham left. Brown coached a freshman-dominated team that finished fourth in the Pac-10 all the way to the NCAA championship game, losing to Louisville. He left in 1981, just before the NCAA wiped the Bruins' 1980 tournament appearance from the books when it found that two players on that team were ineligible.^PostscriptThis wasn't Brown's last run-in with the NCAA. He left Kansas in 1988, fresh off a surprising national championship, one step ahead of the NCAA posse. While the Jayhawks didn't lose their national title, they were barred from defending it after the program was found to have attempted to pay a potential transfer to come to KU (said player ended up never transferring). They finally got back to a successful level with the hiring of Jim Harrick as head coach in 1988, ultimately winning a national championship in the 1994-95 season. The next season, going in as a strong contender to repeat, they instead got stunned in the first round by Princeton, in one of the biggest upsets in tournament history. That would be Harrick's last game at UCLA; he got fired after it was revealed that he tried to cover up an incident where he paid for a dinner involving two of his players, a violation of NCAA rules. Since then, it's been a struggle for UCLA to rekindle past glory.
  • Harrick's replacement Steve Lavin took them to six straight NCAA tournaments, but could never get his team past the Sweet Sixteen. Then came the disastrous 2002-03 season, when the Bruins finished 10-19, their first losing season since 1947-48 (the season before John Wooden was hired). This included losses to Northern Arizona and the University of San Diego. Lavin was dumped at the end of the season.
  • After a modest start, Lavin's replacement Ben Howland took UCLA to three consecutive Final Fours. After that, however, the program quickly faded. The Bruins went 14-18 in 2009-10, including losses to two of the lesser lights of college basketball in SoCal, Long Beach State and Cal State Fullerton. A Pac-12 regular season title in 2012 was wiped away by a loss in the conference tournament, then a 20-point humiliation in the NCAA Round of 64 by Minnesota. Howland was fired.
  • Once again the Bruins turned to a young coach named Steve, but Steve Alford proved to be no different than Steve Lavin, as again they failed to make it past the Sweet Sixteen. The last straw came in the 2018–19 season, with a 73–58 loss to Liberty (yes, the university founded by Jerry Falwell), at home in the storied confines of Pauley Pavilion. Alford was let go 13 games into the season. And in a weird symmetry, the Bruins named assistant Murry Bartow as interim coach for the rest of the season. Yes, he's the son of the aforementioned Gene Bartow.
  • And after the end of the season, it became painfully clear just how much the UCLA program had fallen—according to one veteran sportswriter, "Kentucky coach John Calipari shamelessly used UCLA to the point of embarrassment... taking the school’s interest and reported contract offer and flipping it into a so-called ‘lifetime’ contract [at UK]." The same writer closed his story with "A program that for decades was a fixture at the Final Four will be there this season only as the butt of punchlines." Next came a stab at TCU coach Jamie Dixon, who had an $8 million buyout clause. That didn't stop the Bruins from talking with him, and even coming close to a deal... but then when UCLA realized that TCU would hold firm to its buyout amount, it backed off. Another veteran sportswriter used the terms "misguided" and "nonsensical" to describe the coaching search... and that was before another SEC coach, Tennessee's Rick Barnes, fresh off a season that saw the Volunteers reach the #1 ranking in the polls a couple of times (note Volunteers, not Lady Volunteers), reportedly used UCLA in much the same way Calipari had. An admittedly biased post from a site that reports on Kentucky sports said, "In an ironic twist, the UCLA basketball coaching search has turned into a bigger joke than Tennessee football’s last coaching search, all thanks to the Tennessee basketball coach." The Bruins finally lured Mick Cronin from Cincinnati, who in his second season in 2021 brought the Bruins from the First Four (i.e., among the last four teams in the NCAA Tournament, meaning they had to play an extra game to get in the round of 64) all the way to the Final Four.

NCAA Football

• After receiving the NCAA's first-ever "death penalty" (banned from playing games for two years) in 1987,^note Technically, SMU was banned only for the 1987 season, but would have been limited to only road games in 1988; the school decided to sit out 1988 as well since they saw no chance of being competitive. Southern Methodist University would have only one winning season and no bowl games in the 20 years after that, until June Jones took over as coach for the 2008 season and ended the drought the next year. It took the Mustangs until 2019, 32 years, to make it into the top 25 again, and another four years after that to win their next conference title. The sheer destruction of not only SMU's football program but of the Southwest Conference itself caused by the death penalty has been widely assumed to be the reason why the NCAA has never handed out another D-I football death penalty again, even to some programs that fit the criteria for its use.
• The Southwest Conference's breakup in 1995 (which many blame as a result of the SMU Death Penalty) led to Audience-Alienating Eras for most of the schools that didn't immediately go to the Big 12 Conference. TCU, SMU, Houston and Rice have combined to change conferences 13 times since the SWC's end, with one more to come in 2024.^note TCU: Western Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mountain West Conference, Big 12 (the latter after reneging on an announced move to the Big East); SMU: WAC, CUSA, American Athletic Conference, with a move to the Atlantic Coast Conference coming in 2024; Houston: CUSA, The American, Big 12; Rice: WAC, CUSA, The American Only TCU has produced a consistently winning program among those four. Meanwhile, Baylor getting picked for the Big 12 led to that program's Audience-Alienating Era, as the Bears did not produce a winning season for the first 14 years of the conference's history, including four seasons of going winless in conference (they didn't win more than one conference game in a season until 2005) until Art Briles took over in 2008. Baylor went on to make bowl games in each season from 2010 to 2016, winning the conference championship in 2013. However, revelations that the school had tried to cover up a long string of sexual assaults by players led to a complete housecleaning after the 2015 season, with Briles being fired and both the athletic director and university president resigning. After a bowl appearance in 2016, the Bears looked to be entering a new Audience-Alienating Era, going 1–11 in 2017, but new coach Matt Rhule began to right the ship with a 2018 bowl appearance, and the next season led the Bears into the Big 12 championship game.^note However the season wasn't all rosy, as they did lose their undefeated record by embarrassingly giving up a 25-point lead to Oklahoma, and lost the Big 12 title game in overtime to the same Oklahoma team. Rhule ended up leaving for the NFL after that season, becoming head coach of the Carolina Panthers.
• After David Cutcliffe's 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 conference play. Orgeron would later end up taking LSU to a #1 ranking and a national championship, which makes his incompetence at Ole Miss all the more baffling. Coach O was later let go within 2 years of LSU's national title. After the 2019 season, his defensive coordinator left to take the Baylor head coaching job, and his passing game coordinator left to become an NFL offensive coordinator. After a hugely disappointing .500 season in 2020, both replacements were let go, and two more assistants from the 2019 staff retired from coaching. The 2021 season was little better, with the Tigers finishing 6–6 going into bowl season. It looks more and more like Orgeron caught lightning in a bottle in 2019—getting a season for the ages from QB Joe Burrow, and having a hugely talented receiving corps, a stout defense with a historically great secondary, and an offensive line that was voted the best in the country even though none of its starters went in the first two rounds of the NFL draft. However, the arrival of Brian Kelly as HC in 2022 began to right the ship, with the Tigers winning their division in 2022 and producing the program's third Heisman winner, Jayden Daniels, in 2023.
• The University of Florida's football team has hit several Audience-Alienating Eras ever since the early 2000s retirement of their famed coach Steve Spurrier, with teams ranging from disappointing to outright terrible. The one consistent theme is of coaches that tend to start out strong but quickly regress:
  • Ron Zook, chosen by Spurrier as his successor, was broadly competent and the Gators ended all three of his seasons ranked with bowl berths, but he never managed more than eight wins in a season and his teams had a nasty tendency to lose big against other ranked teams. Fan disappointment led Zook to announce his departure from the program at the end of the 2004 season.
  • The Gators did escape from the Audience-Alienating Era for a little while with the coaching of Urban Meyer, who won them national championships in 2006 and 2008, but slipped back into mediocrity as his health problems caught up to him. He retired due to his health in 2011, then promptly went back on it to go coach Ohio State.
  • Once upon a time, Will Muschamp was considered to be the "coach in waiting" to longtime coach Mack Brown at the University of Texas. Then came his run as head coach with the Gators. Muschamp was heralded as the perfect replacement for Urban Meyer, and it looked like it would be such when the Gators went 11–2 and made the Sugar Bowl in 2012. Then came the 2013 and 2014 seasons which saw the Gators achieve new lows in football and contributed to Muschamp resigning. This era contained "highlights" such as:
    • A complete regression in the offense as the Gators hadn't ranked higher than 103rd nationally even in the year they made the Sugar Bowl.
    • A regression in starting quarterback Jeff Driskel. Once considered to be the best recruit of the 2010 class, he performed worse and worse to the point where NFL and College Football Hall of Famer and former Florida running back Emmitt Smith publicly called for Driskel to be benched.
    • A 4–8 record in 2013, their first losing season since 1979.
    • A 34–10 blowout loss at home against perennial loser Vanderbilt... who hadn't beaten Florida in Gainesville since World War II.
    • A 26–20 loss to Georgia Southern — the first time in school history that Florida had ever lost to a FCS school. It's not exactly unheard of for a FCS school to beat a FBS school, but the way that Georgia Southern did it is important — Georgia Southern beat Florida without completing a pass.^note Granted, Georgia Southern ran a ground-oriented option offense until a new HC installed a pass-oriented offense in 2022, but even in that era, the Eagles typically completed a few passes each game.^PostscriptThe year after this game, Georgia Southern moved to FBS, and has since enjoyed a decent level of success in the Sun Belt Conference. And, after said coaching change, also stuck the final dagger into Scott Frost at Nebraska (see that school's discussion below).
    • Members of the Gators offensive line blocking each other... twice.
  • Jim McElwain was widely seen as a competent successor to Muschamp considering he took the Gators to the SEC championship game in 2015. Cracks began to show in 2016, but the wheels came off the bus big time in 2017:
    • 2016 was a year when the Gators were expected to win big, but in their first major game of the season they choked away an 18-point lead to Tennessee. That wasn't the only humiliation they suffered that year, as they lost by 21 points to Arkansas (who could themselves qualify for a long entry on this page), and were humiliated by in-state rival Florida State during the last game of the season. Somehow, they still managed to make it to another championship game, mainly because Georgia and Tennessee choked even harder, but they were thrashed by Alabama, and it was considered a very big disappointment for a team that had been tipped for bigger things.
    • The 2017 season saw Florida ranked #17 to start, but immediately lost it by falling to Michigan in the first game of the season.
    • The quarterback situation was a mess. First choice Luke Del Rio had been hurt the previous season and still wasn't ready to play. This resulted in Florida having to split their snaps between the perennially underachieving Malik Zaire and the physically talented but unproven Feleipe Franks.
    • In the interim, they beat Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and Tennessee, but considering the first two are the perennial doormats of the SEC East, and the Vols were in an even worse Audience-Alienating Era at this point (detailed below), it could hardly be called an achievement.
    • Following that, the season immediately crashed and burned. Florida lost twice at home to LSU and Texas A&M teams they were expected to beat. Following a 42-7 beating at the hands of conference rival Georgia, McElwain was fired before the day was out. Also not helping was his saying him and his players were receiving death threats, but he failed to provide any evidence of said threats.
    • Firing their coach didn't help, though, and the Gators completed their slide by losing humiliatingly to Missouri and South Carolina (coached by Muschamp) before once again getting embarrassed by Florida State to close out the season.
  • Initially, hiring Mississippi State head coach Dan Mullen for the 2018 season seemed to have done Florida a world of good, as the Gators managed to stay consistently ranked in the latter half of the season, even upsetting #5 LSU and avenging their loss to South Carolina. But they were still upset by Missouri and Kentucky (admittedly, the latter had its best season since the '70s), signaling it was too soon to call whether this Audience-Alienating Era had truly ended or not.
  • 2020 seemed to be the year that Florida was due to challenge for the SEC championship and CFP due to the emergence of Kyle Trask as a superstar quarterback and the one-two receiving combo of Kadarius Toney and Kyle Pitts, along with a lockdown secondary, but ultimately had their season ended by a moment that will go down in the annals of college football infamy. In an unexpectedly close game with a struggling LSU team, late in the fourth quarter Florida's defense stopped LSU outside of field goal range... which Gators cornerback Marco White celebrated by taking an LSU player's shoe and chucking it down the field, drawing a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct flag which gave LSU a first down. LSU would go on to kick the game-winning field goal, effectively ending the Gators' season.
  • And then came 2021. September wasn't all bad; the Gators narrowly lost to then top-ranked Alabama, but were in the top 10 entering October before it all fell apart.
    • First, Florida traveled to Kentucky, a place where the Gators hadn't lost since 1986. Thanks in no small part to 15 penalties, the Gators went down 20–13.
    • After a breather against traditional SEC doormat Vanderbilt, they went to LSU and lost a 49–42 shootout.
    • Next came their traditional rival Georgia, which had taken over the #1 ranking after Bama was upset by Texas A&M. Late in the second quarter, Florida was down 3–0 before an epic meltdown, turning the ball over three times in a 12-play sequence. The first two turnovers were immediately followed by Georgia TDs, and the third was a pick-six^*interception return for a TD, giving Georgia a 24–0 halftime lead. The Bulldogs coasted from there.
    • The following week, they traveled to a South Carolina team coming off a blowout loss to Texas A&M and missing its starting QB to injury. What had been a 10–10 game early in the second quarter turned into a 40–17 blowout loss, giving Mullen his first three-game losing streak in Gainesville. Mullen fired both his defensive coordinator and his offensive line coach after that game.
    • Then came perhaps an even more embarrassing win. The halftime score against Samford—the same Samford that entered the game fifth in its FCS conference, and had a 40-point loss to a conference foe—was Samford 42, Florida 35. It was the most points the Gators had ever given up in a half. The Gators did eventually pull away for a 70–52 win, but the 52 points tied for the most scored by any FCS team against Power Five opposition since the creation of FCS in 1978, and was also the most Florida had ever given up to a school outside the Power Five. At least one writer believed this result made Mullen's eventual firing inevitable.
    • The bleeding didn't stop; the Gators then lost 24–23 to Missouri in overtime, giving up a 2-point conversion for the winning points. This marked the Gators' fourth straight SEC loss and left them with a 2–6 SEC record, their worst since 1979. Mullen was fired the next day. Florida did manage to beat its rival Florida State in the season finale to become bowl-eligible, but needless to say, the season was a huge disappointment as evidenced by their 29-17 loss to UCF in the 2021 Gasparilla Bowl to finish with a losing record of 6-7. On top of that, the Knights were missing several key players to injury, including their starting QB. The UCF loss was the Gators' first to an in-state team other than Florida State or Miami since 1938. The Gators would eventually name Billy Napier, who had just led the Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns to their third straight 10-win season, as Mullen's replacement.
    • Unfortunately, Napier's first year in Gainesville was a major disappointment despite a season-opening win against then-#7 Utah 29-26, which included losses to Kentucky (in back-to-back seasons, no less), Tennessee, Georgia, LSU, perennial SEC doormat Vanderbilt and the season finale against Florida State resulting in another 6-6 season. And to add insult to injury for the Gators, their backup QB was arrested for possession of child pornography after the season and was released, not to mention the fact that the Gators got blown out by Oregon State 30–3 in the 2022 Las Vegas Bowl.
    • Florida began the 2023 campaign on a down note when the Gators lost their season opener against the Utah Utes 24-11. After a breather against FCS McNeese, they surprised ranked Tennessee in Gainesville, and things seemed to be looking up. Next came a disappointing win over Charlotte in which they only scored one TD, though five field goals and a strong defense were more than enough for the W. Then came a visit to Kentucky which saw the Gators get boatraced in the first half, going down 23–0 before the second quarter was half over. Not to mention that Florida had 13 defenders on the field for a later goal-line play and still gave up a TD. The Cats eased from there for their third straight win over the Gators, the first time they had done so since Bear Bryant was their HC. A breather against Vanderbilt and a narrow win over South Carolina were followed by an expected loss to Georgia. Then came a visit by Arkansas, which entered the game on a 6-game losing streak, had one of the worst offenses in the country, and had changed its offensive coordinator. Cue 481 yards of offense by the Razorbacks and a 39–36 overtime win, the Hogs' first ever in The Swamp. The Gators then had to beat one of three ranked teams^note LSU, Missouri, Florida State to even be bowl-eligible, and lost all three. Will Napier's days in Gainesville be numbered? Only time will tell.
• In Florida State, the Seminoles became this after longtime coach Bobby Bowden retired after the 2009 season. While Bowden's successor Jimbo Fisher led the Noles to several winning seasons including a National Championship back in 2013 by defeating Auburn, things began to unravel for the team in 2017 as the Seminoles went 6-6 during the regular season but did win their bowl game. Fisher then left Florida State for Texas A&M after the season. Fisher's successor Willie Taggart, who previously coached at Oregon, would lead the Seminoles to a disappointing 5–7 record and failed to become bowl-eligible for the first time since 1981. The following year, the Seminoles would finish with a lackluster 6–6 record which sealed Taggart's fate in Tallahassee. Florida State then named Memphis' Mike Norvell as its coach, and finished the 2023 regular season unbeaten. However, the Noles had lost their starting QB to injury in their 11th game, and became the first and only unbeaten power conference team left out of the College Football Playoff during its 4-team era. Their Orange Bowl appearance that season arguably qualifies as an AAE in itself—with FSU missing most of its starters to opt-outs, transfers, and injuries, it was destroyed by Georgia 63–3, the biggest blowout in bowl game history and the most lopsided loss in program history.
• The Tennessee Volunteers suffered from one between Phillip Fulmer's departure as head coach at the end of the 2008 season and his departure as athletic director in January 2021, and these are just the coaches responsible:
  • Lane Kiffin went one and done before leaving for USC, causing local outrage... and that was before it was discovered he had engaged in improper recruiting schemes while at UT.
  • Derek Dooley brought the Vols three losing seasons, one bowl appearance, and the "Dumbass Miracle" that was UT's most embarrassing boner of 2010.^note In which LSU totally botched its end-of-game clock management, didn't have a play ready with the clock running out, and fumbled... only to be reprieved when the Vols were caught with 13 men on defense instead of 11. LSU punched it in for the winning TD on the untimed down that followed. The next year, he was on the sidelines for a loss to a Kentucky team that hadn't beaten them since 1984, and had lost its last healthy quarterback to injury the week before, forcing the Wildcats to turn to a wide receiver who hadn't played the position since high school and install a new and very limited offense to accommodate his limitations.^note How limited? In this 10-year retrospective of the Kentucky game, UK's longtime radio play-by-play announcer recalled that when the head coach went over the game plan with his coordinators early in game week, the OC gave him a legal pad with about 10 lines on it, telling the HC that this was all said receiver knew about running the offense.
  • For a while, things looked up with Butch Jones... and then, in 2016, came allegations of a "rape culture" developing under his watch. Despite going 8-4 in the 2016 season and winning a bowl, this was considered to be a major disappointment as the Vols were widely expected to win the SEC East and end up in the conference championship game, and did neither. A speech where Jones declared that despite not winning the championship of the SEC, the seniors had won the "championship of life" became roundly mocked on the internet.
  • Things came to a head in the 2017 season, widely seen as Jones' make it or break it season... and he broke it to a spectacular degree. Lowlights include:
    • After a promising start, coming from behind to beat Georgia Tech in the opening game of the season, losing 26-20 to a Florida team widely seen as being the worst in decades and having the most incompetent coach (Jim McElwain, detailed further in Florida's own section) since Ron Zook. Florida ended up going 3-5 in the conference and ended up with just as few wins as the Vols.
    • After struggling to beat doormat UMass the next week, fans booed the team and walked out before the game was over.
    • A 41-0 thrashing at the hands of conference rival Georgia at home. Quarterback Quinten Dormady performed so poorly that he was given the yank at halftime for unproven freshman Jarrett Guarantano; Dormady never started another game that season.
    • Losing to South Carolina in a game where neither team managed to score a touchdown. After this game, students painted the "Rock" on campus with "FIRE BUTCH".
    • Being predictably beaten by powerhouse Alabama and a Kentucky team having its best season in years.
    • Jones didn't even get to see the end of the season; after Tennessee was blown out 50-17 by Missouri, another team that was winless in conference play, he was shown the door and replaced for the final two games by failed Michigan head coach Brady Hoke. This didn't make things any better, and consecutive losses to LSU and Vanderbilt (yet another team winless in conference play, and a perennial SEC doormat) capped off one of the worst seasons in Volunteer football history, and marked the first time the team had lost 8 games in a season (finishing 4-8). To top things off, they were the only team in the SEC to not manage even a single conference win (even Arkansas, widely considered a dumpster fire, managed to do that), and the team ranked a putrid 116th out of 130 in the FBS for points scored, 107th in passing yards, and 115th in rushing yards, completely wasting the one bright spot on the offense, star running back John Kelly.
    • The only thing keeping fans afloat post-Jones was the hope of an earth-shaking new head coach like Jon Gruden... but the coaching carousel proved fruitless. Jeff Brohm, Mike Gundy, David Cutcliffe, Dave Doeren, and Scott Frost turned Tennessee down, and Dan Mullen ended up going to division rival Florida. Fan ire switched to athletic director John Currie, widely seen as even more incompetent than Jones. Currie was never liked in the first place considering that when he was previously at Tennessee as the assistant athletic director, he was accused of locker room politicking to get Phillip Fulmer fired, and he was widely perceived as being a puppet used by Jimmy Haslam, whose mismanagement of the Cleveland Browns is detailed in the NFL section of this very page, to exert undue influence on the school's athletic programs.^note To be fair, the failure of Currie to find a new head coach wasn't entirely his fault, as reports came out that Fulmer was sabotaging the deals because he still held a grudge against Currie and wanted to get him fired.
    • An ESPN reporter on the morning of November 26, 2017 reported that the Vols had found their new head coach... Greg Schiano, who, to his credit, had taken the Rutgers football program from doormat to contender while he was there. But he was much more well-known for his failure at coaching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and to make matters worse, he had been implicated in covering up the Jerry Sandusky scandal when he was an assistant at Penn State. The fanbase was enraged, and everyone from students to Tennessee state legislators voiced their displeasure. The deal was canceled only a day later.
    • To the relief of most, Currie was finally fired, and Fulmer returned to the program as athletic director, reducing Haslam's toxic influence on the team to a minimal amount... but many Vols fans were dreading the program having to pull an unproven coach from a lower-tier team or hire a coordinator who hasn't been a head coach yet. Many even believed the program had no other choice but to hire Hoke full-time. They ended up luring Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt, though the fact that he lost to West Virginia 40-14 in his debut just goes to show that no matter how good he turns out to be over time, the Vols have a long way to go before they make a full recovery from the utter disaster that was 2017, and the nine-season period that constituted Fulmer's Revenge as a whole—indeed, it had gotten so bad that despite Fulmer's return, bookies have placed UT's odds of coming out on top in the SEC in the 2018 season at 66 to 1—ahead only of Arkansas (80 to 1), Kentucky (100 to 1), and Vanderbilt (150 to 1), and UT had been creamed by Vanderbilt in 2017, which says a hell of a lot about the uphill climb Fulmer and UT are facing. Under Pruitt, the team finally showed itself to be a true competitor with a 59-3 landslide against ETSU—a remarkable reversal of fortune from the West Virginia game the week before, and later on in the season they managed to upset two ranked teams^note Auburn, then Kentucky. The first one was a nailbiter, but the second game wasn't even close—Tennessee kept a margin of two touchdowns nearly the entire game. While the jury was out on whether Pruitt could turn the team's fortunes around, the signs were at least promising... until Tennessee imploded at the end of their season again in almost an exact repeat of the last one, getting blown out by Missouri and losing to Vanderbilt for the third time in a row^note The last time Tennessee dropped three straight to Vandy? 1921., going 5-7 and missing out on yet another bowl game. At least they were better than Arkansas this time, and unlike Jones the year before, Pruitt was able to manage SEC victories.
    • The offensive line was widely criticized for looking like what a Division III team would field and possibly losing Tennessee their bowl berth thanks to folding like wet tissue paper every time a defense blitzed. Jarrett Guarantano getting injured almost every game thanks to the line's inability to block became a minor meme in and of itself. This caused fifth-year senior transfer QB Keller Chryst to see a lot more playing time over the season than was likely originally planned.
    • And then came the 2019 season opener, in which Georgia State paid a visit to Knoxville. On paper, it looked like a Vols blowout in the making, with Vegas sports books installing the Vols as 25-point favorites. The Panthers, out of the Sun Belt Conference, didn't start their football program until 2010. And were coming off a 2–10 season, ending with seven straight losses, with only one loss in that streak by less than two touchdowns. And one of the two wins was over an FCS team. On top of that, GSU had never beaten a Power Five team in its history. Final score: Georgia State 38, Tennessee 30. A website that tracks FBS coaches that it sees as being on the proverbial "hot seat" (most likely to be fired) immediately elevated Pruitt to its #1 ranking. He stayed high on that list until the Vols unexpectedly flipped the script on their season, going from a 1–4 start to an 8–5 finish (ending in a bowl win) and the promise that maybe, just maybe, the exit from the Audience-Alienating Era was at hand.
  • While Pruitt had shown improvement in his seasons on Rocky Top, in 2020 he imploded in a fashion even more spectacular than Jones.
    • While the season looked to be off to a good start with back-to-back wins over South Carolina and Missouri, the Vols proceeded to fail in a spectacular way, going only 3-7; yet another pair of ignominious records were set as all seven of the losses were by double digits, and all but one of them came in a row. It only went From Bad to Worse when an investigation into improper activities in his program was reported to be underway on the very day he lost the last game of the season. Even considering the hit athletics took as a whole worldwide due to COVID-19, this did not look good. Sure enough, this was bad enough for Fulmer to fire Pruitt and nine other staff members involved in said improper activities and leave specific instructions for his own successor as AD to make sure such a disgrace doesn't happen again—he had himself planned to only stay on for a short time and was about to retire before Pruitt's implosion. In a postscript, when the NCAA finally announced penalties for Pruitt's violations in July 2023, Tennessee got 5 years of probation, was required to vacate all of its wins from the 2019 and 2020 seasons, and was hit with an $8 million fine, though the NCAA chose not to impose a postseason ban. Pruitt also received a 6-year "show-cause penalty", essentially blackballing him from college football for that period.
    • Perhaps the worst part of everything related to the Pruitt debacle was what the recruiting violations were revealed to be... literally handing recruits wads of cash in McDonald's bags. Within a day, the Pruitt staff's ineptness at trying to conceal their under-the-table payments became a national punchline in sports media. On top of everything, the reveal of Pruitt's violations makes the Vols fanbase's objections to hiring Greg Schiano on integrity grounds look very, very bad in hindsight.
    • The hits just kept coming for Tennessee—over ten players announced their desire to transfer over Pruitt's firing, including five starters—and several of Tennessee's top recruits decommitted. Auburn all-SEC defensive end Big Kat Bryant announced his desire to transfer to the Vols but rescinded it after all the details of the Pruitt staff's miscues came out—and keep in mind that this mass exodus occurred before the NCAA had even announced any punishments. By the time the dust settled, Tennessee had lost thirty-five players to the transfer portal, the most of any Power Five school that year^note and it wasn't even close—second-place Kansas had 25 players transfer. While Tennessee hired a very competent replacement athletic director for Fulmer in Danny White, who built successful and nationally-ranked teams in both basketball at Buffalo and football at UCF when he was there, leading fans to be cautiously optimistic about Tennessee's fortunes in the future, it was clear that the coach he chose to hire as Pruitt's successor, Josh Heupel,^{pronunciation}HIGH-pul who was UCF's head coach under White, had almost nothing to work with to start.
    • Things got so bad, UT even scrubbed a time-honored tradition at Neyland Stadium, the UT-Army Game. Making things look even worse: This game had been scheduled for the very week that the Congressional Medal of Honor Society—made up of recipients of the highest US military decoration—held its 2022 convention in Knoxville. And Medal of Honor recipients would have been specifically recognized at the game.
    • While Tennessee initially managed to surpass expectations in 2021 with blowouts of Missouri and South Carolina, their next game against Ole Miss was overshadowed by one of the ugliest scenes in the Vol fanbase's history. Pregame tension had already existed from the start considering the Rebels' coach was the very same Lane Kiffin who ditched Tennessee 12 years earlier, and the crowd at Neyland Stadium grew more restless with poor officiating on the field and the perception that Ole Miss players were faking injuries to earn "extra timeouts" and throw Tennessee's offense off its rhythm. Late in the fourth quarter, with Tennessee down 31-26, tight end Jacob Warren was controversially ruled short on a 4th-and-24 reception that would have kept Tennessee in the game, causing Tennessee fans to litter the field with trash including beer cans, water bottles, pizza boxes, and in one case a ''bottle of mustard''; Kiffin was hit by a golf ball on his way to the sidelines. The incident resulted in a 20-minute game delay, Tennessee ultimately failed to win the game, Knoxville police arrested 18 people and ejected 46 more from the stadium, the SEC hit the school with a $250,000 fine for the fans' actions, and Tennessee fans instantly became hated in the sports world, especially for fans of rivals Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, who were outright demanding that Tennessee have one or all of its home games taken away, have its alcohol sales banned, or be forced to have to play games behind closed doors. The ugly incident outright overshadowed the fact that Tennessee was hanging on until the end with a ranked team that was supposed to handily beat them.
    • And just when Tennessee thought things couldn't get any worse, Pruitt attempted to extort a settlement out of the university and threatened a lawsuit he was fully confident would result in SMU-grade ruination for the entire UT athletics program. Cue the collective Vol Nation declaring they miss Butch Jones and painting AD Fulmer as out-of-touch at best. Fulmer, for his part, laid the blame for Pruitt's situation squarely at Pruitt's feet, in case people had any doubts about his views on his disgraced heir to his dynasty after he'd been busted. Thankfully for everyone, nothing came of the extortion.
  • How bad has Fulmer's Revenge affected UT athletics as a whole? This article lists 13 of the worst moments of that nine-year span; even covering all of 2017, we've only barely scratched the surface.
  • Certainly not helping matters is Mark Richt, who was the Georgia Bulldogs' head coach from 2001 to 2015, and whose hiring is generally held to be the beginning of the end for UT's dominance as a college football team and helped sow the seeds for the Curse of Phillip Fulmer to take hold after the 2008 season. And even after Richt left for his alma mater of Miami after the 2015 season, his replacement in Athens, Kirby Smart, proved to be the real deal, keeping the Dawgs atop the SEC East pecking order and eventually challenging Alabama as top dog in all of FBS. Thanks to the influence of Richt (and later Smart) over SEC recruiting, it could well be a while before the damage Richt did would be undone to any conceivable degree.
  • Under the leadership of Heupel and senior QB Hendon Hooker, 2022 was supposed to be the year where the Vols truly escaped their AAE status for good—and they delivered thanks to the high-powered offense, winning their first eight games, finally beating Alabama for the first time in fifteen years, and going into the game with national championship favorite Georgia ranked #1 in the nation and undefeated. Even after losing to Georgia at Sanford, it was widely accepted that the Vols had a berth in the CFP locked up if they finished out the season undefeated. And then came November 19 at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina. The Vols didn't just lose to unranked South Carolina—they got dominated, never coming within 2 scores of the Gamecocks—and to add literal injury to insult, Hooker tore his ACL during the game, putting an ignominious end to his college career. Thanks to this loss, Tennessee didn't just end the season missing the Playoff, they ended up missing the Sugar Bowl—they finished ranked behind Alabama at #6 despite possessing the same record and a win in head-to-head competition. The loss to South Carolina was that bad. Despite Tennessee finishing the season with a blowout of Clemson in the Orange Bowl, it was widely considered a major disappointment. Heupel and Hooker didn't even make the list of finalists for the Coach of the Year Award and Heisman Trophy, respectively, despite being considered top contenders to win earlier in the year. A lot of blame for Tennessee's late-season collapse was placed on the poor play of the secondary, especially corner Kamal Hadden, who was continuously torched during the loss to South Carolina, and got penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct in several games to boot.
  • Then came 2023. Thanks to a large amount of offensive talent turnover, OC Alex Golesh leaving for the head coaching job at South Florida, a lack of improvement from quarterback Joe Milton, and injuries to both starting wide receivers Bru McCoy and Donte Thornton Jr., Tennessee's offense regressed massively, relying on their running game to carry them through games. They would comfortably lose their first conference game to a Florida team that had recently come off a decisive loss to Utah and would get smacked by Kentucky two weeks later (see their entry above), bringing their losing streak in Gainesville to nine. They would follow that up with an ugly 20-13 win over Texas A&M in Knoxville where the Vols scored only one offensive touchdown, capped off by Milton going 11 for 22 passing and several baffling play-calling decisions from Heupel, including going for it on 4th-and-2 from the A&M 18 instead of kicking the chip-shot field goal, but kicking the field goal from 50 yards out later in the game. Tennessee was only saved thanks to their rushing attack and marked improvement from the defense keeping them in the game. It remains to be seen whether Tennessee will match their success from the previous year, but with Alabama and Georgia still on the schedule, it looks increasingly unlikely. Predictably, Tennessee would lose to Alabama in Tuscaloosa, bringing their losing streak at Bryant-Denny to two decades, but what was notable was the way that the Vols lost—after jumping out to a 13-point lead in the first half, they failed to score a single point in the second as Alabama put up 27 to hand them the loss. The ultimate deathblow for the Vols came when they travelled to Missouri, a team they had beaten 4 straight years, with the last two years seeing the Vols lay 60+ points on Missouri. But in 2023, the Vols would only put 7 points as Missouri thoroughly dominated the Vols all game for the lowest point total in the Heupel era thus far.
• The Pitt Panthers were once a major force in college football. Under coach Johnny Majors, they won their ninth national title in 1976 and consistently reached major bowls throughout the '70s and early '80s with coaches Jackie Sherrill, Foge Fazio, and quarterback Dan Marino. After a Fiesta Bowl loss in 1983, the team went 3–8 the following year, beginning a drastic downslide. The team made only two minor bowls between 1984 and 1997; Majors' return in the mid-90s did little more than tarnish his reputation, already at a low point due to being replaced at Tennessee following a 1992 season where he blew three straight games. Pitt rebuilt drastically under Walt Harris, reaching several bowls including the 2004 Fiesta Bowl (where they were crushed by Utah, 35–7), though there are many who will argue that the Walt Harris era was still an audience-alienating era for the Panthers, as it coincided with the rebranding of the university's athletics from the traditional "Pitt" to the "University of Pittsburgh", a change from the bright blue and gold school colors to the darker tones used by Notre Dame, and the demolition of Pitt Stadium. They climbed back to respectability starting in the late Oughts, making bowl games in every season from 2009–16 and 2018–22, and also winning an ACC title in 2021, but still haven't matched their peak in the '70s and '80s.
• The Nebraska Cornhuskers were a dominating force in college football from the '70s until the near the end of the '90s under Tom Osborne. The following coaches hired after him showed he was considered a Tough Act to Follow.
  • Frank Solich took the head coaching mantle following Osborne's retirement and his teams remained highly ranked through the first few years of his tenure, though not on the level of the Osborne years. There was a noticeable drop off in 2002, which saw the team get knocked out of the AP poll for the first time in decades and ended a 40 year streak of winning seasons. The team was getting right back on track the next year, but Solich was fired before the bowl game. The firing of Solich is arguably what fully set the program's Audience-Alienating Era in motion.
  • Bill Callahan, the former Oakland Raiders head coach, had a rocky start in Lincoln, as he oversaw the program's first losing season since 1961. The next two seasons were better and saw a return to bowl games, but nowhere near the level of the program's prime years. 2007 was a make-or-break year for Callahan, but sloppy wins against inferior teams and losses that allowed as much as 76 points gave the coach the boot by the end of the season.
  • The Bo Pelini era went off to a strong start and there was hope the Audience-Alienating Era would end, with the Huskers participating in two Big 12 championship games. However once the university accepted the invite to the Big Ten, things went south. Since the program entered the Big Ten, Pelini's teams still finished with at least nine wins per season, but at the cost of suffering humiliating losses in important games. Pelini would be fired at the end of the 2014 regular season, which was seen as a controversial move.
  • Pelini's replacement had many Nebraska fans scratching their heads — Mike Riley. His first year at the helm had rough start, losing their first home opener in 29 seasons and suffering several close losses, angering many fans. The team returned to the rankings the following year and finished 9-4 once again. The next season was seen as a low point of the program, with an interception-happy quarterback, an inexplicable loss to a MAC team, and blowout losses as a result of a weak defense. Mike Riley would be fired at the end of the season, with a tenure only lasting three seasons.
  • Scott Frost was hired following Riley's dismissal. Frost was the most highly sought-out coach coming into the offseason and many had high expectations for him to return the program to its glory days, as he was part of the 1997 squad that had a share of the national championship. The start of his tenure did not look good at all, with the Huskers starting 0-6 at the halfway mark of the 2018 season, finishing 4-8. The next season saw high expectations for Frost, with the team considered a Big Ten contender and was ranked in the preseason despite finishing the previous season 4-8. The team fell flat in 2019, finishing 5-7 thanks to questionable play calls from Frost, and struggled in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
  • The 2021 season was seen as a very low mark in the program's storied history. Thanks to his conservative playcalling on offense and player injuries, Frost led the team to a 3-9 record despite having all but one of the nine losses decided by one score (and even that other one had a single-digit margin). This considerably increased the temperature of Frost's hot seat and resulted in a restructured contract that would reduce his buyout. Frost entered the 2022 season on one of the hottest seats in recent college football history, and with new staff hires on the offensive side of the ball it was a make-or-break season for him. Instead, his questionable playcalling would continue to cost the team important wins (such as an onside kick at an inopportune time) alongside a heavily regressed defense. Frost would ultimately be fired on September 11 after another one-score loss, this one to Georgia Southern (the same program that in its FCS days had added to Florida's 2010s misery), ending a tenure widely considered to be disappointing.
• Going all the way back to Knute Rockne, Notre Dame has established a fairly consistent pattern of having a great head coach, followed by two or three coaches who, despite some success, were much more mediocre, before hiring another great coach. Two of the mediocre coaching tenures, though, stand out as being the worst eras for Fighting Irish football. Interestingly, the coaches came from opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of qualifications.
  • Joe Kuharich (1959-62) grew up practically in the shadows of Notre Dame Stadium, and had been a star player for the Irish in the 30s, before going on to play in the NFL and having coaching stints at the University of San Francisco and two NFL teams. But, Kuharich seemed lost trying to adapt his pro football coaching style to college players, and a few marquee wins were offset by heartbreaking losses and blowout losses to teams who weren't that good. The low point was the 1960 season, when the Irish finished 2-8, including an embarrassing 51-19 loss to instate rival Purdue. Kuharich had a 5-5 record in his other three seasons, but was let go with a total record of 17-23. He's still notable as the only Notre Dame head coach to never have a winning season at the school.
  • Gerry Faust (1981-85) was a high school football coach when the Notre Dame athletic department decided to take a huge, huge gamble on him. Granted, he'd had otherworldly success in high school coaching, going 178-23-2 in 19 years at Archbishop Moeller in Cincinnati. Many of his players had gone on to play for Notre Dame. Visions of tropes like Underdogs Never Lose and Dark Horse Victory playing out in Real Life tantalized fans and the media (though America's most famous Catholic college hiring a man whose very name evoked a Deal with the Devil should have given people some pause). But, Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs. In his first year, the Irish went 5-6, their first losing season in 18 years and a huge letdown for a team who had been in national championship contention the year before. The next two seasons saw Faust's team come down with Every Year They Fizzle Out syndrome, starting out strong but ending the regular season on a three-game losing streak. One particular lowlight was a loss to Air Force; the Irish had beaten the Falcons in all eleven of their previous meetings (Faust went on to lose three more times to Air Force). By his fifth and final season, Faust's players gave up on him. He lost his final three games at the school by a combined score of 104-20, capped by a 58-7 thrashing at the hands of college football's new emerging dynasty, Miami. It was Notre Dame's worst loss since 1944. Faust's total record in South Bend wasn't exactly horrible (30-26-1), but was a major disappointment by Notre Dame's lofty standards. Going back to the strategy of a coach with plenty of college experience, Notre Dame hired veteran coach Lou Holtz and climbed back to respectability.
• Michigan was once revered for being a powerhouse program in the Big Ten, and in the NCAA in general under the likes of Bo Schembechler, Gary Moeller, and Lloyd Carr, contending for titles almost every year and being a threat to be in the Rose Bowl, along with winning Heisman Trophies with players like Desmond Howard and Charles Woodson. But after sharing a national title with Nebraska in 1997, Michigan's fortunes began to turn for the worst:
  • Michigan became seen as a mediocre program that could win between 8-10 football games, and get a bowl game victory. They did reach an Orange Bowl after the 1999 season and won it, but they were usually seen in the Citrus or Outback Bowls.
  • Arch-rival Ohio State hired Jim Tressel to replace the perennial Wolverines punching bag in John Cooper, and Jim Tressel proceeded to win 10 of the next 11 games, with Michigan winning once in 2003, although the 2010 victory was later vacated by Ohio State after Ohio State players were later found to be selling souvenirs.
  • Michigan looked poised to end the Audience-Alienating Era in 2006, having won 11 games and being ranked in the top 5 all year. But then they played Ohio State in a game for the ages, and collapsed in epic fashion. This loss was even more heartbreaking, as the longtime head coach Bo Schembechler passed away the day before the game. After the loss, Michigan went to the Rose Bowl, and proceeded to lose that one to USC.
  • The bad luck continued into 2007, as Michigan was ranked in the preseason top 5, but they fell out after a humiliating loss to the Appalachian State Mountaineers, a FCS team and then lost the following game against Oregon. Michigan rebounded well enough to finish 9-4, and beat the Florida Gators in the Capital One Bowl to give Lloyd Carr a victory in his last game as head coach of the Wolverines.
  • After Carr's retirement, the team went out and hired Rich Rodriguez, and what proceeded was Michigan unraveled even further. In 2008, the program finished with their first losing record since 1967, and failed to make a bowl game for the first time since 1974, as well as Michigan getting penalized by the NCAA for rules infractions for the first time in the program's history. After two more seasons of Rodriguez, which culminated in a loss in the 2010 Gator Bowl, he was fired and replaced by Brady Hoke.
  • Brady Hoke was hired because the fan base wanted a "Michigan Man" to take over the program. In 2011, it appeared the fortunes were reversing once again, as Brady Hoke went 11-2, and got a victory against Ohio State that still stands as the last victory against Ohio State to date. But he unraveled in every season since that, including heartbreaking losses to Ohio State. He was fired in 2014, after allegations of mistreatment of injured players and a lackluster 5-7.
  • Brady Hoke was replaced by former Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh in 2015. Harbaugh was highly sought after by colleges and NFL teams after being fired by the 49ers, but he chose to go back to Michigan to see if he could right the ship. It began out great, as he had a 10–3 record in his first season and got a bowl game victory. 2016 was another 10 win season that seen an epic collapse against Ohio State, as Harbaugh was emotionally unstable the whole game. The 2017 season was 8–5. He got another ten win season in 2018. 2019 saw a 9-win season, but lost the bowl game, bringing the losing streak to 4 bowl games in a row. In 2020, the program suffered one of the worst seasons in program history, going 2–4 in a shortened season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, although fans were thankful Michigan didn't have to face Ohio State at all.
  • While 2021 looks to have ended the long age of mediocrity, as Michigan beat Ohio State for the first time since 2011 as well as their first conference championship since 2004, leading to their first appearance in the playoff, they still lost to in-state rival Michigan State after blowing a big lead, bringing Harbaugh's record against them to 3-4. The 2022 season looks to have cemented said exit, with the Wolverines beating both Michigan State and Ohio State on their way to entering the Big Ten title game at 12–0, the program's first perfect regular season since 1997, and then won their second straight conference championship for their first 13-0 record in the program's history, though this was not enough to prevent Michigan from suffering a heartbreaking loss to TCU in the Fiesta Bowl, bringing Michigan's bowl game losing streak to six games. The 2023 season sealed said cementing, with the Wolverines cruising into the Rose Bowl following their second straight 13–0 season (overcoming a sign-stealing controversy in the process) and winning a closely-fought game against Alabama to snap their bowl game losing streak, which led to them winning their first national championship since 1997.
• Perhaps the ultimate AAE in all sports, and likely so in major-college football: Sewanee in the SEC. Yes, the tiny private school in Tennessee, formally The University of the South, was a founding member of the most powerful of today's Power Five football conferences. It had been a legitimate power in the early days of the sport at the turn of the 20th century, and remained a solidly successful program into the early 1920s, with all-time winning records over current SEC members Auburn, Georgia, LSU, and Ole Miss. However, the rise of athletic scholarships, combined with bigger schools pouring more resources into football, spelled the end of the Tigers' golden age.
  • On September 30, 1933, Sewanee played the very first football game of the new conference, losing 7–0 at Kentucky... which was about as good as it got.
  • During their 8 seasons in the SEC (1933–1940), the Tigers lost all 37 of their conference games. The aforementioned Kentucky game was one of only two in which they were within a touchdown of their opponents.^note If you're interested, the other was a 10–6 loss in 1938 to Florida.
  • They were shut out more than twice as often as they scored in SEC play (26 to 11), even going scoreless in 1935.
  • Sewanee's aggregate SEC score: SEC 1,163, Sewanee 84.
  • As the linked story put it, "At least their fans weren't around to see the carnage." Sewanee's tiny on-campus stadium made road games lucrative enough that they played every SEC contest on the road.
  • The beginning of the end came in 1938, when a new vice-chancellor^*At Sewanee, the position of "chancellor" is mostly ceremonial. The chancellor heads the university's board, but the vice-chancellor is the operational head of the university. was hired. His condition for coming: Sewanee had to commit to eliminating athletic scholarships. In 1939, Sewanee cut its SEC schedule down to games against Tennessee and the conference's two other private schools (Tulane and nearby Vanderbilt), and in its final SEC season of 1940, its only conference game was against Vanderbilt. Sewanee's deemphasis of athletics is viewed by some as an early step to the eventual creation of NCAA Division III, where it happily resides today.
• The University of Chicago, another current NCAA Division III school, had a similar trajectory to Sewanee, only it had risen to higher heights and had a much more rapid and steep decline. The school was founded in 1890, and decided to use athletics as a way to gain name recognition. To help with this, they hired former Yale star Amos Alonzo Stagg to start the football team from scratch in 1892, quickly becoming a top team during the infancy of college football, with Stagg recognized as one the great innovators in the sport. Chicago was a founding member of the Big Ten, and the Maroons dominated the early decades of football in the conference. In 1924 Chicago won its seventh Big Ten championship, and that would prove to be its last. Some of the issue was that the game was starting to pass by Stagg, who was in his 60s at that point. After losing just one game in that 1924 season, Stagg would never lose less than three games in a season during the remainder of his time in Chicago, with just one winning season and three winless conference campaigns in that period. The final blow was when Robert Maynard Hutchins was hired as university president in 1929. Hutchins (also a Yale grad) had very specific idealistic notions about the role of a university, basically viewing it as a rigorous training ground for classical intellectual ideals, and quickly sought to reboot the university in that direction. He viewed things like fraternities, campus clubs and sports (especially sports) as distractions that undermined the university's mission, and tried to eliminate them, though he faced some resistance from faculty and donors. Hutchins set a mandatory retirement of age of 70, which forced Stagg out as head coach in 1932 (Stagg was quickly hired by College of the Pacific—now University of the Pacific—and coached for 14 more seasons, retiring at 84). Having gone 7–15–4 in Stagg's last three years, Chicago was ripe for a turnaround, and Clark Shaughnessy, coming from a successful stint at Loyola University in New Orleans, took over. Shaughnessy faced an utterly hopeless situation.
  • The influence of Hutchins squeezed the football team on several fronts: he set strict academic requirements for admission, refused to implement physical education as a major, and switched the academic calendar so that examinations occurred the same time as spring practice.
  • All this was occurring as other Big Ten schools ramped up their spending on football. Chicago slashed the team's budget and didn't award scholarships, placing them at a huge disadvantage.
  • The one bright spot was Jay Berwanger, who became the first Heisman trophy winner in 1935, but Berwanger's accomplishments did little to help the team, as they finished a mere 4–4 during that season.
  • A narrow 7–6 victory over Wisconsin in 1936 would be Chicago's final Big Ten win. They closed out their Big Ten tenure with 14 straight conference losses.
  • In 1937, 1938 and 1939, Chicago combined for a record of 4–12–1. The four wins were against Beloit, DePauw, Wabash and Oberlin. One loss was a 32–0 blowout in 1938 to Pacific... yes, Amos Alonzo Stagg's new team.
  • 1939 was especially brutal, seeing Curb-Stomp Battle losses of 46–0, 47–0, 61–0 (twice), and 85–0 (to Michigan). Hutchins finally succeeded in shutting down the football program at season's end. Shaughnessy moved on to Stanford, some other college jobs, and an assistant coaching tenure with the Chicago Bears. The abandoned stadium was turned into an experimental nuclear reactor, and the first nuclear chain reaction occurred there in 1942. Chicago pulled out of the Big Ten entirely in 1946. Long after Hutchins left the school, Chicago reinstated football at the club level in 1963 (though, interestingly, some students held a sit-in at the first game to protest the return of football), and elevated it back to the varsity level (albeit without scholarships) in 1969, with the school becoming a charter member of Division III in 1973.

National Football League

Folder has been alphabetized by city. Please add new examples in the appropriate order.

• Since the Turn of the Millennium, the Buffalo Bills fell into an Audience-Alienating Era, as many of their star players were either retiring or leaving in free agency. After the Music City Miracle, the Bills fell into a state of mediocrity. Never good enough to make the playoffs, but never bad enough to bottom out. It didn't help they were in the same division as Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. Things changed in 2017, when Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane were hired as head coach and general manager. That same year saw them end their 17-year playoff drought at 9-7, despite a three game stretch where they gave up 135 combined points. They floundered against the Jacksonville Jaguars with a final score of 10-3.
  • 2018 saw them trade up to draft Josh Allen, but he was injured and replaced with a QB carousel of Nathan Peterman (who threw five picks in the first half in his 2017 debut), an aging Derek Anderson, and back-up QB Matt Barkley. All that led to a 6-10 record.^note The original plan was to start Peterman and have Allen sit and just get acclimated to the league during his first season (which is the preferred method of developing rookie QBs, regardless of where they were drafted) This plan lasted for all of 2 hours because Peterman stunk so badly that he got benched during the season opener. The injury and Anderson signing would come later in the season.
  • Allen recovered in 2019 and managed to lead the team to a convincing 10-6 record and a wild card. Unfortunately, they blew a 16-0 lead to the Houston Texans and lost in overtime in the wild card round.
  • The audience-alienating era finally ended in 2020, when they brought in receiver Stefon Diggs, Allen finally blossomed into the new franchise QB, leading them to a 13-3 division win and a deep playoff run.
• Chicago Bears:
  • The first roughly 50 years of team history followed a similar pattern - team founder, owner, and initially player George Halas would coach the team for an 8-10 year stint, winning at least one championship each time. Then he'd retire from coaching, the team would decline entering an Audience-Alienating Era, then Halas would step back in as head coach. Rinse. Repeat. Following his fourth such stint as head coach, Halas would retire from coaching for the final time following a 7-6-1 campaign in 1967. The Bears would then enter their longest Audience-Alienating Era to date, having only two winning seasons until Mike Ditka took over the team in 1982. He would lead the Bears to their only Super Bowl victory in 1985.
  • The Bears initially looked set to go on a run for a repeat in 1986, but this failed to manifest after quarterback Jim McMahon was injured in Week 12 and the Bears proved unable to get through the playoffs without him. The team stalled after that, struggling to win playoff games for several years before descending to the point where they would struggle to even make the playoffs. The team has had its ups and downs since then, but has never been able to recapture anywhere near the dominance they boasted in the 1980s.
  • Following a disappointing 1992 season, the Bears fired Ditka and chose Cowboys defensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt as his replacement. Word to the wise: never bring up the Wannstedt era in a conversation with a Bears fan. His successor, Dick Jauron (previously the defensive coordinator for the Jacksonville Jaguars) didn't fare much better. Their combined tenures led to an Audience-Alienating Era lasting until the team hired Lovie Smith in 2004.
  • Despite Lovie Smith taking the Bears to a pair of NFC Championship game appearances and a Super Bowl (where they lost to Peyton Manning's Colts), the Bears fired Smith following a 10-6 season in 2012. They first tried out CFL coach Marc Trestman as a replacement and, when he flamed out, hired former Panthers and Broncos head coach John Fox. Their combined five years saw the Bears fail to post a winning season while finishing dead last in their division four times. The Bears finally seemed to get it right by hiring long-time Andy Reid assistant Matt Nagy in 2018, who brought the Bears their first division title in eight years in his first season as coach, though this was followed by two consecutive 8-8 seasons. 2021 was the final straw for Nagy as well as GM Ryan Pace, both of whom were fired after a disappointing 6-11 finish despite having an incredibly promising rookie quarterback.
• The Cincinnati Bengals. Who Dey! Who Dey! Who Dey think gonna beat dem Bengals?!^note Well, maybe Sewanee in the SEC (the next-to-last entry in the "NCAA Football" folder). After their last playoff win in 1990, the team went 31 years without winning another playoff game. In the seven playoff games they've qualified in, all of them ended in embarrassing losses; the last five, in a franchise-record playoffs streak from 2011–15, resulted in an NFL record for consecutive first round losses, including two squandered division titles (2013, 2015). They've compiled a Who's Who list of draft busts and questionable-at-best free agent pickups, not helped by having an inept scouting department and coaching staffs full of yes men. This has resulted in a tortured fanbase foaming at the mouth for a better team. Mike Brown, the owner of the Bengals and the son of the late Paul Brown, has been lambasted by his own fans and fans of other teams for being an incompetent cheapskate who is callously indifferent to his team's struggles even when it is evident that changes for the better of the team are clearly being clamored for. No wonder the team was given the derisive nickname the "Bungles." The era finally came to a likely end with the 2021-22 season, in which the Bengals broke their playoff win drought, racking up three playoff wins — including the first two road playoff wins in franchise history — en route to a Super Bowl appearance.
• The Cleveland Browns:
  • A once-successful franchise that was the home of legendary running back Jim Brown and a long history that included four NFL championships, and three titles when they were part of the All-America Football Conference before that league folded and the Browns jumped to the NFL itself. Though they never won a championship in the "Super Bowl" era (1967 to present) they did have 14 playoff appearances and were, at worst, a respectable team. Then, in 1995, owner Art Modell controversially uprooted the franchise and moved them to Baltimore. The city of Cleveland filed a lawsuit and were allowed to hold on to the Browns name and history, in hopes of one day returning to play under a new franchise, which they were eventually awarded, and after a three-year hiatus, the Browns returned to the NFL as an expansion team in 1999. For most of the next two decades, they were a disaster, posting an 88–216 record through the 2017 season. During this time, they had only two winning seasons (2002, 2007), and only made the playoffs once as a wild card team. The reasons for the continued ineptitude were multiple, including a revolving-door at both the head coach and Quarterback positions they could never seem to fix, years of bad draft picks, injuries, and embarrassing legal problems with the ownership. Playing in a tough division opposite Baltimore, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh hasn't helped, either. To add salt to the wound, the "old" Cleveland Browns (now Baltimore Ravens) have since won two Super Bowls, while the "new" Browns were widely viewed as the league's Butt-Monkey franchise until they finally turned things around in 2020 (see below).
  • The "new" Browns went on to share NFL infamy with the 2008 Lions in 2017, when they cratered all the way to 0-16. Any hope of major improvement was dashed when coach Hue Jackson, who had gone 1-31 since taking the helm of the team in 2016, was retained for a third year.^note At least until he was fired after their week 8 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. That, combined with the fact that the current owner (since 2012), Pilot Flying J head Jimmy Haslam, seems more concerned with lining his pockets and/or trying to keep his truck stop chain afloat^note he was raided by an IRS/FBI joint strike team at one point! than building a good front office, led many a Browns fan to consider the state of the Lions^note an occasional playoff entrant with a capable QB, a few other good pieces and enough holes for any other playoff-caliber team to drive a tractor-trailer through a wistful fantasy during some of those years^note although one has to think that's likely reversed after 2020, as Lions fans would surely love for their team to have turned it around half as quickly as the Browns did.
  • The quarterback position has been a particularly sore spot for the new Browns, as they've either had draft busts (Tim Couch, Brady Quinn, Brandon Weeden, Johnny Manziel), nondescript journeymen (Kelly Holcomb, Josh and Luke McCown), or past-their-prime former studs (Jeff Garcia, Jake Delhomme) leading the team. As of the 2018 season, the team had 30 starting quarterbacks in 20 seasons. Compare that to the New England Patriots, who only had five starting QBs — Drew Bledsoe, Tom Brady, Brady fill-ins Matt Cassel and Jimmy Garoppolo, plus Jacoby Brissett, who filled in when Garoppolo was hurt and Brady suspended for Deflategate — over the same period of time. Given the woes of all starting QBs after him, "draft bust" Tim Couch (who was not worth a first overall pick, granted, but he was not that bad) starts to look pretty good for a Browns QB. In fact, between the team's dismal record and the rate at which they went through quarterbacks, there was a point in time when the quarterback who had won the most regular-season games in Cleveland since the Browns returned to the league was Ben Roethlisberger. Who has spent his entire NFL career with the Steelers. Baker Mayfield finally surpassed him in Week 10 of the 2020 season.
  • It initially looked like 2018 top pick Baker Mayfield, who took over as the starter in Week 3, was the real deal, seeing that he led the Browns to 7 wins, more than they had in the previous three seasons combined. But then came 2019... in which Mayfield regressed from his promising rookie season, with a pathetic offensive line as the biggest factor.^note The ineptitude of new head coach Freddie Kitchens, who was fired after just one season, also may have played a role. The problems with the 2019 Browns, however, went far beyond a regressing quarterback and a porous O-line. In a span of less than two weeks in midseason, they lost three starters for reasons other than injury...
    • After a poor performance in Denver, safety Jermaine Whitehead was called out by numerous fans on Twitter. He responded with threatening tweets from the visitors' locker room. Whitehead's tweets went so far over the line that Twitter suspended his account before he boarded the departing team bus. The Browns waived him soon after.
    • The following Sunday in Buffalo, receiver Antonio Callaway was benched for showing up late to the stadium. Then, four days later, he was released four hours before kickoff of the Browns' home game against the Steelers. It turned out that he had violated the NFL's substance abuse policy for a second time, resulting in an automatic 10-game suspension.
    • The Browns' win in said game was overshadowed by one of the ugliest on-field brawls in NFL history. Browns defensive end Myles Garrett delivered a late hit on Steelers QB Mason Rudolph. The two got into a heated exchange that led to Garrett tearing off Rudolph's helmet and hitting him on the head with it, soon followed by much (though not all) of both benches clearing. The following day, the NFL suspended Garrett for the rest of the season. He had already drawn major fines earlier in the season for punching one opponent and delivering late hits on another.
  • And the Browns signed running back Kareem Hunt in October of that year despite knowing that he would be suspended for the first eight games of the season for two documented incidents of violence, with one episode involving him swinging at and kicking a woman on the floor of a hotel.
  • 2020, however, proved to be a turnaround season for the Browns, under the leadership of new head coach Kevin Stefanski. Baker Mayfield ended up having a major bounce-back season (behind a revamped O-line), the players avoided any major incidents on or off the field, and the Browns would finish with an 11-5 record and their first playoff spot since 2002, which then became their first playoff win since their return to the league. We'll see if the Audience-Alienating Era has finally ended.
  • The Browns ended up causing some audience alienation of a different kind due to their decision to trade for Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson ahead of the 2022 season, despite Watson having been accused of sexual assault by, at the time, over 20 women (with numerous civil cases still pending at the time of signing), a decision they continued to stand by even as additional disturbing information (including even more allegations) continued to surface in the months following the acquisition. While some supporters were pleased at the team's going "all in" and gave him the benefit of the doubt, numerous fans — many of whom had steadfastly stuck by the team throughout all the previous misery — felt the team was sending a terrible message (that Watson's ability to win games was more important than the horrible things he was accused of) and choosing to sacrifice their principles just to improve their Super Bowl odds, and some (particularly those who had been victims of sexual assault) indicated they'd find it near-impossible to cheer for a team led by Watson. Even if the Browns were to manage unprecedented accomplishments with Watson, it still seems likely that they've lost at least some fans for good (or at least for as long as Watson is with them) with this move — but what makes this sting even worse for Browns fans is that Watson has been a barely-above-average QB in Cleveland, meaning the Browns may have given up a boatload of resources and shouldered a massive controversy for nothing. Adding to this further, the character concerns with Watson weren't even the only aspect of the situation that alienated fans; fans were also not happy to see the Browns make a risky move like this after they had finally begun to find stability for the first time in the 21st century (particularly considering the extent to which the team mortgaged the future, in both draft picks and salary cap space, in the process, thereby also affecting their ability to further build the team around Watson and their other stars). Still others were upset on behalf of Baker Mayfield, feeling that the team should have showed at least a little loyalty to a player who had done so much for them rather than effectively giving up on him after one injury-disrupted season (that wasn't even that bad compared to most of the pre-Mayfield years) — criticism that only intensified with the team's bungled handling of Mayfield's situation in the wake of the Watson trade, which basically amounted to allowing Mayfield to be left in limbo for months due to being more concerned with getting an ideal return in a trade.^note This ended up backfiring on them as well, as the delay only caused Mayfield's trade value to plummet further due to potential trade partners finding other solutions at quarterback in the interim.
• Dallas Cowboys:
  • The first five years of Jerry Jones owning the 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. Why? As one of the few sole general manager-owners in the league, Jones cannot draft fundamentals (like an offensive line) to save his life, frequently takes chances on players who had injury problems in college like DeMarco Murray (that have carried over into injury-plagued NFL seasons) and has on at least two occasions traded away multiple draft picks for underachievers like Joey Galloway and Roy Williams. While they eventually found some good skill players like linebacker/defensive end DeMarcus Ware and wide receiver Dez Bryant, management's inability to draft the basics for a team has cost the Cowboys multiple chances at returning to prominence, especially since the advent of Tony Romo and later Dak Prescott becoming the starting quarterback.
  • Jimmy Johnson was replaced in 1994 by Barry Switzer, who was an accomplished college coach and a close friend of Jerry Jones. There were just a few problems with the man: first, he had integrity issues and an arrest record. Second, he coached the Oklahoma Sooners, mortal enemies to Texan football fans everywhere. Third, and most importantly, he was just too nice, a hands-off guy in a league where it was typically a coach's way or the highway, and a talented team where many players reveled in their debauchery like rock stars. As a result, the Cowboys underachieved under Switzer (though they still won the Super Bowl in his second year, they failed to get out of the division round the following year against a Carolina Panthers team in just their second year of existence, and the wheels fell off after that), and it wasn't long before fans were screaming for his head.
• Denver Broncos:
  • The Broncos fell into an Audience-Alienating Era after the retirement of legendary quarterback Peyton Manning. After winning Super Bowl 50, the team heavily regressed and haven't appeared in the playoffs since, which happens to be the team's worst stretch since their days as the AFL's doormat in their early years. To start, the Broncos struggled to find a new franchise QB in the post-Manning years, as they started ten quarterbacks in between the 2016 and 2022 seasons, none of whom really shined under center during their time in Denver. This is not helped at all by being in the same division as Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, who became one of the most dominant teams in this timespan.
  • The Broncos made a blockbuster trade in 2022 when they acquired longtime Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson, hoping to finally break their playoff drought. Instead, the season became a disaster as a result of Wilson severely regressing, to the point where he was mocked by Patrick Star of all people during a blowout loss on Christmas Day. Much of the team's offensive struggles can be attributed to head coach Nathaniel Hackett, whose inexperience in playcalling clearly showed throughout the season. Hackett was shown the door after only fifteen games and was replaced by longtime New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton, who briefly retired from coaching.
• The Detroit Lions fell into a long, mostly uninterrupted Audience-Alienating Era since "The Curse of Bobby Layne" set in in 1958. Before this point, they had four NFL championships, including three in six seasons. Since then, the team has accumulated twelve total playoff games, one total playoff win (in 1991), and zero Super Bowl appearances (the only franchise in the NFC as of 2021). Barry Sanders, the team's longtime running back, retired before the 1999 season (at the top of his game, no less!) because he was done with playing for a lackluster team who could not keep on improving. Wide receiver Calvin "Megatron" Johnson would do likewise in 2015, citing "a lack of passion for football" as well as some injury concerns after only 9 seasons, all with the Lions. "Sub-mediocre" is sometimes a generous description of the team's "prowess", never more so than the infamous "imperfect record" (0–16) season in 2008. The curse is supposedly over now (since Layne did say "they wouldn't win for 50 years" when departing for Pittsburgh), but their first three playoff appearances following their 0–16 season (2011, 2014, 2016) all translated into first round losses. However, following their first NFC North division title in decades in 2023, this long era of struggle appears to have finally ended, though it currently remains to be seen if this exit is cemented.
• Green Bay Packers:
  • 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, they 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 Packers' plummet to mediocrity and occasional awfulness post-Lombardi era was partly driven by poor draft selections. For a classic example, collegiate stud Jerry Tagge (from perennial powerhouse Nebraska) was drafted 11th overall in 1972 as future Hall of Famer Bart Starr's heir apparent at quarterback. In three seasons with the Packers, Tagge passed for three touchdowns and 17 interceptions, and was ironically cut by Starr himself, who had, by 1974, taken over as Green Bay's head coach.
  • There was also the infamous trade for star quarterback John Hadl, who was clearly past his prime when the Packers sent five mostly high future draft picks (two first-rounders, two second-rounders, a third-rounder) to the Los Angeles Rams to acquire his services. Hadl "rewarded" Green Bay with nine TD passes and a whopping 29 interceptions combined in 1974 and 1975.
  • Things seemed to be looking up in 1989, when quarterback Don Majkowski put up a huge season, but Majkowski was injured in the subsequent season and never got back to his Pro Bowl form, ultimately losing the starting job to Brett Favre, who first came in as Majkowski's backup after Majkowski was injured yet again in 1992.
  • The Mike Sherman years definitely qualify as their latest Audience-Alienating Era. 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 Carroll (a cornerback who was notorious for constantly giving up big plays, earning him the nickname "Highway 28") and B.J. Sander, 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, who'd been with Favre since the beginning, wasn't afraid to (figuratively) smack him upside the head when he did something stupid, Sherman seemingly was star-struck by his own QB, as his coaching philosophy seemed to be "Brett 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 McCarthy was hired, everyone rejoiced.
  • The Packers had an A.A.E. 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).
  • Averted after Brett Favre's "retirement". The departure of a long-time face of the franchise is usually one of the largest causes of A.A.E. in sports, but thanks to Aaron Rodgers and company, the Packers had their greatest period of success since the Lombardi years. After one slightly rough transition year in 2008, the Packers went back to playoff contention in 2009. Then, in 2010, 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 Packers teetered on the brink of another one beginning in 2017, when the team went into a tailspin after Aaron Rodgers was injured. At first, fans were willing to write it off as a fluke due to losing their starting quarterback, blaming the staff at most for not having a capable backup on the roster, but when the Packers failed to rebound in 2018 even with Rodgers healthy, fans began seeing the 2017 season in a different light as well, and head coach Mike McCarthy was fired before the end of the season. Fortunately, new head coach Matt LaFleur was able to right the ship before it could go any further, leading the Packers to three straight 13-win seasons, three division titles, and two NFC Championship appearances in his first three years with the team.
• The Indianapolis Colts lapsed into an Audience-Alienating Era after trading away their beloved franchise quarterback (and one of the best of all time) Peyton Manning to the Denver Broncos. It was during the Andrew Luck era (2012-2018) that they experienced this. For starters, Andrew Luck (who, like Manning before him, was a number 1 overall pick), dealt with constant injuries, so much so that he missed nine games in 2015 and sat out for the entire 2017 season. So much for a guy whose last name is "Luck". Then there was the playoffs. Luck did help the team make it to the AFC Championship for the first time since trading away Manning, but were ultimately marauded by the New England Patriots 7-45, then it was all bleak from there. The Colts then missed back-to-back playoffs in 2015 and 2016 due to finishing 8-8 both times, then finished with an abysmal 4-12 record in 2017. Eventually, due to the frequent injuries, Luck would retire after the 2018 season.
• The Los Angeles (formerly San Diego) Chargers were in an Audience-Alienating Era from 1996 through 2003, where they failed to make the playoffs and never won more than half of their games. The Ryan Leaf era (1998 and 2000, he missed the 1999 season due to a shoulder injury) is pretty much the nadir of this team's AAE. The Chargers traded their 3rd overall pick, a future 1st round pick, a second round pick, and three-time Pro Bowler Eric Metcalf to get the 2nd overall pick, selecting who the Colts (who had the number one pick) didn't draft. Unfortunately in hindsight, the Chargers were better off refraining from such a trade, as Ryan Leaf would become one of the worst quarterbacks and worst draft picks of all time. Reasons for this were 1) his lazy behavior, 2) his poor chemistry with the media and his teammates (whom he often scapegoated for his poor play), and 3) his horrible career statistics as he completed less than 50% of his passes and threw more interceptions than touchdowns. When Leaf's 2000 campaign saw the Chargers go 1-15, they replaced him with Drew Brees at quarterback, and although he was eventually let go a few years later, which resulted in him signing with the New Orleans Saints (who were in an AAE of their own, see below), they eventually found their successor in Philip Rivers and the rest was history.
  • The Tom Telesco era (2013-2023) has shaped up to be another AAE for the team. In fairness, much of the cause of the AAE happened off the field in an ill-advised move of the team from their hometown in San Diego to Los Angeles, to the ire of the San Diego fans and the apathy of Los Angeles. But the on-field product was no help. Telesco, like Jones before him, was unable to draft fundamentals to save his life, particularly on defense, and many of the free-agent signings he made to compensate were disastrous. The team cycled through three coaches of uninspiring at best quality, with a pattern of each making the playoffs once and missing out every year otherwise. This culminated in an embarrassing collapse in the 2022 playoffs against Jacksonville, followed by a disaster of a 2023 season that, due to an injury to star QB Justin Herbert, showed that the whole team was being carried by their star quarterback, and prompted questions about what problems notorious iron man Philip Rivers had been papering over in prior years.
  • The early years of the NFL-AFL merger were not kind to the Chargers. Inaugural head coach and offensive genius Sid Gillman had retired, star wide receiver Lance Alworth was traded to the Cowboys for three players (one of whom never suited up for the Chargers due to a degenerative nerve condition), and the team had a bad habit of signing over-the-hill vets like Johnny Unitas and Deacon Jones. Proving that the Chargers have a talent for wasting quarterbacks, even a young Dan Fouts couldn't salvage the situation. It wasn't until the hiring of Don Coryell in 1978 that this era ended.
• The Los Angeles (formerly St. Louis) Rams:
  • From 2005 to 2016, the St. Louis/Los Angeles Rams never finished above .500, only getting to .500 once. During the time, they made some questionable draft picks (Alex Barron, Tye Hill, Adam Carriker, Tavon Austin, Greg Robinson) that more or less held the team back. Their coaching choices never panned out, such as Scott Linehan, Jim Haslett, Steve Spagnuolo, and most infamously, Jeff Fisher. From there, the team was lacking in different team needs that were never addressed, namely the offensive line. From 2007 to 2016, they suffered consecutive losing seasons. When Jeff Fisher took over in 2012, they consistently led the league in penalties. 2016 was egregious because of it being their first season back in Los Angeles since 1994. To twist the knife further, head coach Jeff Fisher said "none of this 7-9 bullshit" after posting three 7-win seasons during his stay with the Rams. He was right: he was fired during the season, posting a 4-9 record before Fisher's firing. With head coach Sean McVay taking over and 2016 first overall pick Jared Goff turning into a star after Fisher got fired, the Rams made it to Super Bowl LIII, losing to the Patriots in the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in 53 years, but also proving that their last Audience-Alienating Era is over. 2021, however, would finally see the Rams break through when they traded away Jared Goff and a couple of first-round draft picks to the Detroit Lions in exchange for Matthew Stafford, picking up Odell Beckham Jr. and Von Miller mid-season and reaching the playoffs again. Eventually, they made it back to the Super Bowl by appearing in Super Bowl LVI and then finally winning the ultimate game while hosting the Super Bowl in their own home stadium despite being billed as the visiting team (even though technically they were the home team and were the second team to do so after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from the previous year); this being their first Super Bowl victory since Super Bowl XXXIV when they were in St. Louis.
  • And there's the ownership. At the beginning of the Audience-Alienating Era, polarizing owner Georgia Frontiere was near death and had her son, film producer Chip Rosenbloom, running the team. Once Rosenbloom inherited the team, he more or less was trying to make the team so bad that he could move them back to Los Angeles and sell to the highest bidder. Minority owner Stan Kroenke put a stop to that by putting the NBA Denver Nuggets and NHL Colorado Avalanche in his wife's name^note a billionaire in her own right, being a daughter of Bud Walton, brother and business partner of Walmart founder Sam Walton to buy him and his wife's share of the team.^BackgroundAt the time, the NFL prohibited its team owners from owning stakes in any professional teams in other sports unless they were (1) in the NFL team's home market, (2) located in non-NFL markets, or (3) soccer teams, regardless of their location. The NFL owners lifted these restrictions in October 2018, after which Kroenke took back his ownership of the other teams. The only league-related restrictions that now exist state that NFL owners can't own interests in other football teams. An exception to that particular item was that NFL owners could own Arena Football League teams in the NFL team's home market, but that ended when the AFL folded in 2019. Dealing with the fan apathy, however, was another issue completely, and in 2016, Kroenke himself moved the team back to Los Angeles. This, followed by comments about St. Louis being just a "baseball town", led to fans loudly chanting "Kroenke sucks!" when professional football returned to the city with the XFL's St. Louis Battlehawks.
  • As for Spagnuolo himself, after his firing in 2011, he became the defensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints (who were without head coach Sean Payton, who was suspended for the 2012 season for his involvement in the Bountygate scandal). Spags' defense set a dubious record of allowing 7,042 yards of total offense, the most in league history. This led to his firing by Payton following his reinstatement. After a stint as a secondary coach with the Ravens from 2013-2014, he would return to the New York Giants as a DC in the 2015 season; his defense allowed 6,725 yards of total offense, the third worst in league history. He did, however, manage to turn things around after joining the Kansas City Chiefs as a defensive coordinator in 2019, winning a Super Bowl with the team in his first year and another three years later (with his defense making key plays in both games).
• Miami Dolphins:
  • Don Shula is the all-time winningest coach in the NFL and belongs on the Mount Rushmore of NFL head coaching. But his time in Miami from the late 80's until his retirement was barely above average at best, as for as good as he was at coaching players, he was terrible at drafting them. He struck a gold mine in 1983 with Dan Marino in the first round, plus Mark Clayton in the 8th (Marino's go-to target for the next decade), and Reggie Roby in the 6th (the punter of the decade for the 80's). His next draft class? LB's Jackie Shipp and Jay Brophy (both with 1 career sack), RB Joe Carter (1 career touchdown), QB Dean May (when he already had Marino and the best backup in the league in Don Strock; May never played for Miami), and then a bunch of guys who never played a down. He also brought in Al Del Greco into training camp to compete with Uwe von Schamann. Del Greco would go on to be one of the best kickers in the 90's, holding almost every kicking record for the Oilers/Titans by the time he retired. Uwe von Schamann would go on to have one of the worst seasons by a kicker ever, was cut after the season, and is mostly known today as the guy who served as the model for Ray Finkle. And it didn't stop there, as he frequently drafted players that never got a second contract, with the worst being the 1987 draft. There he picked DE John Bosa (7 sacks over the course of 3 years), LB Rick Graf (3 sacks in 4 years), WR Scott Schwedes (1 start and 1 receiving touchdown for his career), RB Troy Stradford (was the rookie of the year in 1987, but only because they had to give it to someone, otherwise, 17 fumbles to 12 touchdowns for his career), and then a bunch of guys who only played the replacement player games, some of them not even for Miami. Thus, the reason becomes clear why Dan Marino never won a Super Bowl.
  • The entire Jimmy Johnson era and legacy is in turn an audience-alienating era for the Dolphins. Johnson's insistence that it would be his team, built his way, meant clashes with Marino (particularly over Johnson's attempts to trade him), the team's best player; and Johnson used high picks on running backs such as John Avery and James Johnson (no relation), who ended up as role players at best. And he brought in Cecil "the Diesel" Collins, who went to prison for probation violations before even finishing the season (he was only a fifth-round pick, but the embarrassment was still strong). Johnson resigned in 1999, and hand-selected Wannstedt as his successor, and the Dolphins have been ordinary (at best) ever since.
  • If that was bad, however, their 2007 season, with Cam Cameron behind the wheel, was even worse as at least Johnson was able to draft Zach Thomas, Jason Taylor, Patrick Surtain, and Sam Madison. His first genius move was to trade fan favorite player Wes Welker to division rival New England, where he would go on to make 5 straight Pro Bowls, then draft Ted Ginn Jr. to replace him, when Miami needed a QB more than anything, while also skipping over Patrick Willis, Darrelle Revis, Joe Staley, and Eric Weddle, among others who were better players. Then in the second round he drafted John Beck, a rookie who was already 26 at the time. Miami would go on to their worst season ever. They were literally a hair away from going 0-16 the year before Detroit did, and managed to eke out one win, in Week 15 against the Baltimore Ravens in overtime. He was thankfully fired once the disaster of a season was through, but since then they've only had winning seasons four times (2008, 2016, 2022, and 2023), and all four times would lose in the Wild Card round of the playoffs.
• New Orleans Saints. Who Dat! Who Dat! Who Dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?! As strange as this may seem to younger fans, the New Orleans Saints were a major audience-alienating franchise in the latter half of the 20th century, earning the team the derisive nickname of "Ain'ts". It wasn't until the arrival of Sean Payton and Drew Brees in 2006 — the Saints' 40th season in the NFL — that the team turned a corner and became the perennial playoff team of the late 2000s and the 2010s, winning one Super Bowl (XLIV) in the process. Among the lowlights in the interim:
  • The Saints ruined the promising career of their star QB, Archie Manning, as they failed to record a single winning season despite Manning leading the league in several passing statistics early in his career. What's more, the Saints refused to let Manning leave New Orleans until his prime years were long gone despite the team's ongoing struggles even with him under center, so he didn't even get a chance to play for a contender (modern free agency, which gives players more control over their careers, didn't come into existence until the early 1990s).^note This is widely believed to have been a major factor in Eli Manning's decision to refuse to play for the San Diego Chargers in 2004, as Archie and Eli feared he would suffer a similar fate in San Diego. To show how bad things were for the Saints during most of The '80s, the 1980 season had their fans start wearing paper bags over their heads once their team amounted up to twelve straight games without a win to protest their team's embarrassing performance during home games, marking the first time fans of a pro-level sports team had done so. The "paper bag over head in sports" meme was started by then local sportscaster Bernard Diliberto who suggested to the Saints fans to do it in order to show their displeasure of their team's terrible performance.
  • The Saints didn't make the playoffs for the first time until 1987, and went one-and-done five times in seven years before lapsing into another stretch of non-playoff seasons. It wouldn't be until 2000 that the Saints recorded their first playoff win.
  • In the 1999 draft, the Saints, under the direction of head coach Mike Ditka, traded their entire draft plus a first and third-round pick in the subsequent year to move up and draft RB Ricky Williams. This would be hard to justify even if the player in question had actually turned out to be a franchise-changing star, let alone for a running back who ultimately only gave New Orleans a few productive seasons before injuries and drug problems derailed his career. Ditka himself would lose his job at the end of the season after going 3-13.
  • Then there was the infamous 2003 River City Relay, where the Saints, down by 7 against the Jaguars and needing a win to keep their playoff hopes alive, scored a last-second touchdown that featured three successful laterals... only for John Carney, one of the best kickers in NFL history, to miss the extra point that would have tied the game and sent it into overtime, thereby making the entire play All for Nothing. While the Saints would have been eliminated from playoff contention anyway that day after a Dallas Cowboys win, the whole situation epitomized the Saints' reputation as the league's Butt-Monkey — that even when they did something incredible and historic, they still found a way to blow it.
• New York Giants:
  • The Giants have had great success in multiple eras — the late-'50s and early-'60s with Y.A. Tittle, Frank Gifford, and Sam Huff, the mid-'80s to early-'90s with Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor, and, in subsequent years, their two Eli Manning-led Super Bowl teams. But they've also had about just as many Audience-Alienating Eras.
  • The first Audience-Alienating Era of Giants football came in 1946, when star quarterback Frank Filchock and fullback Merle Hapes were banned from the NFL for their roles in a betting scandal, where a gambler allegedly paid them off to fix the 1946 championship against the Chicago Bears. Post-betting scandal, the Giants dropped from 7–3–1 in 1946 to 2–8–2 in 1947, and didn't recover until QB Charlie Conerly's rise to stardom in the early '50s.
  • There's the '70s Audience-Alienating Era, which featured past-their-prime QBs Craig Morton and Norm Snead, and mediocre youngster Joe Pisarcik (he of the infamous fumble that led to the Miracle at the Meadowlands) at quarterback. From 1973 to 1980, the Giants finished either fourth or fifth (and last) in their division, though by 1979, they'd made one big move to end this Audience-Alienating Era, drafting Phil Simms as their quarterback of the future.
  • After winning Super Bowl XXV, the rough, gruff, yet brilliant and successful Bill Parcells retired from football, with his head coaching job going to Ray Handley. One of his first moves was to have a gimpy, yet still capable Simms battle it out for starting QB with Super Bowl XXV hero Jeff Hostetler, who was a capable fill-in, but not franchise QB material. And while he seemed at first to be a nicer guy than Parcells, media, and ultimately players, didn't see him that way, as he refused to take accountability for the Giants' descent "from the Super Bowl to the toilet bowl". Handley was gone after going 14-18 in two seasons (1991-92), and while Dan Reeves led the Giants to an 11-5 record in 1993, the team turned over the QB reins to the disappointing Dave Brown in 1994. And Danny Kanell in 1997 when Brown wasn't cutting it. And while their record under those two QBs (a combined 38-41-1) isn't that bad, it can be said that the Giants achieved such a record despite, and not because of, their quarterbacks.
• The New York Jets went through this from the 1994 to the 1996 seasons, which started with the Fake Spike Game between the Dolphins and Jets, that resulted in them losing their last four games and the firing of Pete Carroll. The following season, the Jets hired Rich Kotite as the new head coach and general manager. Kotite notoriously passed up highly-touted defensive tackle Warren Sapp for tight end Kyle Brady in the 1995 draft, despite the Jets already drafting one three years ago. During Kotite's tenure, the Jets finished 3–13 and 1–15, and eventually, Kotite resigned at the end of the season.
• After years of success in Oakland and Los Angeles, the Oakland Raiders entered an Audience-Alienating Era after their 2003 curb-stomping by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl XXXVII (Who were led by Jon Gruden, the head coach Al Davis practically gave away with contempt). Since then, their playoff drought lasted until 2016, and they only finished better than 5-11 seven times, in 2010, 2011, and 2020 with 8–8 records, 2015 and 2019 with 7–9 records, 2016 with a 12-4 record, and 2017 with a 6-10 record. All but the most apologetic NFL fans point to Al Davis' waning health and mental capabilities late in life, and his stubborn refusal step down as General Manager. Some fans think it actually started with Davis' falling out and eventual acrimonious split with running back Marcus Allen in 1993 (Allen left as a free agent and signed with the Raiders' bitter rival, Kansas City). Things have started to turn around with Davis' son, Mark Davis, in control... and the team (as of the 2020 season) becoming the Las Vegas Raiders.
• The Pittsburgh Steelers' early history. Their first 39 seasons featured only eight winning records, no playoff wins, and no titles. In 1969, they hired Chuck Noll as head coach and he began to build the Steelers into a solid contender. They recorded their first playoff win in 1972 (the famous "Immaculate Reception" Game) and eventually went on to claim four Super Bowl titles before the end of the decade. When the players from the '70s dynasty inevitably retired, the Steelers fell back into another Audience-Alienating Era in the '80s. After Noll finally stepped down in 1991 and Bill Cowher became head coach, the Steelers returned to their winning ways, but they weren't completely out of the Audience-Alienating Era due to constantly fizzling out in the playoffs, the most glaring losses coming in the '94, '97, 2001, and 2004 AFC Championship Games, at home nonetheless, as well as Super Bowl XXX against the Cowboys. Cowher finally won a championship in 2005 before retiring after the 2006 season. With current coach Mike Tomlin, the Steelers have played in two more Super Bowls with one victory, haven't posted a losing season since 2003, and despite a few speed bumps as key players from the later Super Bowls have retired, continue to remain perennial playoff contenders thanks to fresh talent ably taking their places.^note One example of this would be the trio of receivers who have caught 500+ balls from QB Ben Roethlisberger, making him the only player to pull of that feat - the first two were tight end Heath Miller and wideout Hines Ward, who formed the core of Pittsburgh's passing game throughout the mid-to-late 2000's and early 2010's. The third is lead wideout Antonio Brown, who was drafted in 2010 and was in the prime of his career as of 2018, but had a severe falling-out with the team in general and Roethlisberger in particular by the end of that season and was traded after it.
• San Francisco 49ers:
  • The Niners of the late 70's under Joe Thomas were putrid. Big acquisitions such as Jim Plunkett, and OJ Simpson became utter busts, and the team trundled through losing season after losing season. Thankfully, said losing run ended soon after Bill Walsh and Joe Montana arrived.
  • The 49ers under the York family have turned into the NFL's joke, save for a 4-year run (2011-2015) under Jim Harbaugh's tutelage. The Niners' struggles began when the Yorks replaced head coach Steve Mariucci with Dennis Erickson, who proceeded to have two straight losing seasons while coaching practically the same team Mariucci led to the playoffs. Not helping was an increasingly toxic locker-room atmosphere (sparked primarily by the feud between Quarterback Jeff Garcia and Wide Receiver Terrell Owens), the departures of key players like Owens, Garcia, and Garrison Hearst, and the drafting of infamous bust Rashaun Woods. Things seemed to turn around in 2005, when Erickson and GM Terry Donahue were fired and the team selected quarterback Alex Smith with the Number One pick. Unfortunately, Erickson's successor as head coach, Mike Nolan, was no better, and Smith was an injury-prone bust during his early career. The Niners then replaced Nolan with Mike Singletary, who was a good motivator (a strange example was when he dropped his pants to allude to his team's embarrassing play) but an otherwise mediocre coach, and the Niners kept on losing. However, the Niners' constant losing hid the fact that they were able to draft key building blocks such as Frank Gore, Vernon Davis, Andy Lee, Patrick Willis, Joe Staley, NaVorro Bowman, and Colin Kaepernick. Said building blocks (and Alex Smith's improvement) led to the team becoming a powerhouse once Harbaugh arrived. Unfortunately, said success would end once Harbaugh left due to a dispute with management and was replaced by Jim Tomsula, who was just flat-out incompetent. With key players either leaving (like Willis, Smith, Gore etc.), getting injured (Bowman), or just flat-out struggling (Kaepernick), the Niners went from playoff contenders to the NFL's laughingstock, even after Tomsula was replaced by Chip Kelly, who was eventually fired as well. Thankfully, a new GM (John Lynch), a new head coach (Kyle Shanahan), some young prospects (Carlos Hyde, Eric Reid, and DeForrest Buckner, to name a few), and a host of free-agent signings (e.g. Pierre Garcon, Malcolm Smith and, in a giant coup, former Patriots backup QB Jimmy Garoppolo^note believed by many to be the real deal, as opposed to Matt Cassel or Brian Hoyer, who were exposed after taking starting duties with other teams; Garoppolo quickly took the Niners on a win streak as soon as he was put in the starting role, although by that time they were out of contention for the '17 playoffs) may mean that the Audience-Alienating Era at the time appeared to be nearing its end, but the stench of the Yorks' ownership might still keep it going. The Niners didn't improve in 2018, going 4–12—though they had an excuse in that Garoppolo lost almost all of the season to a torn ACL (though they still didn’t get the worst record in the NFC West, that honor would go to the 3-13 Arizona Cardinals). With Garoppolo healthy in 2019, the Niners ended up being the season's last unbeaten team, won the NFC West, and made it to Super Bowl LIV (losing there to the Chiefs), apparently ending that Audience-Alienating Era…
  • …until the next year where the 49ers once again became a butt end of jokes this time due to yet another glut of injuries happening to the entire starting team. Garoppolo would once again fall to injury and miss most of the season AGAIN, followed by several key players (Nick Bosa, Richard Sherman, George Kittle, Raheem Mostert, Dee Ford and Deebo Samuel just to name a few). Even worse, the 49ers would have to leave their home stadium due to Santa Clara’s COVID restrictions, therefore forced to play at the stadium of the division rival Cardinals. With a 6-10 season, the 49ers missed the playoffs yet again proving they are nowhere near out of this audience-alienating era.
  • The 49ers managed to have a bounce-back year of sorts in the 2021 season, though it wasn’t a pretty bounce-back to say the least. The Niners entered the season with a ton of question marks which included the future of QB Jimmy Garoppolo who was endlessly criticized by both fans and the media for being injury prone and accused of being carried by the team despite his strong winning record with the team and being a locker room leader. It was so bad, it eventually caused the 49ers to move up in that years draft to take in rookie Trey Lance. HC Kyle Shanahan was also facing backlash from the fanbase to the point of many questioning if he ever was an offensive genius he was hyped to be. Come the 2021 season, it was ugly to say the least. Despite a 2-0 start, they would fall to an uncertain 3-5 after losing several winnable games including a tough loss to red hot Packers team and a downright humiliating loss to a Cardinals team without their starters. It was so bad that the Niner “faithful” outright booed the team off the field at half time in Week 7 vs the Colts, this wouldn’t be the only time they would be booed by their fans. The 49ers thankfully managed to turn the season around with a 10-7 record and claw their way into the playoffs, thanks to WR Deebo Samual having a breakout season and the Defense finally finding it’s stride. They would have a deep playoff run with victories over the Cowboys and the top seeded Packers in a revenge game. Sadly, it was short lived as the 49ers would suffer another humiliating loss to division rival Rams, the same Rams team the 49ers swept in the regular season and was 0-6 against the Niners since 2019. This loss only further infuriated the 49er faithful.
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers:
  • The Bucs may be the kings of this trope in sports, especially since they have the worst overall winning percentage in the NFL. Their image was cemented when they were winless for their entire inaugural season and almost all of the second, an NFL-record 26-game losing streak from 1976 to 1977. 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.
  • While some of the younger inaugural Bucs had potential (brothers Lee Roy and Dewey Selmon, both rookie defensive linemen out of Oklahoma) and some of the veterans (quarterback Steve Spurrier, defensive end Pat Toomay) had decent, if not stellar NFL careers beforehand, the team also had its share of players who'd be out of a job if not for the Bucs, and were often out of the NFL after their run with the Bucs ended. These included giant left tackle Steve Young (no, not THAT Steve Young who replaced Joe Montana on the 49ers), 190-pound linebacker James "Psycho" Sims, who originally played defensive back at USC, and several other ex-USC players coached by McKay, including his slow, undersized wide receiver of a son, John McKay Jr., who, unsurprisingly, was a starter.
  • Eventually, McKay's youth-first 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.
  • One bad draft that stands out was the 1982 draft, where the Bucs wanted to select Booker Reese, a super-athletic, yet extremely raw defensive end, with the 17th overall pick. A communications snafu led Tampa Bay to mistakenly use that pick on their second choice Sean Farrell, a talented and polished offensive tackle who ended up having a good NFL career. The Bucs, wanting to have their cake and eat it too, wanted to trade up for Reese in the second round, and were so desperate for a deal that they sent their first-round pick in the 1983 draft to Chicago for the rights to Reese. Reese turned out to be an epic failure as he was a huge, drug-addled bust who couldn't adjust to life in the pros, while the Bears used that pick (18th overall) to select Willie Gault, who had a successful pro career at wide receiver. Much worse, Dan Freaking Marino was still on the board at that time, and the Bucs needed a quarterback in the worst way possible.^note  Marino's draft prospects had taken a hit after a weak final year at the University of Pittsburgh and allegations of drug problems, but he was still regarded as a potential generational talent, and the Miami Dolphins used their first round pick (27th overall) to draft him.
  • The Bucs' misfortunes were mainly caused by the original owner of the team: Hugh Culverhouse. Even if he was one of the most influential owners in the NFL, he was often very cheap and barely did much to help turn the team around and/or learn from their mistakes, and it's safe to assume that his mismanagement led to the Buccaneers' initial infamy. UrinatingTree made a whole video here which can further explain Hugh Culverhouse's handling of the team. The biggest moment that cemented his reputation in Tampa was what he did with Bo Jackson. The man was a Heisman Trophy-winning running back from Auburn, and was the consensus #1 player headed into the draft. Culverhouse took Jackson for a physical and tour of the team's facility, all paid for by Culverhouse and assuring Jackson that the SEC approved of this. However, the truth was that the SEC did not and stripped Bo Jackson of his eligibility to play his senior year in baseball. This had Jackson believe the Bucs had deliberately tried to sabotage his baseball career, and told Culverhouse that "[the team is] going to be wasting a draft pick" if they selected him. But the Bucs drafted him anyway with the first overall pick in 1986. Jackson instead chose to play in MLB (starting with the Kansas City Royals) and re-entered the draft the next year where the Raiders drafted him and allowed him to continue playing in baseball.
• Washington Commanders:
  • The team has endured one under executive meddler extraordinaire Dan Snyder from 1999 to 2023. Despite being the most profitable team in the league, the team has perennially underperformed due to Snyder's interference: the team has had seven head coaches in 12 years, posted a losing record through 2000–10 (86–106) 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 Washington fans eagerly awaited Snyder's departure, to put it lightly. It's gotten much worse eventually with the controversy over the team's name being offensive. Even longtime Skins fans turned against the team and its institution for its refusal to change anything at all with a negative connotation towards American Indians. By 2016, once-unheralded Kirk Cousins had stepped up as an elite quarterback and erased bad memories of two horrible seasons and onetime potential Hall of Famer Robert Griffin III's injury- and attitude-fueled descent to mediocrity. Unfortunately for Washington fans, Cousins' rise just meant the Redskins found an entirely new way to screw up: franchise-tagging Cousins twice instead of giving him a long-term deal, which resulted in him defecting in free agency to Minnesota after the 2017 season. The team replaced him with Alex Smith, who is at least a competent quarterback, but the trade cost the team a draft pick, a promising young cornerback, and a large extension for Smith that's probably not much smaller than the long-term deal they could have given Cousins after the 2016 season.
  • And then, midway through the 2018 season, Smith broke his leg in a gruesome manner similar to Joe Theismann. Smith literally came within an eyelash of losing his leg to the injury. This probably cost the Skins a playoff berth.
  • In 2019, with Smith set to miss the entire year at least, the team tried to shore up their quarterback situation by trading for veteran Case Keenum (who's had his moments (see the Minneapolis Miracle), but has classified himself by and large as a career backup) and drafting Dwayne Haskins. Neither one was able to do much in 2019, and the team limped to an abysmal 3-13 record, with head coach Jay Gruden being fired after a 0-5 start to the season. Keenum would be traded to Cleveland before the start of the 2020 season; Haskins stuck around for 2020, but was benched and demoted to second backup after just four games, and ultimately ended up getting released before the final game of the regular season due to a combination of poor play and off-the-field concerns.
  • Ahead of the 2021 season, Washington tried to generate some spark by adding Ryan Fitzpatrick, a journeyman QB with a flashy, though sometimes inconsistent, history. Fitzpatrick didn't even last a single game before succumbing to a season-ending injury. The team just cannot catch a break.
  • The name controversy finally ended shortly before the 2020 season, when Snyder finally dropped the "Redskins" name... but only when many of the team's sponsors threatened to pull their support without a name change. And Snyder managed to completely botch the name change, dawdling so long that outside parties swooped in and trademarked everything that had been floated as a potential replacement name. While the "Washington Football Team" name was intended to be a placeholder for the 2020 season only, it ended up sticking around for 2021 as well before the team finally adopted a new permanent name ahead of the 2022 season.
  • Another contributing factor to the franchise's downward spiral was the hire of Bruce Allen as general manager in 2009. Being the son of Hall of Fame coach George Allen (who led the Redskins to their first ever Super Bowl appearance), Bruce was mostly hired to "bring the Redskins back to the glory days" but largely proved to have done anything but. Under his 10-year supervision Washington posted a 62-100-1 record and a horrendous .398 winning percentage, the fifth-worst NFL percentage of the decade. Apart from the quarterback saga detailed above, Allen's leadership has met with much highlights of turmoil off the field as it has on the field, with incidents such as:
    • Airing former GM^note during this time, Bruce Allen had been promoted to president Scot McCloughan's past as an alcoholic which was widely suspected and criticized as a smear campaign to get McCloughan fired out of jealousy.
    • Signing linebacker Reuben Foster a mere four days after he was arrested and released by the 49ers in 2018 for his second domestic violence charge in just his first year in the league (the charges were later dropped). Not helped by the fact that in the same year the NFL had started to add much stricter punishments for players guilty of such. Allen was deservedly lambasted by local and national media for bringing another potential PR landmine to a team that has been hounded by them since the 2010s. Making matters worse, Reuben Foster would then go on to suffer a devastating knee injury in the offseason and did not play a single down in 2019, with his career possibly in doubt.
    • The final straw however, would be alienating franchise cornerstone Trent Williams due to a dispute with the team's medical staff over a misdiagnosis that nearly killed him: he was told by team doctors that a growth on his head was "minor", but it turned out to be cancerous and was weeks from getting to his brain. This led to Williams declaring that he would never play for the franchise again. Instead of trading him for draft capital (some teams were willing to offer two first rounders, quite the bargain for a 32-year-old left tackle) Allen refused to move him out of spite. Williams didn't play in the 2019 season, first due to a team suspension and then due to complications from the lifesaving surgery. Allen was finally fired after the 2019 season, to the delight of long-suffering fans, and Williams was traded to the 49ers.

National Hockey League

• The '70s was this for North American hockey in general. Over-expansion and a rival league in the World Hockey Association drained the talent pool, and minor leagues that once featured talent to rival the NHL in the Original Six era degenerated into the chaotic world that inspired Slap Shot. The leagues that didn't completely collapse limped their way through the decade. Even the NHL saw franchise instability, as teams relocated, merged, and teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. The WHA was even more unstable, with only six of sixteen total franchises (never more than 14 in one season) reaching the finish line in 1979, and only four being accepted into the NHL.
  • The late 1990s-early 2000s are looked backed on negatively (unless you are a Devils, Red Wings or Avalanche fan). The Dead Puck Era, as it is called, featured very few goals and the focus was mainly on playing the neutral zone trap.
• The Disney era for the Anaheim Ducks was a mixed bag, but was on the whole a lot worse than the current era.
  • Back then, their name was The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, with the logo of a duck goalie mask in front of a puck with two crossed hockey sticks behind it, and they were used more for movie publicity than they were as a sports team (as were their sister franchise, the Anaheim Angels). While their traditional home and away jerseys and the original logo are often looked back on fondly by fans (even to the point where the old logo was brought back for the current third jerseys), their third jerseys from the 1995-96 season◊ is considered one of the worst in the sport's history. Overall, the Ducks were both literally and figuratively treated as a Mickey Mouse organization by everyone including the ownership.
  • While the Ducks were not a bad team, they were never really good either, making the playoffs four times in twelve seasons, and only making the Stanley Cup finals once in 2003. Even with breakout players like Paul Kariya, Teemu Selänne, Jean-Sébastien Giguère, Andy McDonald and Steve Rucchin, they could never quite consistently compete for playoff spots until after the ownership changed.
• Due to its extremely small market, the Edmonton Oilers have had this problem caused 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 A.A.E. when the Kings beat the Oilers in the 1989 playoffs, but Edmonton 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 Audience-Alienating Eras.
  • Beloved forward Ryan Smyth was the centerpiece of the second A.A.E. 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. The Oilers failed to make the playoffs until the 2016-17 season, while racking up 4 number 1 draft picks in 6 years between 2010 and 2015. While getting a good number of first-overall picks would be a godsend for most teams, Edmonton's picks were a mixed bag: while Ryan Nugent Hopkins (selected in 2011) and Connor McDavid (2015) have become key pieces in the Oilers' current core, Taylor Hall (2010) was traded to the Devils a year before the Oilers returned to playoff contention (despite being a pretty good player himself), and Nail Yakupov (2012) ended up as the NHL's biggest draft bust in recent history ^note Made worse by the fact that Yakupov was selected before the likes of Andrei Vasilevskiy, Filip Forsberg, Tomas Hertl, Teuvo Teravainen, Matt Dumba, Frederik Andersen, Connor Hellebuyck, Jaccob Slavin, and Matt Murray..
• 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 after allowing five goals in the first period of what ultimately ended up being an 11–1 loss to the Detroit Red Wings (Roy was finally given the yank in the second period after allowing his ninth goal). Roy would end up winning two more Cups with the Colorado Avalanche^note which, to add insult to injury, were previously known as the Quebec Nordiques, Montreal's hated rival. Meanwhile, it took 16 years for the Canadiens to find a stable goalie after Carey Price finally took the reins from Jaroslav Halák. The closest the Canadiens have ever gotten to the Stanley Cup since Roy's trade was losing in the Conference finals, leading some to suggest that the Habs are suffering under the 'Curse of Saint Patrick'. This trend would be somewhat bucked as the Canadiens finally reached the Finals in 2021, only to lose to the Tampa Bay Lightning in five games.
• Many NHL teams hit extreme slumps after success. For example, the Detroit Red Wings were better known as the "Dead Things" 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 spent several years as a bottom feeder team before rebounding by drafting Alexander Ovechkin.
• The Toronto Maple Leafs had the Harold Ballard era. Once Ballard became chairman of the Maple Leafs in 1961, things eventually took a turn for the worse for the team. Though it was tempered by the Leafs starting a dynasty Cup run in the 60s, winning the Cup in 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1967, Ballard's ego grew gradually bigger after each Cup win and eventually got in the way of him and his team the more he was involved. After the team's last Cup win, he made a habit of trading off popular players in exchange for magic beans, firing coaches frequently, and generally pissing off everyone 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 1980s, the Leafs were the laughingstock of the NHL all because of Ballard's actions. On a lesser note, the 9-year playoff drought between 2005 and 2012. Particularly the last, as the team lead its division for some time, and got eliminated after losing 9 of 10 games, only making 24 points to the end of their season, finishing at 13th on the East. Even when they returned, they overcame and tied a series which the Bruins were winning 3–1, but lost Game 7 after allowing a Bruins comeback when the Leafs were leading 4–1!
• Similar to Ballard, the above-mentioned Chicago Blackhawks had their own Hated by All owner in William (aka Bill) Wirtz, also known as "Dollar Bill" for being a greedy tightwad. Add Invisible Advertising, blocking local broadcasts of home games, raising ticket prices, and plain mismanagement, from 1997 to 2008 the Hawks hit Rock Bottom, with many Chicago fans preferring the minor-league Chicago Wolves of the AHL (who, at that period, were affiliated with the then-Atlanta Thrashers). The team has since rebounded after Wirtz died in 2007 and his son Rocky led the Hawks to three Stanley Cups, but to show how bad things were, the fans at the United Center booed the memorial for the universally reviled "Dollar Bill" at the 2007–08 home opener.
  • After winning three Cups in six years in the earlier part of the 2010s, the Blackhawks would start to fall back into this trope in the 2017-18 season, when they lost star goaltender Corey Crawford to a concussion. The Hawks would soon struggle without him for the remainder of the season and miss the playoffs for the first time since 2008. It got worse in 2018-19, when after a 6-6-3 start, longtime head coach Joel Quenneville got the pink slip. Soon, the Hawks would hit Rock Bottom again, toting one of the league's worst records. The Blackhawks did make the playoffs in 2020 ^note  Due to COVID-19 placing 24 of the then-31 teams into playoff bubbles in Toronto and Edmonton, but in the 2021-22 season, a sexual assault allegation involving a former prospect who was sexually assaulted by a now-former staff member during the team's run to the Stanley Cup title in 2010 rocked the franchise to its core, causing long-time fans to turn away and costing long-time general manager/president of hockey operations, Stan Bowman, his job.^note Bowman wasn't the only casualty of that scandal: Former Hawks head coach Joel Quennville was let go from his then-current job as the Florida Panthers head coach, and Al Macissac stepped down from his job as the Hawks' senior VP of hockey operations. Head coach Jeremy Colliton was let go as well, but that was due to the 1-9-2 record that the Hawks trotted out with to start the season.
• Poor, poor Canada, ever since the Montreal Canadiens' Cup victory in 1993, the Canadian teams have been in a complete A.A.E., unable to win the Cup ever since. From 1995-2003, no Canadian team even made it to the Finals. Since then, only five Cup Finals have featured a Canadian team (2004 Calgary, 2006 Edmonton, 2007 Ottawa, 2011 Vancouver and 2021 Montreal). To put it into perspective, the Detroit Red Wings have made the Stanley Cup Finals more times than every Canadian team combined since 1993. The 2015-16 season then hit a collective nadir for Canada: on March 31, 2016, all 7 Canadian teams missed the playoffs with the Philadelphia Flyers defeating the Washington Capitals in a shootout, mathematically eliminating the Ottawa Senators from clinching the final wild card spot. Now Canadians were forced to watch America take the whole spotlight in the hunt for Lord Stanley's Cup.
• Many younger fans don't know about the San Jose Sharks' struggles in The '90s, due to the Sharks' relative success (despite their near-constant playoff chokes) in recent history and their extremely 90's-era identity (black and teal as primary colors, a scary animal mascot, "Get Ready for This" as a goal song). As expected for an expansion team, the Sharks were perennial underachievers, despite their rabid fanbase, the presence of talented players such as Doug Wilson, Arturs Irbe, and Owen Nolan, and some early successes (first-round playoff upsets of the Detroit Red Wings and the Calgary Flames). The Sharks then Took a Level in Badass after hitting rock bottom in 1997, drafting young stud Patrick Marleau (seen by some as the best Sharks player of all time) and hiring Darryl Sutter. Ever since then, they have been a constant playoff threat (albeit one that always makes an early exit from the post-season) and a huge draw for fans in the South Bay Area. Many even consider the San Jose Sharks as one of the most successful post-90's expansion teams in North American sports.
  • The Sharks had two moments where they nearly entered another A.A.E.:
    • The first one was during the 2005/2006 season, where they spent the first half of the season out of playoff contention. After a 10-game losing streak, the Sharks then traded key players Brad Stuart and Marco Sturm to the Boston Bruins in exchange for eventual talisman Joe Thornton; the trade ended up causing the Sharks to come roaring back with a vengeance, ending up in 5th place in the Western Conference.
    • The second one was during the last season of head coach Todd McLellan (2014/2015). Following an embarrassing first round choke to the hated Los Angeles Kings (under none other than former Sharks head coach Darryl Sutter, no less, who was responsible for the Kings' 2012 and 2014 Cup victories), the Sharks ended up stripping Joe Thornton of the captaincy and going the entire season without a captain. They also made some uninspired offseason moves, such as signing John Scott and letting go of the likes of Martin Havlát and Dan Boyle. This ended up with San Jose finishing sixth in the Pacific Division and missing the playoffs for the first time since 1997. This was despite the presence of veterans Thornton and Marleau, the strong play of stars Joe Pavelski, Logan Couture, and Brent Burns, and the development of young studs such as Tomáš Hertl, Melker Karlsson, and Chris Tierney. Thankfully, the Sharks' slide was halted when GM Doug Wilson (considered by some a scapegoat of the Sharks' struggles) replaced McLellan with Pete DeBoer (who named Pavelski team captain), and made key acquisitions such as Martin Jones, Joel Ward, Joonas Donskoi, and Paul Martin. These moves ended up not only bringing the Sharks back to the post-season, but also led to the Sharks' first-ever appearance in the Stanley Cup finals...where they lost to the Penguins in six games. Some things just never change.
• Many hockey fans will tell you that the NHL is currently going through one long Audience-Alienating Era under the leadership of Commissioner Gary Bettman. Why, you may ask? Let's count the reasons:
  1. Two seasons shortened and another cancelled by work stoppages ^note  1994–95, 2012–13, and 2004–05, for the record.
  2. Five franchise relocations ^note  Minnesota North Stars (Dallas Stars), Quebec Nordiques (Colorado Avalanche), the original Winnipeg Jets (Arizona Coyotes), Hartford Whalers (Carolina Hurricanes), and Atlanta Thrashers (the "new" Winnipeg Jets).
  3. Several expansions into Southern markets that are either uninterested or unsupportive of their new hockey teams. The financial situation of the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes has been bad enough at times that the league itself has stepped in to run them while still insisting that the franchise is viable long-term (and still insisting this after the Coyotes were booted out of their arena and have been playing at ASU's 5,000 seat rink ever since). Meanwhile, the Atlanta Thrashers drew so poorly, they were uprooted and awarded back to Winnipeg in what could almost be seen as an apology to Canadian fans who'd lost two franchises south to the US. And the 2017–18 season saw a new Las Vegas team start play.^note The Golden Knights have far exceeded initial expectations, however, setting a new record for expansion team wins mid-season, locking up a playoff berth by mid-March, and reaching the Stanley Cup Final! They didn't miss the playoffs until their fifth season in 2021–22, and bounced back from that by claiming Lord Stanley's Mug the next season! Things may be looking up, though, with the announcement that the Seattle Kraken would start play in 2021 (and Seattle had been chomping at the bit to get a new team), but some are still upset that Canadian markets are being ignored.^note This comes down to simple economics: all league business (including paying players) is done in U.S. dollars but Canadian teams naturally take most of their revenue in Canadian dollars, which is more often than not worth less (73 cents as of this writing), putting them at a pretty sizeable economic disadvantage before a single game is played.
  4. Selling ESPN's television broadcast rights to the NHL to what was at the time, the nearly-unheard-of Outdoor Life Network, previously best known for PBR bull riding, fishing shows and dirt track racing. And even then the coverage of hockey was notoriously bad (oftentimes clashing with OLN's other major draw, the Tour de France). Only much later, under the names of Versus and eventually NBC Sports Network (later NBCSN), has it gotten any better (but even then, sometimes playoff games had to be broadcast on the Golf Channel of all places). It took until 2021 to ESPN to host hockey again (in a dual bid with TNT), which in turn caused Comcast to shutter NBCSN and move the remaining sports it had to the USA Network and Peacock.
  5. Fox's brief tenure as an NHL broadcaster from 1995-98, mostly remembered for the infamous "glow puck"^note it should be noted the blue glow was supposed to be replaced, but it somehow ended up a Permanent Placeholder (or, as Fox called it, "FoxTrax") that many fans saw as annoying, obtrusive and gimmicky (though in fairness, Fox and the NHL were looking to solve a real issue, that being the near-impossibility of actually seeing the puck on screen in an age of tube TV sets and fuzzy analog reception; even today with huge HD screens and digital broadcasting/streaming, it can still be rather difficult). This one went away after 1998 since Fox owned the rights to the underlying technology, and few missed it (though the glow puck was the foundation of other, less obtrusive tech gimmicks in sports broadcasting like virtual goal lines and pitch tracking).
• St. Louis Blues fans revere Craig Berube for coaching the team to their first-ever Stanley Cup in 2019. A few fans, though, lamented that they could have won the Cup 20 years ago if it weren't for Mike Keenan, who was the Blues' general manager and coach in the mid-1990s. Keenan inherited a very talented team which he proceeded to systematically dismantle. His antics included pissing off star players until they said Screw This, I'm Outta Here (Wayne Gretzky liked St. Louis and wanted to end his career there, but he bolted for the New York Rangers when Keenan rescinded his contract offer after he slumped in the playoffs; Keenan benched Dale Hawerchuk when his dying grandmother came to watch him play, causing a disgusted Brett Hull to yell at Keenan, while Keenan responded by stripping Hull of his captaincy), bad trades (trading away valuable pieces like Brendan Shanahan, Petr Nedvěd and Curtis Joseph, who became important parts of the teams that acquired them) and questionable coaching decisions (playing goalie Grant Fuhr for 79 games when most starting goalies played 60-70 games; when Fuhr bowed out with an injury in the playoffs, he took the Blues' playoff hopes with him). If Berube is widely loved by Blues fans, Keenan is still widely hated to this day.
• Pity the poor, poor New York Islanders. After a golden age when they won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980-83, they suffered for over two decades under the reigns of Mike Milbury and Garth Snow, who are quite possibly not only two of the worst General Managers in the history of the NHL, but all of North American sports.
  • First, there was Milbury, who spent nine years as GM. His idiocy involved trading away talented players for the equivalent of a bucket of pucks (goaltender Roberto Luongo, defenseman Zdeno Chára and the draft pick that became Jason Spezza), chronic turnover on the coaching staff (seven head coaches in nine years), ridiculously bad draft picks (choosing 19-year-old Rick DiPietro as the first ever goaltender chosen first overall in a draft, only for DiPietro to be Made of Plasticine and chronically injured, and mediocre when he did play), and laughably bloated contracts (giving prima donna Alexei Yashin, who refused to honor his contract with Ottawa because he wanted more money a 10-year, $87.5 million contract, only for Yashin's productivity to evaporate along with his incentive once he got his cash). Milbury once said that he and his fellow GMs were all crooks who tried to swindle and con each other in their deals. Ironically, he was usually the one getting ripped off in the deals he made.
  • When Milbury stepped down, he was succeeded by Neil Smith. Because the hockey gods decided New York needed to suffer some more, Smith was fired after 41 days on the job for Snow, who had zero management exerience. Snow's antics as GM were similar to Milbury's, and one of his first moves was to give Rick DiPietro a contract for $67.5 million over 15 years. Years of bad draft choices (such as first-round bust Griffin Reinhart), bad coaching hires, star John Tavares saying Screw This, I'm Outta Here when Snow failed to build a good team around him, more bad contracts (giving Andrew Ladd $5.5 million per year), and bad trades (sending multiple players and a first-round draft pick to Edmonton for an aging Ryan Smyth, and trading Tavares' favorite linemate Matt Moulson for a Thomas Vanek who left by year's end) and poor playoff performances (11 wins during Snow's 12 years as GM, an average of less than one a year) all followed as the Islanders floundered between mediocrity and the NHL basement. When Snow was fired in 2018, few were sad to see him go.
• John Ziegler Jr. was the president of the National Hockey League from 1977-1992. It was during Ziegler's tenure that the NHL expanded 18 to 24 teams, including the 1979 addition of four teams from the World Hockey Association. It was also under Ziegler however, that the Cleveland Barons folded in 1978, the Atlanta Flames moved to Calgary in 1980, and the Colorado Rockies moved to New Jersey and became the Devils in 1982. This was mind you, all within a five-year span. And to this day, the NHL is the only major North American professional league to have a team outright fold in the modern era. And the terms of the deal were so unfavorable to the former WHA teams that ultimately three of them (the Winnipeg Jets, the Quebec Nordiques, and the Hartford Whalers) could not build solid enough foundations to thrive, and ultimately relocated in the 1990s.
  • From May 24, 1980, when Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final was broadcast on CBS and January 21, 1990, when the All-Star Game was broadcast on NBC, National Hockey League games of any kind were not nationally broadcast on network television in the United States. During the 1980s, the NHL was buried on cable, either on a fledgling ESPN or on USA Network. For the 1988-89 season, the NHL landed a sweet deal with SportsChannel America (a spinoff of the SportsChannel regional sports networks), which paid the league $17 million per year and televised upwards of 100 games per season. Yet, SportsChannel only had about only a third of the reach as ESPN did. For the NHL’s 75th Anniversary season of 1991-92, Ziegler was able to get only $5.5 million from SportsChannel in a one-year deal that was literally brokered the day the season started. To put things into proper perspective, all of those records that Wayne Gretzky set or broke were out of the public eye, as far as TV in the U.S. was concerned.
  • Ziegler colluded with NHL Players Association Executive Director Alan Eagleson while he was in office. The two worked together to impose restrictive free agency polices and to keep player salaries low. Eagleson’s wrongdoings included embezzlement of players’ retirement funds and skimming money from players’ insurance settlements. Those transgressions are on Eagleson, though Ziegler knew who he was dealing with. It could be argued that Ziegler had to do whatever he could to keep player salaries low; if that meant colluding with someone who was selling out his own constituents.^note As a result of these actions Eagleson is to date the only person that's been thrown out of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
  • The event that in all likelihood cemented Ziegler's legacy as an incompetent NHL president happened in 1988, during the playoff series between the New Jersey Devils and Boston Bruins. The whole Jim Schoenfeld/Don Koharski affair after their third game^note During an argument in the tunnel after the game, referee Koharski tripped and fell, accusing Devils coach Schoenfeld of pushing him. Schoenfeld famously responded, "Good, 'cause you fell you fat pig!" Then, he yelled "Have another doughnut! Have another doughnut!" The incident was played repeatedly on ESPN and has since become part of NHL lore. Schoenfeld was suspended by Ziegler for Game 4, but the Devils received an injunction from a New Jersey court, allowing Schoenfeld to coach the fourth game. is something that Ziegler will never live down. For reasons unknown, Ziegler went fishing, and was unavailable when the Devils were granted a court injunction, permitting Schoenfeld to coach Game 4 vs. the Bruins. The referees refused to officiate the game, and league officials frantically tried contacting Ziegler for the next couple of days, without success.
• The late 1990s were a tough time to be a Vancouver Canucks fan. They seemed to be going places with a magical Stanley Cup run in 1994, losing the Finals in seven games to the New York Rangers. Despite the loss, they retained several of the key players from that 1994 run. From there...
  • In 1996, General Manager Pat Quinn had all but convinced Wayne Gretzky to sign with Vancouver. After an evening of negotiations, Gretzky agreed and promised to sign the paperwork in the morning. Unfortunately, team CEO Stan McKinnon forced Quinn to demand Gretzky give them his signed agreement that night. Gretzky had already gone to bed by that point, so his agents had to wake him up to talk to Quinn. An infuriated Gretzky refused to sign and instead bolted for the Rangers, where he finished his career. The Canucks missed the playoffs for the first of four consecutive seasons in 1997.
  • In 1997, Quinn landed Mark Messier, Gretzky's teammate and one of the game's all-time best scorers and leaders. Unfortunately, Messier angered some fans almost immediately by demanding and wearing jersey #11. That number belonged to beloved player Wayne Maki, who died of brain cancer, and whose number had been unofficially retired since. Messier's point totals also dropped off sharply from his previous years, leading fans to suspect his heart wasn't in it. Worse, he lost his leadership touch. Team captain Trevor Linden was considered The Heart by many fans, and they weren't pleased when he was pressured to give up his captaincy to Messier. Linden later said that Messier caused hostility and tension in the dressing room. When he "guaranteed" that the Canucks would make the playoffs, repeating what he said as a Ranger in 1994, they... didn't. Fans considered him a Replacement Scrappy and Poor Man's Substitute for Linden.
  • Things hit Rock Bottom when the Canucks had a disastrous start to the 1997-98 season. Quinn and coach Tom Renney were both fired, and Messier did his former Rangers coach Mike Keenan a favor by persuading ownership to hire Keenan as coach and de facto GM. Much as he did in St. Louis, Keenan proceeded to dismantle the team he inherited. He shipped out Linden and many other fan favorites, leading many fans to feel he was ripping the heart out of the franchise. The Canucks also got worse under Keenan's leadership, missing the 1998 playoffs and finishing dead last in the Western Conference. Things got so bad in the 1998-99 season that Keenan was fired halfway through the season by new General Manager Brian Burke. When Messier left after the 1999-2000 season (having missed the 2000 playoffs) it was hard to tell whether he or Keenan were more despised in Vancouver. There was a silver lining for Vancouver fans as their bottoming out in the standings would lead to the team acquiring two important draft picks for the 1999 NHL Entry Draft, which eventually resulted in the Sedin twins, Henrik and Daniel, and the rest was history.
• The Ottawa Senators were one overtime goal short of reaching the 2017 Stanley Cup final. The following season started off badly, the team decided to embrace the failure and sent away most key players, and made the fans finally snap out against owner Eugene Melnyk, who was deemed as unwilling to spend to make the team better and overall making bad decisions, with a crowdfunding campaign spreading outdoors in Ottawa reading "#MelnykOut" to pressure him into selling the team. By 2019-20, the Senators were at the bottom of the attendance rankings. Once Melnyk died near the end of the 2021-22 regular season, along with trying to be respectful, fans also hoped a change in ownership (even if an unsure one, whether moving to Melnyk's young daughters or someone else buying the team) can finally end this awful period.
• The Buffalo Sabres have been in one ever since Terry Pegula bought the team during the 2010-11 season, which also happens to be the last time they were in the playoffs. Since the 2011-12 season they've had the worst record in the league, finished last in their division 5 times and last in the league 3 times^note One of which was a deliberate tank in an attempt to get megaprospect Connor McDavid, which didn't even work because the Edmonton Oilers won the draft lottery and the Sabres got saddled with the #2 pick, high draft choices either not developing into NHL caliber players or getting the hell out of town at the first available opportunity,^note most notably Jack Eichel, the other megaprospect in McDavid's draft class, who became alienated from the team due to issues surrounding his treatment for a chronic neck injury, eventually leading to a trade to Vegas... which won the Cup in 2023 with him on board and an absolutely toxic reputation in league circles thanks to terrible management on and off the ice.^note The Sabres consistently rank at the bottom of player surveys, usually only behind the Ottawa Senators. It's not a coincidence that these two teams also have the lowest attendance in the league. The baffling thing about this to Sabres fans is that Pegula also owns the Buffalo Bills NFL team and reformed that team from the Butt-Monkey of the league (they're listed in the NFL section above) to a perennial Super Bowl contender in about 3 years.

Tennis

• Ever since Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi retired in the early 2000s, American men's singles Tennis has been in a bad slump, with the only true standout American male player since 2003 being Andy Roddick who won just one Grand Slam and spent the vast majority of his career being overshadowed by Roger Federer (and Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray...). A couple of other Americans (John Isner, Mardy Fish) have managed to make it into the top 10 at one point or another, but none of them have been able to stay there for a prolonged amount of time or be serious Slam contenders and with Roddick retiring from tennis in 2012, no true candidates to take his place have emerged yet. (However, in doubles, the Bryan brothers, Bob and Mike, were the world's top team for most of the period from 2005 to 2016.)
• Australian men's tennis isn't doing so hot either ever since Lleyton Hewitt's career tailed off after his stint as the World No. 1 in 2001-03. Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios initially generated big excitement and hopes with their runs to the Wimbledon quarterfinals as teenagers, but they've become much better known for lacking the motivation and mental strength to make it to the top and spouting off controversial statements than anything they've achieved with their tennis since then (which hasn't been that much — they've yet to crack the top 10 rankings or win a title bigger than an ATP 500), and no other young Australian male player has really looked like a future Slam winner.
• Swedish men's tennis is in an even worse state than American and Australian men's tennis. While the U.S. and Australia still at least have multiple male players ranked in the top 100, Sweden has struggled to produce even one top 100-caliber player ever since Robin Söderling's career was tragically cut short by mononucleosis in 2011 — in November 2022, the only Swede in the top 100, Mikael Ymer, was at 71 (and the highest he's reached so far is 67). That's quite a steep fall from relevance for a country who used to be a tennis powerhouse with Hall of Fame-worthy players like Björn Borg, Mats Wilander, and Stefan Edberg in the 1970-90s.
• After Justine Henin's sudden retirement in 2008, women's tennis went through a period of instability with the World No. 1 spot being frequently occupied by players who had yet to win a single Grand Slam in their careers (Jelena Janković in 2008, Dinara Safina in 2009, Caroline Wozniacki in 2010-11) and were just a little more consistent than the actual Slam winners who were either sidelined by injuries or had a bad habit of following up their wins with first-round losses to inferior players. Things stabilized in 2012, though, when Victoria Azarenka claimed the No. 1 mantle with an Australian Open victory and Serena Williams returned to a regular playing schedule.

Philippine Basketball Association

• The PBA had an AAE of its own for most of the 1980s. Crispa and Toyota, the league's two most popular and successful teams, disbanded in quick succession. In fact, lots of teams were sold or outright disbanded, and from 1985 to 1988, the once ten-strong league was down to six full-time teams. The stars who made Crispa and Toyota great quickly showed their age, while there was a noticeable dearth in quality talent from the collegiate ranks and amateur leagues. Defense was also nonexistent, as teams mailed it in with scores resembling the '80s Denver Nuggets on uppers. Sure, there was the ascendance of Ginebra as the people's team, thanks to the arrival of "Living Legend" Robert Jaworski in 1984, and Billy Ray Bates was a talented, exciting American "import" for the same team. But by and large, the PBA went through a long slump in attendance, popularity, and talent level until 1989, when young players like Allan Caidic, Alvin Patrimonio, and Jojo Lastimosa proved worthy replacements for the old guard, and the mostly youthful San Miguel Beermen won a Grand Slam, winning all three "conferences" in the season.
• Some will argue that the PBA in the mid-2010s is also going through a new Audience-Alienating Era. Reasons include a lack of effort on defense, high scores as a result of said lack of defense,^note A complete inverse of American fans' reaction to Uglyball, as described above in the NBA section no parity, what with two expansion teams making it a 12-team league in 2014, and bullshit trades that benefit contenders and make also-rans look like farm teams.
• Ginebra San Miguel went through a Audience-Alienating Era in the early-mid '90s that was so bad, Filipino singer-songwriter Gary Granada wrote a song about it and made it a big radio hit. (The song is called "Kapag Natatalo Ang Ginebra", or "When Ginebra Loses" when translated in English.) The Audience-Alienating Era started in 1993, as the team's Detroit Pistons "Bad Boys" Expy lineup disintegrated due to age and injury, and while Ginebra thought the best way to avert a slide was to trade a promising rookie draftee (Vic Pablo) for two proven veterans (Manny Victorino and Ponky Alolor), they were both aging, soft, and a shadow of their old selves. 1994 first-overall pick Noli Locsin reminded many of NBA star Charles Barkley, but it didn't prevent Ginebra (then briefly known as Tondena) from another miserable finish. Their nadir, however, came in 1995, when the team selected 7-footer EJ Feihl second overall (he was an utter bust) and the coach's son, Robert "Dudut" Jaworski Jr. in the second round (he wasn't pro-caliber by any means). Fortunately, things started to look up in 1996, when the team got a skilled big man, Marlou Aquino, as their first-overall pick, and signed 1995 second-rounder Bal David to play point guard, thus ending that Audience-Alienating Era. Eventually, Ginebra (now Barangay Ginebra, named after the team's die-hard fanbase) entered in the midst of another Audience-Alienating Era. While most Ginebra teams haven't been bad, they have nonetheless been painted as underachievers, with gaudy stats tending to hide a failure to come up big when it matters. It doesn't help much that their once-stellar backcourt of Mark Caguioa and Jayjay Helterbrand is definitely showing their age. Ginebra's inability to win any conference championship since 2008 has led their "Manila Clasico" games with bitter rival/sister team Purefoods/Star (also in an Audience-Alienating Era circa 2016) to be derisively dubbed the "Boracay Cup", in reference to Boracay being the Philippines' top beach attraction, and the tendency of both teams to go on early "vacations" after getting eliminated. With Barangay Ginebra having won their first championship in eight years in the 2015-16 Governor's Cup, there's a strong possibility Ginebra has finally ended its Audience-Alienating Era.
• 2016 has marked the dawn of the Star's most notorious Audience-Alienating Era. After legendary head coach Tim Cone left for the Barangay Ginebra Gin Kings (see above) for the 2015-16 season, he was replaced by Jason Webb, a former PBA backup point guard and analyst who had not a whit of PBA coaching experience ahead of his hiring. Immediately, he tried to fix things that weren't broken, eschewing Star's tradition of defensive-oriented halfcourt basketball for a more uptempo style, and putting a bigger premium on youth when the team had often done just fine with an older, veteran lineup and short, seven-to-eight-man rotations.^note Putting things in context, it's like transforming a successful Larry Brown-coached team into an unsuccessful Expy of Steve Kerr's Golden State Warriors. In the end, Webb was fired following an underachieving 2015-16 season. It doesn't help, though, that rumors have been swirling about the Star franchise being sold, and that when Star management denies rumors, those rumors eventually become reality. (Cone's transfer from Star to Ginebra being the quintessential example.)
• Even the San Miguel Beermen, the PBA's most successful active franchise, are not immune to the occasional slump. One such A.A.E. happened during the mid-90's (between the last years of legendary coach Norman Black's tenure and the acquisition of team legend Danny Ildefonso): stars such as Mon Fernandez and Ato Agustin either retired or got injured, local coaches complained after the Beermen hired American coach Ron Jacobs, and the team frequently choked in the playoffs. Another slump happened when the team played as the "Petron Blaze Boosters" from 2011-2014: despite the Governor's Cup triumph in 2011 and the excellent play of stars Alex Cabagnot and Arwind Santos, the team went through numerous playoff chokes and coaching changes before they drafted 6'11" giant JuneMar Fajardo, hired Leo Austria as coach, acquired veterans Chris Ross and Ronald Tubid, reverted to the "San Miguel Beermen" moniker, and became a consistent championship contender.
• Current contenders Talk n' Text were this during their days as the 7Up Uncolas and the Mobiline Phone Pals; they had a gritty and physical style of play (much like the Detroit Pistons during the "Bad Boy" era), but they weren't able to win anything of note until they acquired half-Filipino standouts Asi Taulava and Andy Siegle.

Olympic Games

• The Olympics had suffered crash and burn moments from 1976 to 1988 as a result of several boycotts. In 1976, the Olympics was boycotted by African countries because of New Zealand's rugby team playing in South Africa (at the time of apartheid).^note South Africa had been blacklisted by the IOC due to apartheid, but because rugby wasn't an Olympic sport at the time the IOC couldn't really do much about it. The 1980 and the 1984 Olympics were boycotted by the West and the East respectively due to the Cold War, the former having been held in Moscow and the latter in Los Angeles. The 1984 boycott is also the reason why the McDonald's promotion of the 1984 Olympics failed (at least from the company's perspective), as the American team racked up a laundry list of medals due to the Soviet Union, their arch-rival, boycotting the games. Finally, the 1988 Olympics in Seoul were boycotted by North Korea, which would only participate in a joint ceremony in which the hosting duties were split between North and South Korea, as that country does not recognize South Korea as a separate nation (which was averted 30 years later when North Korea sent athletes to the Winter Games in Pyeongchang), though unlike in 1984, their boycott was joined by only a handful of small communist countries (Cuba, Ethiopia, Albania, and the Seychelles). The constant political boycotts surrounding the Olympics led Ted Turner to create the Goodwill Games in 1986, as he thought that the Olympics had become more about national posturing than sport.

Other Sports

• The Romanian women's gymnastics program, which had been a major powerhouse in the sport, endured a painful fall from grace in The New '10s. After two largely miserable quads, the team has looked a tiny bit more promising in 2020 and 2021, but they still have a long way to go before they can be a major contender again, and the true glory days of the late 20th century may be gone for good.
  • After absolutely dominating the 2004 Olympics (where they won 6 medals, including 4 out of 6 available golds), the team began showing signs of regression when they took home just two medals in 2008 (floor gold, team bronze) and three in 2012 (vault gold, floor silver, team bronze). Additionally, the two individual medals they won in 2012 were won by veterans (Catalina Ponor and Sandra Izbasa), which, given that gymnastics — and especially women's gymnastics — is a sport where athletes' peaks tend to be comparatively brief, was a further sign that the team's future viability was questionable.
  • The real problems, however, began in the 2013-2016 quad. The catalyst for their downfall was the 2014 World Championships, where a mostly inexperienced but promising Romanian team just missed the medal podium. Rather than recognize the potential that existed and nurture these young gymnasts for future success, the Romanian Federation immediately began begging retired veterans to come back and "save" the team, sending a clear message to the young gymnasts that they didn't trust them and were all but writing them off as failures already (as explained in more detail here). Within a year, many of these promising gymnasts, perceiving that their Olympic dreams were already as good as dead, had downgraded their training or even given up the sport altogether, effectively gutting the depth at the top of Romania's program. Meanwhile, only one veteran, two-time Olympian Catalina Ponor, was able to make a successful comeback, and even that took longer than they had hoped. The problem that Romania had created for itself would be made all too clear at the...
  • 2015 World Championships, which also happened to be the primary qualifying meet for the 2016 Olympics. Even with 2014 World All-Around silver medalist Larisa Iordache headlining the team, Romania struggled to put together a full roster that could keep pace with the top of the field (Ponor wasn't ready to compete yet), so while they weren't completely out of it, they had a lot less margin for error, which is exactly the last thing that a team with a largely inexperienced roster needs. Sure enough, mistakes did happen, and without any cushion to absorb them, they ended up finishing in 13th place, more than five points short of the eighth-place spot that would have secured Romania an automatic team berth at the Olympics. (Incidentally, the much-maligned 2014 team had finished seventh in qualifications, so matching that would have been good enough to earn Romania a team spot.)
  • The team had one last chance to qualify a team to the Olympics through the Olympic test event in early 2016. Needing only a top four finish out of a field of eight to qualify (and not an extremely strong field, since all of the teams at the test event were the ones that failed to clear the automatic qualification threshold at the aforementioned World Championships), Romania had every reason to believe that the veteran trio of Iordache, Diana Bulimar, and 2004 gold medalist Catalina Ponor would be enough to earn them an Olympic berth... but the lack of depth came back to haunt Romania once again, as Iordache ended up having to miss the meet due to injury and Romania didn't have an athlete with remotely comparable scoring potential to send in her place. The team they did send ended up having to count numerous low-scoring routines and major mistakes (with even Bulimar and Ponor not being immune, as each of them had a fall in the course of the competition), and they ended up placing dead last in the team rankings. And with that, the country which had won a team medal in women's gymnastics at every Olympics from 1976 to 2012 failed to even qualify a full team to the 2016 Olympics.
  • Romania was given one individual athlete spot for their participation in the test event, which they gave to 2004 Olympic gold medalist Catalina Ponor, a questionable decision given that Iordache clearly had greater medal potential; the Federation claimed the choice was related to the injury that kept Iordache out of the test event, but some perceived it as another example of the team favoring the veteran based on her history rather than assessing what each gymnast was capable of at the present moment. At the Olympics, Ponor looked to many to be past her prime, finishing seventh in the balance beam final and not even making the final on floor, the very event where she had shined in 2004 and 2012 (winning gold in the former year and silver in the latter).
  • The lack of depth continued to plague Romania into the following quad. The already thin roster became even thinner over the course of 2017 as they lost Iordache to injury and Ponor to retirement, as well as losing promising first-year senior Olivia Cimpian, who decided to leave Romania for Hungary (where she had dual citizenship). Romania was almost entirely a non-factor in the medal picture for major international meets for most of the quad, and at the 2019 World Championships, the Romanian team finished 22nd out of 24 teams, nowhere near the numbers they would have needed to qualify a team to the Tokyo Olympics^note the test event qualification piece was eliminated after 2016 in favor of doing all the team qualifications at the World Championships, but even if there had been one, Romania wouldn't have even qualified to try for a team spot at the test event being that far down the board, as only the 9th-16th place teams got team spots in the test event years. Their only taste of international success came in the 2020 European Championships, in which they were competing against a much weaker field than normal, as almost all of the top countries eligible for the event chose to sit out due to the then-ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic; they ended up winning team silver behind Ukraine, the only country participating in the event that had had anything resembling an Olympic-level team in recent years (Ukraine placed 14th at the previous year's World Championships, leading to them being named second alternate team for the upcoming Olympics).
  • With a new qualification format in place, Romania did qualify two individual athletes to the Tokyo Olympics: Maria Holbura received an individual spot from 2019 Worlds as the top-ranked individual athlete for a country that did not qualify a team, and Iordache, who managed to return from injury during the year's delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, secured one of the last available spots through the 2021 European Championships after finishing fourth in qualifications. However, Holbura never really had the scoring potential to be competitive in an Olympic field, and Iordache would end up getting injured on her first event in qualifications, leaving her unable to challenge for a spot in the all-around due to not being able to compete the rest of her events. Iordache did qualify to the balance beam final and seemed to have a chance at a medal (her qualifying score was less than one-tenth of a point behind the third-place qualifier), but was ultimately unable to compete in the final due to her injury. Even before Iordache's injury, though, Romania not even having a chance to contend for a team medal for the second Olympics in a row was still a clear indication that their Audience-Alienating Era was far from over.
• The Braunschweig Lions of the German Football League (Germany's top tier of American Football and one of the best American Football leagues in Europe) first made the German Bowl (the final for the German championship) in 1997 and would reach the final every subsequent season until 2008 for twelve consecutive participations (with a 7-5 win/loss record). For reference: No other German team has made the German Bowl more than nine times in total (As of 2021 the combined second place in German Bowl participations is held by the Düsseldorf Panther and the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns). Braunschweig would only show up again in the German Bowl in 2013, starting another impressive run with six participations in seven years (they missed the 2018 edition because Frankfurt Universe upset them in the semifinal) going 5-1. The less that is said about the performance of Braunschweig during the four seasons between their two German Bowl participation streak, the better - they did not finish with a positive win/loss record in any of them, only made the playoffs in 2010 (as fourth in the North in a six team division) and were one-and-done in the postseason that year. Part of it has to do with financial woes during that era, but the contrast between their utter dominance before and after that audience-alienating era is still stunning. Interestingly, the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns who made all but one of the German Bowls since 2011 (as of 2021) rose to prominence at the tail end of that Audience-Alienating Era - would their rise have been possible without Braunschweig faltering? After COVID-19 cancelled the 2020 season, Braunschweig seemed to fall back to old patterns and only placed fourth out of six in the North losing the quarterfinal to Schwäbisch Hall (with the Unicorns taking five turnovers off the Lions). Whether the 2021 season is an indicator for the future of the Lions or a one-off remains to be seen.

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