The Seattle sports scene isn't exactly hopping these days. Baseball's Mariners haven't been in the playoffs since 2001, while the NFL Seahawks are 9-23 over the past two seasons, a distressing slide for the football club following a five-year run of postseason appearances that failed to bring a championship.  Both franchises, born a year apart in the mid-1970s, are still searching for their first titles despite qualifying for the playoffs a combined 14 times. In 109 cumulative sports seasons for all Seattle pro teams, the city has only won one title. The franchise responsible for that lone championship a distant 31 years ago, the NBA Supersonics, left for Oklahoma City two years ago, lured by a better arena deal. It's left local fans to watch ESPN highlights of prized 2007-08 Sonic rookie Kevin Durant light up opponents in an Oklahoma City Thunder uniform. Add it all up, and Seattle is America's most miserable sports city for a second straight year.  In Pictures: America's Most Miserable Sports Cities  Sports misery is usually defined as a matter of years of losing records or long championship droughts: the Chicago Cubs going over a century without a World Series title, or the New Orleans Saints turning in losing seasons almost every year over four decades (the Saints busted their city's misery in a big way with this year's Super Bowl win, of course).  What we're going for is something different--the kind of misery that comes from teasing the fans by getting close to a championship, only to let them down in the end. The kind of misery that the Brooklyn Dodgers faithful endured in the late 1940s and 1950s after their team won six National League pennants in 10 years but fell to the Yankees in the World Series after five of them. The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1960s dominating in the West but always losing the NBA title to the Celtics. The Boston Red Sox dealing with the frustration of four World Series defeats and numerous second place finishes during an 86-year championship drought.  The Lakers and Red Sox have since stamped out their misery credentials. Who are the closest modern equivalents? The Atlanta Braves fit the bill, with 14 division titles and four league pennants since 1991, but only one World Series championship to show for their efforts. The Braves are the main driver behind Atlanta's second-place ranking on our misery list--the team's 1995 World Series title is the city's only championship in 147 cumulative seasons of major league sports. Phoenix comes in at No. 3, thanks mainly to the Suns' failure to bring home a ring in eight trips to the conference finals, including two losses in the NBA finals.  Other cities in the misery mix: Buffalo, where the Bills are 0-4 in Super Bowls and the NHL Sabres are still searching for their first Stanley Cup after 27 trips to the playoffs; and San Diego, where the Chargers and Padres have combined to lose six of seven times in championship round play. The Padres lost their only two World Series appearances in team history; the Chargers dropped three American Football League Championship games in the 1960s and their only Super Bowl in 1994 (the club played in Los Angeles during inaugural 1960 AFL season, when it also dropped the title games).  To create our misery rankings, we compiled the number of postseason appearances by a city's teams and compared them to the number of titles won. Those cities that combine a lot of playoff losses and few championships score highest (final round losses, such as a Super Bowl or World Series, are given the most weight, followed by semifinal round losses, and so on). Records from the pre-merged American Basketball Association and American Football League count.  We also factored in the ratio of total seasons to championships (just one title for Phoenix in 88 cumulative sports seasons, for example), and the number of years since the city last won a title (it's 46 years and counting for Cleveland, No. 6 on our list).
With its lone title 31 years in the past and Kevin Durant turning into a star elsewhere, it's gloomy in Seattle.