Alabama's football team has once again writ her name in crimson flame. In the weeks approaching the BCS National Championship Game against Notre Dame, the word "dynasty" was batted around quite a bit. The Crimson Tide have won three championships in the past four years, and while definitions differ, most would consider that a dynasty on today's landscape.
There's no denying greatness in what Bama has just done, but what has been the greatest dynasty of the past 30 years? For starters, I use 30 years as a metric not as the ESPN era, as the Worldwide Leader is wont to do, but because it is (roughly) my lifetime. When I posed that question to several friends, the answer was unanimous: Jordan's Bulls. Indeed, the Chicago Bulls won six championships in eight years, and the two interim years were the two when Jordan had retired, meaning that the Bulls went a consecutive 6/6 with #23/45 leading the squad. It doesn't get much better than that, but there are a few that approach.
Elsewhere in Chicagoland, the Cavaliers won five championships in seven years between 2000-2006; a feat bolstered by the fact that they won the silver in the two years without a championship. The five championship threshold was only met a few times, and only once in a shorter time period, with Jimmie Johnson's five consecutive NASCAR championships.
There is one streak in process that threatens to eclipse all of the above, however. Presently, the Blue Devils have won four of the six championships since 2007. The two they haven't won have been silver medals, including the 2008 loss to Phantom Regiment by a mere 25/1000 of a point. What's more, they have been dominant in Open Class as well, with Blue Devils B winning three championships in a row from 2009-2011. While most sports/activities don't have the same sort of ability for wins at multiple levels, nor do most corps have a B corps, what the entire Blue Devils organization has been able to put together is nothing short of a dynasty.
There's no denying greatness in what Bama has just done, but what has been the greatest dynasty of the past 30 years? For starters, I use 30 years as a metric not as the ESPN era, as the Worldwide Leader is wont to do, but because it is (roughly) my lifetime. When I posed that question to several friends, the answer was unanimous: Jordan's Bulls. Indeed, the Chicago Bulls won six championships in eight years, and the two interim years were the two when Jordan had retired, meaning that the Bulls went a consecutive 6/6 with #23/45 leading the squad. It doesn't get much better than that, but there are a few that approach.
Elsewhere in Chicagoland, the Cavaliers won five championships in seven years between 2000-2006; a feat bolstered by the fact that they won the silver in the two years without a championship. The five championship threshold was only met a few times, and only once in a shorter time period, with Jimmie Johnson's five consecutive NASCAR championships.
There is one streak in process that threatens to eclipse all of the above, however. Presently, the Blue Devils have won four of the six championships since 2007. The two they haven't won have been silver medals, including the 2008 loss to Phantom Regiment by a mere 25/1000 of a point. What's more, they have been dominant in Open Class as well, with Blue Devils B winning three championships in a row from 2009-2011. While most sports/activities don't have the same sort of ability for wins at multiple levels, nor do most corps have a B corps, what the entire Blue Devils organization has been able to put together is nothing short of a dynasty.
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