While the Chicago Cubs’ 108-year drought remains unmatched, several teams have now gone well over 50 years without a title.
Whether it’s Week 1, Opening Day or the first night of a new NBA or NHL season, fans enter each season with at least a hint of optimism on a day where every team starts on the same level and anything is theoretically possible.
Ultimately, the reality is much more complicated. Regardless of what league/sport is your favorite, there are haves and have-nots everywhere you look. Some franchises boast a decorated history where winning championships is more of a standard to reach than an unthinkable achievement, while others haven’t been anywhere close in their team’s history.
To someone who isn’t a team sports fan, it may seem like a big part of sports’ communal aspect is the shared joy and elation upon a favorite team’s victory – but I can certainly tell you that the opposite is what watching sports is all about.
While teams like the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics may not be able to relate, dozens of other fanbases share a history of shared misery over the course of decades while waiting for an elusive championship.
As a Cubs fan, I’m familiar with what all of that is about. While my misery as a Cubs fan was quite short-lived as they broke the curse when I was 20 years old, the significance of such a win and the length of the drought wasn’t lost on anybody.
My father was just eight years old when the 1969 Cubs collapsed down the stretch to the Amazin’ Mets who went on to win it all, a key event in the heartbreak the city of Chicago and all Cubs fans bore for over a century. Conversely, I was only seven years old when the Cubs fell apart in the 2003 NLCS, a moment that made it crystal clear even to a second-grader that the drought and this team were simply no joke to anyone.
We’re still decades away from any team approaching the futility the Cubs managed, with the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox also having broken droughts of 88 years and 86 years in the 2000’s, respectively.
With that said, there are still plenty of teams in all four major pro sports leagues that have been without a championship for a very long time, or in some cases, are still looking for their first.
Below is a look at the five teams who have gone the longest without winning it all in North American pro sports:
5. Atlanta Hawks (Last championship: 1958)
Perhaps one of the most overlooked pro sports franchises, the Hawks have been a bastion of mediocrity for much of the franchise’s existence, last winning it all when they were the St. Louis Hawks in 1958.
The Hawks have been based in Atlanta for over 50 years, playing their first season in ATL in the 1968-69 season. While the team has been firmly established as an integral part of the city’s culture, the Hawks have been hard-pressed to find deep playoff runs.
In addition to not winning a title since 1958, the Hawks haven’t been to the NBA Finals since they were in St. Louis in the 1960-61 season, while only finding limited success since moving to Atlanta.
After making the Division Finals (an earlier equivalent to the Conference Finals) in their first two seasons in Atlanta, the Hawks wouldn’t return to the Conference Finals until the 2014-15 season despite routinely making the playoffs over the decades-long span in between.
The Hawks have made the Eastern Conference Finals once more since the 2015 season, falling two games short of the NBA Finals in 2021 when the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks finished off Atlanta in six games.
Though not seen as a serious contender in the 2025-26 season, the Hawks are off to a sharp 9-5 start to the campaign.
4. Detroit Lions (Last championship: 1957)
Last winning it all in the pre-Super Bowl era, the Lions’ futility is widely known across pro sports as the vast majority of their franchise history since their last NFL title has been maligned in mostly very poor play.
Not only have the Lions not won it all since 1957, they also have never appeared in a Super Bowl, which was first played in January 1967 following the 1966 season.
Since winning it all in 1957, the Lions have made just 14 postseason appearances, only reaching the Conference Championship Game twice, in 1991 and 2023.
The latter of those games serves to be perhaps the most heartbreaking game for fans in the team’s history, which saw the Lions squander a 17-point halftime lead as the 49ers rallied back to clinch the NFC title.
Though the Lions are competitive in today’s NFL, hoping to avenge heartbreaking losses in each of the past two postseasons this year, much of the team’s notable futility also occurred in the 21st century.
The struggles reached unforeseen levels when the Lions finished the 2008 season with an 0-16 record, becoming the first team ever to go winless in a 16-game season, a mark that was later echoed by the 2017 Cleveland Browns.
The Lions are currently 6-4 during the 2025 NFL season, just outside of the seven-team NFC playoff field heading into Week 12.
3. Sacramento Kings (Last championship: 1951)
A franchise that has been mired in decades of poor play while only once coming measurably close to a title, the Sacramento Kings remain seemingly very far away from an NBA title.
The Kings’ lone championship and Finals appearance came in 1951, when they were the Rochester Royals, based in Rochester, New York.
The franchise then became the Cincinnati Royals ahead of the 1957-58 season before moving once again to become the Kansas City-Omaha Kings in 1972-73, splitting their home games between the two Midwestern cities. The franchise moved to Kansas City full-time before the 1975-76 season as the Kansas City Kings before finally moving to Sacramento for the 1985-86 season, where they have remained since.
Since the switch to a Conference Finals format in 1971, the Kings have made the Conference Finals just twice – a Cinderella run in 1981 that saw them fall to the Houston Rockets in five games, and a heartbreaking defeat to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2002 Western Conference Finals widely seen as one of the most controversial series in the sport’s history.
Though the Kings led the 2002 WCF three games-to-two, controversial calls that overwhelmingly favored the Lakers in Game 6 of the series helped Los Angeles bounce back before winning Game 7, with the Lakers receiving 15 more free throw attempts in Game 6.
The WCF run was the peak for that era of the Kings, who endured a historic postseason appearance drought from 2006 to 2023.
While the Kings were 48-34 and a No. 3 seed in 2023, that campaign now looks to be a flash in the pan as Sacramento has started the 2025-26 season with a 3-11 record with the focus turning to a potential rebuild.
2. Cleveland Guardians (Last championship: 1948)
It’s hard to find more heartbreak than what you could spot with a glimpse into Cleveland’s franchise history, which truly has it all when you’re talking about misery in fandom.
If pure futility without ever being close to a title is your brand of pain, the Guardians did plenty of that – as they didn’t make the playoffs a single time between their 1954 World Series loss and their loss in the Fall Classic in 1995, which only kickstarted a new era of pain for Cleveland.
The Guardians have been quite competitive in the 30 years since their emphatic return to the World Series, though it hasn’t amounted to a championship. The franchise has endured two extremely heartbreaking Game 7 losses in the World Series – a walk-off at the hands of the Florida Marlins after blowing a ninth-inning lead in 1997, and a feverish comeback that fell short against the Chicago Cubs in 2016 in a battle of two long World Series droughts.
It was Cleveland’s misery that persisted after 2016, and there was no quick reprieve. The Guardians went on to blow a 2-0 ALDS lead in 2017 after a 102-win regular season, with Cleveland taking five more postseason defeats since 2017.
The 2025 season briefly looked to be one of destiny for the Guardians, as they rallied back in the biggest division race comeback in MLB history, erasing a 15.5 game deficit to the Detroit Tigers in late July to win the AL Central. However, the Tigers went on to exact their revenge in the AL Wild Card Round, dispatching Cleveland in three games to send the Guardians home for another painful offseason.
1. Arizona Cardinals (Last championship: 1947)
While the Cardinals may not have the hallmark heartbreak moments the Guardians and Lions do, decades of nearly uninterrupted futility is certainly not a recipe for high fan morale either.
The Cardinals last won it all well before the first Super Bowl was played, taking home the NFL Championship in 1947 when they were known as the Chicago Cardinals, playing their home games at Comiskey Park.
The Cardinals returned to the NFL Championship in 1948, this time losing to the Philadelphia Eagles in a defeat that began a long era of misery for the franchise that spanned through multiple locations.
Arizona has appeared in the postseason just nine times since their 1948 Championship Game loss, with six of those appearances having come since their relocation to Arizona ahead of the 1988 season. The Cardinals also played as the St. Louis Cardinals from 1960 to 1987, making three postseason appearances in that stretch.
Despite all the futility, Cardinals fans have one big-time heartbreaker to share with one another – their crushing loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl 43. After nabbing a go-ahead touchdown with just two minutes and 37 seconds left on the clock, a heroic drive from Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers offense crushed Arizona, as an iconic catch from Santonio Holmes with just 35 seconds left secured the sixth Super Bowl win for Pittsburgh.
The Cardinals have returned to a state of mediocrity since, with an NFC Championship Game loss in 2015 serving as the highlight of the years since their Super Bowl defeat. With a 3-7 record to start the 2025 season, it doesn’t look like this drought is coming to an end this year.
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