The tragic plight of a Washington state sports fan

There is one thing all of our sports teams have in common — they’ll break your heart.

It’s been a little more than a week since the inexplicable play call that led to the Seahawks losing Super Bowl XLIX. It completely and flawlessly confirmed one thing — the one thing all our sports teams have in common.

Boston Red Sox fans said they had it bad it the 20th century. No, they had the Celtics. The Chicago Cubs have been awful for years, but they were blessed with the Bulls and the Bears.

Being a Seattle sports fan is the most difficult thing in the sports world. Not because the teams historically lose more often than not, and not because more than one team can’t seem to get it on the same page at the same time, but because of the inexplicable, gut-wrenching ways they lose.

Let’s start with the Seattle Super Sonics. Our beloved basketball team was sold and in turn moved to Oklahoma City while thousands of fans protested helplessly. There was nothing they could do but watch helplessly as the city’s most storied franchise — the only one with a championship at the time — was yanked away, leaving an emptiness in February and March that has yet to be fulfilled.

Then there is the Seattle Mariners, who in 2001 tied for the best regular season record in baseball history. They didn’t even make it to the World Series. Every other year has been shrouded in mediocrity at best. Sure, expectations are high in 2015, but, knowing Seattle’s luck, something awful will happen, and the team will finish somewhere in the bottom half of the American League West.

A whole volume of books could be written on WSU sports, enough to fill a public library. A basketball team that had Klay Thompson, DeAngelo Casto, Reggie Moore, and Brock Motum did not make the NCAA Tournament. A team that should have been coached by Tony Bennett and feature former Virginia standout Joe Harris. A year prior, New Years of 2009, the Cougs won a double overtime game to Oregon, only to have to win ripped away when the referee called WSU with a technical foul because a bench player placed a foot on the court after the game winning shot — an unprecedented call, one that would not be called again.

There is the New Mexico Bowl collapse, missed 19-yard field goals, a 2002 triple overtime apple cup loss when the team was ranked third in the country, and two seconds still waiting for Ryan Leaf in the 1997 Rose Bowl.

In all of eternity, Seattle sports teams and WSU teams combined have won exactly two championships, unless you want to count the Seattle Storm.

But the one thing they have in common is the one thing that keeps us coming back. In many ways, we’ve grown to love the pain because it makes it that much sweeter when we do win something in a miraculous fashion.

So, thank you for breaking my heart. At least I know it’s in there.