Club reaching new lows, even for a Philadelphia team

	The Philadelphia Flyers have scored a league-low 117 goals while allowing 185, second most in the NHL. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

When the Rangers beat the Flyers this weekend, it didn't mean as much to Ranger fans as it did last year. Almost everyone has beaten the Flyers. I single handedly tied them last Tuesday, and lost the game on a shootout.

As I write this, the Flyers are 11-32-5. Sitting in fifth place, they have just 27 points -- just over half of the 51 that the fourth-place Islanders have. No other team in the NHL has less than 40. If the Flyers won six games while the rest of the league somehow managed to all lose at the same time, they'd still be the worst team in the NHL.

The Flyers' mediocrity reminded me of the column my brother wrote on which city had it worst when it came to sports. Philadelphia won -- and that's the only thing they've won in a while. It's been a combined 126 years of non-championship seasons and 23 years since any team has won a title. That's easily the longest drought of any city with four sports teams. Heck, that's a longer drought than most cities with one sports team.

I don't mean to hurt Philadelphians, but the other cities with at least four teams (with their last championship in parenthesis, like this sentence) are Atlanta (1995), Boston (2005), Chicago (2005), Dallas (1999), Denver (2001), Detroit (2004), Miami (2006), Minneapolis (1991), New York (2000), Phoenix (2001), and Washington DC (1992). Wow.

Philadelphia has waited eight years longer than Minneapolis and nine years longer than DC -- and for some of those years, neither city even had four teams.

So we've established that the last 23 years in Philadelphia have been difficult. But this year might just be the worst in history. Which is amazing, considering the Phillies' history.

The Flyers are not just the worst team in hockey right now, they're the worst team in professional sports. While they have a higher winning percentage than the Memphis Grizzlies and the Oakland Raiders, the Flyers have more distance between them and the next worse team than any other team in recent memory. If you gathered all the hockey teams that suck together, the Flyers would still suck in comparison.

While the Boston Celtics' 11-game losing streak is preventing the 76ers from having the worst record in the Atlantic Division, being in fourth place in the Atlantic is like being the second meanest guy in hell. The 76ers have a .311 winning percentage, and that's after winning four of their last six.

The Eagles pulled out an improbable five win finish to their season to leapfrog the fading Cowboys and fading-er Giants into first place in the NFC East. A lot of good that did them. After almost losing to the Giants in the first round (The Giants!), the Eagles were eliminated from playoffdom the following week. But a great comeback led by unlikely replacement Jeff Garcia and the second round of the playoffs isn't bad, right?

It is after last week's news that quarterback Donovan McNabb is reportedly unhappy with the team and Garcia announced he will test free agency.

And then, of course, the Phillies. The best chance at redemption in any of the majors next year, the Phillies only missed the wild card by a few games last season. But Jimmy Rollins is already flapping his mouth, saying that the Phillies are the team to beat in the National League East. If I recall, they finished 12 games behind the Mets last year. Yes, the Mets have lost some pitching. But even if the Mets lost every game Pedro Martinez won last season, they'd have still finished first. The Phillies do have a shot -- but they've had a shot the last six years, and finished second or third every season.

Even the National Lacrosse League's Philadelphia Wings and the Major Indoor Soccer League's Philadelphia Kixx both finished fifth last year. The best chance Philadelphia has for any decent championship right now is in college basketball, and none of the big five are currently ranked.

If you're a fan of any of the teams in Philly, I respect the struggle you've had to endure, and wish you luck. To stick through all this, you've got to be a true sports fan, and you will be rewarded for it. Some team, at some point, has got to win something, right?

Just not the Flyers.

Steve Hofstetter is a nationally touring comedian whose column appears every Monday on si.com. Tell him why he's never welcome in Philadelphia for writing this at livevideo.com/sportsminute.