What's your definition of a sports dynasty?

Spurs are more a dynasty than the Patriots to me, because I tend to believe dynasties should be over an extended period of time (i.e. more than four years). That and the Pats were nowhere close to the Super Bowl the year after the first one, missing the playoffs altogether, so that ought to be factored in somewhere.

 

Oregon State returned two full-time position players after losing two-thirds of the weekend pitching rotation and the nation's leader in saves. Rachel Bachman of The Oregonian has a good column on how improbable these back-to-back championships were. She uses the word "dynasty" too (reminder: OSU played in the CWS in 2005), but she does a good job of detailing the context of these championships in the changing landscape of college baseball.

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/rachel_bachman/index.ssf?/base/sports/1182824733265900.xml&coll=7&thispage=2

The changes in college baseball in the last 10-15 years are complex and easily overlooked and forgotten, and she does a good job of touching on many of them -- as well as the changes ahead.

 

While that does have to be factored in, the Spurs got swept by the Lakers in the 2001 Western Conference Finals, lost 4-1 in the 2002 Conference Semifinals and 4-2 in the 2004 Conference Semis. They weren't really close in any of those years either, and the Lakers were dominant.

It's hard to call a team a dynasty when another team was almost as dominant in interspersing years of their "dynasty."

 

The Lakers are a factor there, but at least the Spurs were contenders, making the Western semis each time. Pats didn't make the playoffs one season.

And again, I believe dynasties to be over long periods of time. With the Spurs, four very different teams have won NBA titles. With the '70s Steelers, the first two Super Bowl teams won with defense; the last two won with offense. With the '80s 49ers, the first two won with defense; the last two won with offense.

I guess if the Patriots were to win a fourth Super Bowl -- like the Steelers did in six years or like the 49ers did in nine -- then I would call them a dynasty. Until then, they fall into the '90s Cowboys category for me, winning three in four years with much the same team. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not a dynasty.

 

See, I disagree with you there, Oz. It's much harder, IMHO, to win three out of four years than it is to win four times in nine years, even if the team is vastly different. There's no way there should be more non-title years than title years in course of a dynasty.

If the spurs had won seven of nine, or even six of nine with a couple finals appearances in there, it would be one thing, but the Spurs never even won back-to-back titles. No way can you be a dynasty without at least one pair of back-to-back titles.

The Spurs are no dynasty. They're an organization that won the NBA title four times.

 

The Steelers of the '70s bring up an interesting question. Do you need a great deal of turnover in personnel or is it more impressive for the same group to win it over and over again? Those four championship teams (and the two contenders in between) had pretty much the same core of players and the same coach. I doubt that would even be possible today, to keep a group like that together.

 

So you don't consider the Niners in the 1980s to be a dynasty then?

 

Someone mentioned dominance as an important criterion. I agree. Oregon State was dominant at the CWS and deserves praise for going unbeaten there this year, but the fact that it was one loss to UCLA away from being 9-15 in conference and a spectator in the postseason takes away from the dominance factor this season. Even at 10-14 the Beavers needed help from Arizona State coach Pat Murphy, who pushed hard for their inclusion in the 64-team tournament field. They were one of the last to get in.

Still, what it accomplished was and is extraordinary. I just think the word "dynasty" gets thrown around a little too casually these days.

 

Oh, Joe Gibbs and his Redskins were a dynasty if you consider the turning over of players.

Can anyone name a coach who has won a SB with two totally different set of players and still coached the same team?

Gibbs, Landry...

End of list.

 

What Oregon State "accomplished" is more a reflection of the sorry state of affairs in college baseball right now than some mythical dynasty.

 

I would disagree. It's more a reflection of parity, of every program now playing by the same rules as far as maximum number of games, universal starting date, etc. The average college baseball player today is far superior to the average player in the 1980s. But they're just spread out among more programs instead of being concentrated in 10 or 12.

Twenty years ago now way players like Darwin Barney or Jorge Reyes stay in the Northwest to play. They go to California or Arizona and play a 75-game schedule. Now they can stay closer to home and succeed because the rules are even.

It's much like college football. The game is far better today at 85 schollies than it was at 110 or 120. Men's and women's basketball should do the same and reduce to 11 or 10 schollies.

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I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned already, but if the only thing keeping a team from 13 consecutive championships was Bob Petit playing out of his mind in a Game 7 and Wilt Chamberlain heading one of the top 3 teams in NBA history, I'd say you've got a certified dynasty.