Assumptions:

• The quality of a basketball team, at the highest levels, depends more on the the ability of players to work together than their innate skill.
• The ability of players to work together is roughly proportional to the amount of time they spend practicing together.
• Competitive basketball is largely -- and in fact was purposely invented to be -- an indoor game.
• Players are more likely to spend more time playing an indoor game when the weather outside is worse.
• The perception of "bad" outdoor weather is roughly proportional to the temperature difference between summer and winter.

Therefore, if we took a list of all of the colleges in the NCAA college basketball bracket, established the August (start of the school year, usually warmest month of the year) and March (during March Madness and close to the coldest month of the year) average temperatures, we’d be able to fill in a bracket that would be as accurate (to a close approximation) as if we actually knew anything about college basketball. (As a tie-breaker, I’m using the school with the colder temperatures. If I need another tie-breaker, I’m picking arbitrarily.)

So that’s what I’ve done. Here is the raw data, and here is my bracket. (Yes, this is almost completely tongue-in-cheek.)

Here’s a trivia question (to which I currently do not know the answer) inspired by the Red Sox’s recent World Series win and what I can only hope is soon to be the unbeaten 9-0 Patriots. If you take the 4 major American team professional sports championships (Stanley Cup, World Series, Superbowl, NBA Finals^[1]), what’s the longest streak of consecutive championships in one metropolitan area?^[2]

^[1] - Is it just me, or does basketball not have a very recognizable term for its championship? ^[2] - I’m willing to be relatively flexible with the definition of “metropolitan area”.

Update: Answers below the fold!

There are a number of issues that make this question less than straightforward to answer. Firstly, before 1915, the Stanley cup was only contested on a challenge basis (similar to the way that chess and boxing are done today). Since the challenges weren’t annual, and there were a lot of times that the challenger was crushed outright, I’m going to ignore those years. Second, the question of how far back to look comes up. There’s never been a streak of more than two consecutive championships in the same area as long as all four contests have existed in their current form (the Superbowl, started in 1968, is the youngest).

Not counting pre-1915 hockey, there have been three times that there have been streaks of three. In 1906-1908, the Chicago White Sox won the World Series once and the Cubs won twice, and none of the others existed. In 1927, the New York Yankees won the World Series, and then in 1928 the Rangers won the Stanley Cup and the Yankees won again. In 1932-33, New York repeated the feat with the Yankees, Rangers, and the (baseball) Giants.

There has almost been one streak of three since 1968, but it requires that we make the cognitive leap to assuming that San Francisco and Los Angeles are a single metropolitan area. And I think that in terms of sports affinity, it’s a hard case to make. But in 1988, the Lakers won the NBA Finals, the Dodgers won the World Series, and then in early 1989 the 49ers took home the Lombardi Trophy.