And Now You Know!: Three Peats

When you think of Three-peats you might first think of Pat Riley's trademark of the terminology. If not, maybe you are thinking of Tom Emanski's instructional videos in which he claims that his coaching helped bring AAU's back-to-back-to-back National Championships. Thank You Fred McGriff. But when I think three-peat, I think of something that rarely ever happens in sports. A sign of a true dynasty, none of this, "You win 3 times in a decade and you are the team of that decade".

I got to thinking, this blog needs a bit more NASCAR in it, and rest assure I will deliver as the weeks go on. Many people do not give enough credit to Jimmie Johnson and his current three-peat that he has currently, so I wanted to examine just how rare a three-peat was in sports. And maybe to be honest, it isn't all that rare after all?

For this I looked at the 5 major sports, (NASCAR included) and also briefly touched upon Horse Racing's Triple Crown. I set up a timeline and plotted each three-peat or longer on the chart to see exactly what we were dealing with, dating back to 1930. Here is what I found.

Beginning in 1930, MLB, NHL, and the NFL had all formed leagues. The NBA and NASCAR didn't come around until 1946 & '47 respectively, and they had officially been keeping track of the Triple Crown since 1923.

The first three-peat known is actually something that many sports fans believe to never existed, a three-peat in the NFL. Starting in 1929-31 the Green Bay Packers ruled the NFL. Granted the NFL didn't have a Championship game, rather they just gave the title to the team with the best record each year and it just so happened that the Packers had that claim for three straight years. Call it what you want, but the record books still call it championships. Ironically, that wasn't the only three-peat in the NFL.

Once you get past the Yankees four-peat in 1936-39 you will find the Cleveland Browns and their four-peat from 1946-49. What is strange about this is that the Browns were originally part of the AAFC (All-American Football Conference, which later merged with the NFL), though the NFL refuses to acknowledge that these Championships existed while the Hall of Fame clearly labels them as Champions. Regardless, there have been 0 three-peats in the NFL since the Browns.

So without going through all the numbers of three-peats, like the Montreal Canadians of the late 50s, the Celtics of the early 60s, or the Canadians again in the late 70s, let's just look at the numbers.

In the 1950s, there was a dominance of the Minneapolis Lakers (1952-54) and the aforementioned Canadians (1956-60). That was a span of 7 years that decade during which there was a three-peat dominance. This trend continues throughout our history. In fact, in the last 78 years, since 1930, a team has been in the midst of a three-peat or longer for 52 of those years, or 66% of the time.

Reread that last paragraph if I lost you, but basically, a three-peat in sports isn't as rare as you might think. There have been 18 instances of three-peats or longer in professional sports, but when you extrapolate the years, you notice that a good portion of our lives are run by one team constantly winning. There have been 11 Triple Crown winners in horse racing with the last being in 1978.

There are three-peats that I am not even counting, whether it be golf events, tennis majors, Olympic medals, or NCAA champions. So when we look at Jimmie Johnson and see that he is only the second NASCAR driver ever to win back-to-back-to-back Sprint Cup Titles, maybe he doesn't deserve all the accolades considering how often they occur (Since 1990 there have been five three-peats). Who knows, we could be at the start of another three-peat whether it be the Phillies, the Steelers, the Celtics, or the Red Wings.

I'll close on saying that there is one impressive streak that stands out in my mind, and that would be Jim Kelly and the Buffalo Bills' back-to-back-to-back-to-back Super Bowl losses. I couldn't find any other instance in sports in which a team had three-peated in defeat. Will anyone step up to the plate and take this four-peat away from the Bills?

And Now You Know! (And Knowing is Half the Battle)

Related Posts by Subject