UConn followed Chiefs in winning back-to-back titles. Could others repeat?
Just 58 days after the Kansas City Chiefs achieved something that hadn't been done in 20 years, the UConn Huskies men's basketball team completed a feat that hadn't been managed in 17.
Could 2024 be the year of the repeat champion? If so, why now?
Back-to-back triumphs are a long and storied staple of sports, and, in many cases, the minimum backbone of any body of work that could be regarded as a dynasty.
In mid-February, Patrick Mahomes had the Chiefs looking and feeling inevitable on their way to another set of Super Bowl rings, a standard of excellence that was the real reason for victory, despite the impossibly hyped and generally enjoyable (for most people) love tangle between a certain tight end and pop icon.
Over the past weeks, Dan Hurley's impenetrable scheme on the hardwood similarly proved to be a puzzle without solutions in racking up six consecutive bone-rattling wins and making a mockery of college basketball's basic premise of implied unpredictability.
Yet these are not norms in recent times, and evidence suggests that winning a title and then doing it all over again is actually increasing in difficulty as the years go by.
Countless teams hope that 2024 continues to buck the trend, a group not restricted to Italy at soccer's European Championships, the Denver Nuggets as the NBA postseason closes in, the Texas Rangers as the MLB campaign gets underway, the Vegas Golden Knights, Ryan Blaney in NASCAR's grueling slog and many more.
"It is so, so hard to do it for the first time, but in a lot of ways it is even more difficult now for teams to do it again," FOX Sports football analyst and former NFL head coach Eric Mangini told me recently. "On the one hand, you have a group that knows it is capable of winning when everything is on the line. But then there is all the other stuff; you have a target on your back, other teams are building themselves specifically to beat you, guys want more money — it is a lot."
Re-signing Chris Jones was essential to continuing the Chiefs dynasty
In pro football, the unceasing duct taping of salary caps and contract restructures is an obstacle to ongoing success, a factor largely offset by the excellence of Mahomes and his surrounding parts, Andy Reid's intelligence and tact and the future-oriented creativity of the Kansas City front office.
For Hurley, the primary issue was the eternal one in college sports — churn — with three starters departing for the NBA and five of his top eight scorers having been lost from the prior season's net-cutters.
"In the current day and age of the transfer portal, the idea of roster continuity and building with three- or four-year players is becoming a lost art," FOX college basketball analyst John Fanta told me on Tuesday. "Look at UConn's main returning players this year, with sophomores Donovan Clingan and Alex Karaban along with a (second-year) transfer in Tristen Newton.
"For a team that won six NCAA Tournament games by a combined 120 points last year to then reload and somehow not just repeat, but accelerate, is historic. It has never been harder to repeat for a title in college sports.
"We just witnessed one of the greatest two-year runs by any program ever, and by doing this, the Huskies cement themselves as no worse than a top-four men's program in the sport's history."
How did UConn win back-to-back championships?
When teams do win — and keep winning — it feels like they're never going to stop. But we are seeing it happen less and less.
NASCAR has crowned 13 straight non-repeat champs since Jimmie Johnson won five titles in a row from 2006-2010. The Chiefs' twin triumphs emulated the New England Patriots and a fresh-faced Tom Brady all the way back in 2003-04, back when everyone talked about how young Brady was. That script flipped during his most recent title runs.
UConn matched Florida's double act in 2006 and 2007 under Billy Donovan and with Joakim Noah patrolling the paint, before the iPhone existed and when no one had heard of Twitter, let alone X.
The NBA has been a free-for-all ever since the predictability of the Warriors era, when Golden State battled LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers in four straight Finals. The Miami Heat went back-to-back before that, while the 1990s were a Chicago Bulls fest, interrupted only by consecutive titles for the Hakeem Olajuwon-led Houston Rockets.
Baseball hasn't had a returning victor since the New York Yankees leaned on Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams Mariano Rivera and other stars to three in a row up until 2000.
In soccer, Italy was a surprise winner when the 2020 Euros were delayed a year during COVID and would be even more of a shocking champion this summer, with World Cup runner-up France, led by the brilliance of Kylian Mbappe presenting a mighty force. England too, spurred by perhaps the world's best player right now in Jude Bellingham, is seen as formidable.
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The Nuggets look as good as anyone in the West going into the NBA playoffs but face stiff competition, especially with the Boston Celtics having put together 62 wins (and counting) on the other side of the country.
For as much as the trophies snared by the Chiefs and the Huskies could be the start of something new, chances are better that they aren't true indicators.
Glory presents a mixture of conundrums, some of which Mangini touched upon. The ferocious competitiveness of modern sports, and the rewards that go along with winning, magnifies the idea of what it takes to be better than everyone else in a certain window of time.
Chiefs trade two-time Super Bowl champ L'Jarius Sneed to Titans
In the NFL especially, many teams — look at the 2021 Rams as a case in point here — risk everything on a one- or two-season window, and it doesn't take long for the bill to become due. Reworking deals doesn't mean the money is deferred forever. Draft picks shipped off in exchange for pending free agents don't magically reappear.
It is hard to judge which is the better thing for sports as a spectacle; constant change or sustained excellence. Variety is the spice of life, so they say. Dominance, particularly when compared with past greatness, provides endless discussion fodder for sports enthusiasts.
Ultimately, though, it boils down to a simple truth: Even trying for a second title isn't possible without what comes immediately before it.
"It's hard," Chiefs coach Reid said before the start of last season, "To even get one."
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX and subscribe to the daily newsletter.
