But Washington also qualifies as long suffering. Washington had a very good football team during the 1980s and into the early 90s. But not before or since.
Washington had major league baseball and football teams since 1933. Both were rarely any good. Both stunk during the 40s, 50s, and 60s. (Before my memory, the R*dsk*ns were briefly good during the 1940s.) Both teams were owned by overt racists who compounded that with being out & out skinflints.
Calvin Griffith moved his Senators in 1961 to Minneapolis, renaming them the Twins. I was 11 years-old and took it personally at the time. That team was miserably bad, I shouldn't have wasted any love on them. A newly created expansion team replaced them – also miserably bad. In 1971 that team moved to Texas to become the Rangers. Washington was abandoned by major league baseball from 1972 until 2005.
The only game in town was the football team, owned by a racist bigot, George Preston Marshall. He made money by televising games locally as well as across a wide swath of the segregated south including Virginia, North & South Carolina, and maybe beyond. He appealed to that audience by hiring only white players and lack-luster coaches. During the late 50s and on into the 60s, that hurt the team's won/loss record, but didn't hurt Marshall's income.
By 1961, the R*dsk*ns played in federally owned DC Stadium. The US Department of Interior owned the land and managed the stadium. The Secretary of the Interior, Steward Udall warned Marshall to hire black football players or face civil rights legal action. Marshall reluctantly complied, and died in 1969.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Football_Team#Front-office_disarray_and_integration_(1946–1970)
New owners (among them Jack Kent Cooke) completely rebuilt the team with better players and coaches. By 1978, a young Joe Gibbs was hired by an owner whose intent was fielding winning teams. Once the R*dsk*ns were desegregated, becoming a competitive team, local fans became hard-core supporters. Gibbs went on to a 12 year record, winning 3 super bowls in 1983, 1988, and 1992.
After the Gibbs era, it took a very long time (~10-15 years) for a despised and dysfunctional owner (Dan Snyder) to destroy that loyal fan base. Once Washington fans had to wait years to get season's tickets. Now WTF has the NFL's 4th lowest attendance. And many of those attending are fans of visiting teams.
This history is quite different than for Buffalo. Washington had a long sad history of big league sports teams. Only during the 1980s did Washington sports fans enjoy a really good team. Since 1992, the WTF!? football team has been a painful embarrassment, on a long downhill slide.
I guess I hadn't finished my RANT about the WTF!? I'm done now, I promise
