Top 7 non-baseball streaks of the past 20 years

Last week, the Top 7 took a look at the best baseball streaks of the last twenty years.  The rest of sports get their due this week.  Another fun list may be life streaks; what college student has the record for consecutive days drinking, what the most times someone has flipped a heads in a row, or consecutive days eating a Godfather’s Pizza buffet.  Life’s fun.  Onto the list.

7. Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor

Yes, women’s beach volleyball made the list.  They won 112 straight matches.  Also, Misty May is married to a baseball player and tried to get President Bush to smack her on her ass.  Watching them annihilate their opponents in the Olympics twice in a row was entertaining, and they were responsible for me personally being involved in a ridiculously loud and high participatory USA! chant after they won the gold medal last summer.  USA chants are within the top 1% of coolest things to be a part of—I hope that you started your own after the Navy SEALS went three for three on shooting pirates.  By the way, is there a bigger mismatch in world history?  The United States Navy SEALS against teenaged Somali pirates.  It’s like the 1998 Yankees squaring off against Dowell, Illinois’s American Legion team.

6. Houston Rockets

Perhaps the most amazing thing about their 22-game winning streak last season was that it still fell 11 games short of the NBA record.  There can be entire NBA seasons where no one even wins 11 in a row, and that’s what the Rockets still needed in order to tie the record.  They went over ¼ of the season without losing a game, like a baseball team winning 45 in a row, or an NFL team winning…four in a row.  Well that’s not so impressive.

5. Brett Favre

Prior to his newest retirement (he could end up with a streak of most consecutive seasons retired), Favre’s consecutive games started at quarterback streak was at 269.  Something that doesn’t get as much attention is the fact that Peyton Manning is now in second place all-time at 176, but he still needs six straight seasons to catch Favre.  By the time Favre’s Hall of Fame induction goes down, do you think you’ll get a nostalgic feeling from the whorish media reminiscing?

4. Undertaker

17-0 at WrestleMania.  This one is similar to Eric Gagne’s saves streak from last week in that we really don’t realize how ridiculous it is until no one comes close to touching it for the next few decades.  Granted, Undertaker’s streak included wins against Giant Gonzalez, King Kong Bundy, Big Bossman (in a beyond atrocious match), and Mark Henry, but nothing in recent wrestling history can come close to touching this, especially since they rarely wait things out anymore and blow good storylines way before they should.  For another obligatory wrestling entry, you could have gone with Goldberg’s WCW streak in the late 90s, or historically, Andre the Giant’s “15-year” undefeated streak, but Undertaker’s still takes both of those.

3. Prairie View A&M

Prairie View, who later added the “A&M” onto the end, lost 80 football games in a row over a nine-year span.  You would have to think that they were at least partially an inspiration for the team from The Waterboy.  Their basketball team was also notorious for being near the bottom of the USA Today Division I computer rankings.  They were no Cal Tech though.  If you ever want entertainment, Google the scores from Cal Tech’s basketball games over the last few years.   You’ll think that some of the scores are misprints.

2. Tiger Woods

It’s Adam Sandler movie mention week at the Top 7, because Happy Gilmore made it seem possible that a charismatic golfer could actually garner interest in golf amongst people who usually have no interest in it whatsoever.  Tiger Woods came along just a couple of years later.  The Tiger-only fans want him to not only win every single event, but win them by 12 to 15 strokes.  They are the ones who tune in only if he’s in competition on the last day of tournaments, giving the ratings double-digit boosts.  He may have the Yankees/Duke quality for some hardcore golf fans, but not for the outsider.

1. New England Patriots

Since 19-0 never happened, this has been forgotten a bit, but the Patriots won an NFL-record 21 straight games from 2003 to 2004.  The last time I checked, they still had Tom Brady, quite frankly, that’s all you need.  It’s a shame that once you realize how great of a source of comedy that shows like Quite Frankly are, they’re gone.  Gone like The Magic Hour, The Half-Hour News Hour, and McEnroe. Just wanted to mention that.

The Top 7 is written by Jason Major. He wishes the Magic Hour was still on television. Email him at [e-mail].

EDITOR’S NOTE: Brett Favre and the Patriots brought up images and references of John Madden and Stephen A Smith. Both of them are no longer with us in the same capacity - and both of them left on the same day. Can someone get us a box of tissues? Please?