Dan Marino turns 55 today. He still hasn’t won a Super Bowl title. His best chance came 31 years ago in just his second pro season. The Hall of Fame quarterback threw for 318 yards, 1 TD and 2 interceptions in a 38-16 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XIX. He never made it past the AFC Championship game after that.
Marino is arguably the greatest NFL player to never put fingerprints on the Vince Lombardi Trophy. In honor of Marino’s birthday and the fact that we were all born to one day die, let’s look at the 10 other great pro athletes that never won it all.
Charles Barkley
The “Round Mound of Rebound” played 16 seasons in the NBA and won the same number of titles as I did: zero. Barkely made the postseason 13 times in stints with the 76ers, Suns, and Rockets. He led the Suns to the NBA Finals in 1993, where even a Game 4 triple-double couldn’t keep the Michael Jordan Bulls from glory. He made millions of dollars, played in 11 All-Star games, won league MVP in the 1992-93 season, and is fifth on the league’s all-time offensive rebound list. He retired in 1999 as just the fourth player in league history to have 20,000 career points, 10,000 rebounds and 2,000 assists. He was inducted into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame, but he never won it all, so we remain equals. We are not role models.
Eric Dickerson
Dickerson burst into the NFL in 1983 and quickly set the standard for running backs, rushing for a league-high 1,808 yards as a Los Angeles Rams rookie. His sophomore effort was even better: 2,105 yards, a record that still stands today. Dickerson led the NFL in rushing four times in his 11-year career, and sits seventh all-time in rushing yards. But not even a playoff-record 248 yards on the ground in 1985 could get the Hall of Famer into a Super Bowl game. It did beat the Cowboys, though.
Elgin Baylor
The Lakers franchise has won the NBA title eight times. Elgin Baylor played for Minneapolis/Los Angeles for 14 seasons. Somehow, none of that lined up for the 11-time All-Star. Baylor and Jerry West led the Lakers to a remarkable eight NBA Finals losses in the 1960s. What’s worse is that Baylor couldn’t win a title after he retired, either. He spent 22 generally hapless years as general manager of the Los Angeles Clippers before losing the gig in 2008. At least West got a logo modeled after him or whatever.
Karl Malone
The Utah Jazz had a dynamic duo in Karl Malone and John Stockton in the ’90s. But what they had in assists and exposed thighs, they lacked in actually winning NBA titles. Malone won NBA MVP honors in 1997 and 1999. Stockton himself holds the all-time NBA record for assists (15,806) and steals (3,265). The duo led Utah to consecutive NBA Finals appearances in 1997 and 1998, only to be edged twice by the Chicago Bulls.
Jordan, man. The dude was just plain greedy.
Marcel Dionne
Feels like a lot of Buffalo Sabres greats could take this spot on the list, but you have to respect the goal scoring touch of Marcel Dionne. He scored 731 goals in his 18-year career with the Red Wings, Kings, and Rangers. Of the top 10 all-time goal scorers in NHL history, only Dionne and Mike Gartner never hoisted Lord Stanley’s Cup. Dionne’s teams couldn’t get it together in the postseason, but he always performed — he finished his career with 45 points in 49 career playoff games. Also, his nickname was “Little Beaver,” which is pretty tremendous.
Patrick Ewing
The New York Knicks could not win an NBA title with Patrick Ewing in the lineup. This is probably what they deserved, given the NBA might’ve rigged the 1985 draft lottery so the Knicks would win the coveted Georgetown forward. Then again, that draft was probably rigged to prevent noted racist Donald Sterling’s team from drafting Ewing. Dang, what a complicated world we live in. Ewing was still a really good basketball player, though. Dude made 11 All-Star teams and led the Knicks to the NBA Finals in 1994 and 1999, but only played the first two games of the series in ’99 and watched from the bench as the San Antonio Spurs won in five games.
Jim Kelly
As a resident of Western New York, we have now entered my area of expertise. The Buffalo Bills went to four straight Super Bowls in the 1990s. They lost all four. Jim Kelly was the starting quarterback for those teams. Though he doesn’t have the monster numbers of modern quarterbacks — he never threw for 4,000 yards in a season and only once threw more than 30 touchdowns — the Hall of Fame quarterback was the master of the K-Gun offense that made Buffalo a powerhouse for the better part of a decade. At least until January.
Fittingly, Kelly and Marino were rivals since they were both taken in the 1983 NFL Draft. The two greats fueled the Bills/Dolphins rivalry to fever pitch, but neither team could manage to win it all with their Hall of Fame quarterbacks under center. In hindsight, it seems obvious: Marino was better, but Kelly was more futile.
Bruce Smith
There were a lot of good players on those Super Bowl Bills teams. Andre Reed is 17th all-time in receiving yards. James Lofton is ninth. Running back Thurman Thomas is 15th all-time in career rushing yards. None of them won a Super Bowl. But Bruce Smith is arguably the best defensive end of all time. The first overall pick of the 1985 draft played 19 pro seasons — 15 of them with the Bills. He holds the NFL career sack record — 200 even. Smith was a menace on one good knee and an absolute terror when healthy. Even when he finished out his career in Washington, they never booed him in Buffalo. They were saying “BRUUUUUUUCE.”
Ted Williams
The Splendid Splinter is the last Major League Baseball player to bat .400 in a season—.406 to be exact. Williams slugged 521 home runs in his career for the Red Sox, including one that permanently left a seat at Fenway Park colored red. Even the nerd stats say Williams is among the greatest players of all-time—he finished with an on-base percentage of .482 in his career. Williams, however, only led the Red Sox to a single World Series in his career—losing to the Cardinals in seven games in 1946.
One could argue, however, that Williams did win when it mattered most. He left baseball for three years at the height of his career to help the Allies win World War II. Williams later left baseball again to fight in the Korean War before retiring in 1960.
Barry Sanders
Listen, this is not Barry’s fault. One of the greatest running backs in NFL history happened to get drafted by the Detroit Lions and they just wasted him, you guys. In 1997, Barry Sanders ran for 2,053 yards. Somehow the Lions only went 9-7 and lost to Tampa Bay on Wild Card weekend. The final score was 9-8. Sanders played 10 NFL seasons. The Lions lost the wild card game five times with him in the backfield. Sanders is third all-time in rushing yards and arguably retired still in his prime.
I don’t blame him one bit.
