Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news?

Well, the good news is that it’s Georgetown Day, and the Nationals aren’t in last place yet.

The bad news is that the Nationals are the good news.

In fact, they’re the only good news in the professional sports world of Washington, D.C., today. The rest of the picture just ain’t pretty.

Together, the Capitals, Wizards, Redskins and Nationals have become a pitiful collage of almost everything that can go wrong for sports franchises – and they’re all within 10 miles of each other.

You couldn’t draw it up any worse if you tried. To even come close, you’d have to get the Florida Panthers, New Jersey Nets, Oakland Raiders and Chicago Cubs to all migrate to the same city.

OK, so maybe that would be worse. But the point is that sports in the District are in a bad spot.

It all starts with the one team that looked like it could turn things around for sports in the nation’s capital this year and give D.C. its first deep playoff run of the new millennium – the Washington Capitals. During the 2009-2010 regular season, the Caps were 54-15-13 and won the President’s trophy with the league’s best record. They were the only team in the National Hockey League to score at least 300 goals, finishing with 46 more than the next-highest scoring team. They owned both the best home and away records in the NHL. To call them the favorites to win the Stanley Cup would have been an understatement.

And now their season is over. Just like that, after one series in the playoffs, the Caps are done. They led the Montreal Canadiens three games to one in the best-of-seven opening round and had two chances to win the series on home ice, but they couldn’t do it. Their 2-1 loss at Verizon Center on Wednesday night put the finishing touches on what can only be identified as a monumental collapse – an utter choke job topped only by the 2004 Yankees.

Wednesday marked the first time in the history of the game that a No. 1 seed in the playoffs has lost a series to a No. 8 seed after going up three games to one. But it wasn’t a first for the franchise. Since the 1980s, the Capitals have lost such a lead in six different playoff series.

While no sports franchise can rival the four consecutive Super Bowl losses of the Buffalo Bills in the early 1990s, the Caps are cementing their own similarly unenviable legacy as a team of almost, not quite.

But one thing you have to give the Capitals is this: At least Alex Ovechkin doesn’t use handguns to settle disputes with his teammates.

Need I say more?

The troubles of the Capitals’ Verizon Center roommates, the Washington Wizards, have been well publicized over the last several months. Franchise player Gilbert Arenas and fellow guard Javaris Crittenton were both suspended without pay for the remainder of the 2009-2010 season when details about their misconduct in the Wizards’ locker room was made public over the winter. Both have since plead guilty to their respective charges in court – a felony for Arenas and a misdemeanor for Crittenton – which resulted from a report that the two pulled guns on each other in the arena on Christmas Eve during an argument about a gambling debt.

The team’s pains then carried over to the basketball court. The Wizards finished with a 26-56 record; only the Kings, Timberwolves and Nets fared worse in the regular season. Oh, and Andray Blatche (Excuse me, who?) led Washington in scoring in Arenas’ absence.

There’s only so much that can be said about the Wizards before depression sets in, so let’s move on to the Redskins. Undoubtedly the city’s proudest and most successful franchise in terms of complete history, they seem to have been trying very hard to change that over the last 18 years. Since their Super Bowl victory in 1991, the ‘Skins have won 10 games in a regular season just twice. Last year they went 4-12 and finished dead last in the NFC East by four games.

Owner Dan Snyder has been active since taking over the team in 1999, to say the least. He has turned the Redskins into the greatest revenue producer in the National Football League, but he has failed again and again to use that money to bring in players (see Albert Haynesworth’s 7-year, $100 million contract) and coaches (wait for it) that can win. From Marty Schottenheimer to Steve Spurrier to Joe Gibbs to Jim Zorn, Snyder’s big-name approach to hiring has ended with lots of losing, unrest and firing.

Don’t look now, but Mike Shanahan fits the mold as the next high-profile honcho who will inevitably receive an early pink slip from Snyder. And don’t be fooled by the acquisition of Donovan McNabb – he never won a Super Bowl with a better supporting cast in Philadelphia, and now he’s 33.

Finally, we come to today’s “good news” – the Nationals. In fairness, they have a winning record this season after 23 games. But it really is too easy to point out the flaws in this franchise, which has lost 100 games and finished with the worst record in Major League Baseball the last two years. They have yet to have a winning campaign in D.C. and last year misspelled “Nationals” as “Natinals” on the front of their uniforms – for a regular season home game.

Perhaps the clearest sign of the ball club’s plight is that any and all current hype surrounding the team is being created by a player in Double-A. When people think about the Nationals, they think about former San Diego State phenom Stephen Strasburg and wonder when the front office will call up the flamethrowing right-hander so that he can pitch at Nationals Park.

Granted, I’m excited about seeing what Strasburg can do in the big leagues, too. But he’s never even thrown a pitch for the Nationals, and yet he’s the face of the franchise. Would a minor leaguer ever be the biggest story concerning the Red Sox, Yankees or Phillies? No, because they’re relevant ball clubs.

Someday – maybe even someday soon – Washington will have winners to cheer for at the professional level. As the city of Tampa showed in the 2000s, an entire city’s worth of teams can all make drastic turnarounds within the same decade (see the Buccaneers’ 2002 Super Bowl, the Lightning’s 2004 Stanley Cup and the Rays’ 2008 run to the World Series). But to do that, the District will have to shake its well-earned reputation for playing host to teams that choke, break the law, underachieve or just flat-out lose.

Connor Gregoire is a freshman in the College. For Love of the Game appears in every other Friday issue of Hoya Sports.

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Which do you want first: the good news or the bad news?

Well, the good news is that it’s Georgetown Day, and the Nationals aren’t in last place yet.

The bad news is that the Nationals are the good news.

In fact, they’re the only good news in the professional sports world of Washington, D.C., today. The rest of the picture just ain’t pretty.

Together, the Capitals, Wizards, Redskins and Nationals have become a pitiful collage of almost everything that can go wrong for sports franchises – and they’re all within 10 miles of each other.

You couldn’t draw it up any worse if you tried. To even come close, you’d have to get the Florida Panthers, New Jersey Nets, Oakland Raiders and Chicago Cubs to all migrate to the same city.

OK, so maybe that would be worse. But the point is that sports in the District are in a bad spot.

It all starts with the one team that looked like it could turn things around for sports in the nation’s capital this year and give D.C. its first deep playoff run of the new millennium – the Washington Capitals. During the 2009-2010 regular season, the Caps were 54-15-13 and won the President’s trophy with the league’s best record. They were the only team in the National Hockey League to score at least 300 goals, finishing with 46 more than the next-highest scoring team. They owned both the best home and away records in the NHL. To call them the favorites to win the Stanley Cup would have been an understatement.

And now their season is over. Just like that, after one series in the playoffs, the Caps are done. They led the Montreal Canadiens three games to one in the best-of-seven opening round and had two chances to win the series on home ice, but they couldn’t do it. Their 2-1 loss at Verizon Center on Wednesday night put the finishing touches on what can only be identified as a monumental collapse – an utter choke job topped only by the 2004 Yankees.

Wednesday marked the first time in the history of the game that a No. 1 seed in the playoffs has lost a series to a No. 8 seed after going up three games to one. But it wasn’t a first for the franchise. Since the 1980s, the Capitals have lost such a lead in six different playoff series.

While no sports franchise can rival the four consecutive Super Bowl losses of the Buffalo Bills in the early 1990s, the Caps are cementing their own similarly unenviable legacy as a team of almost, not quite.

But one thing you have to give the Capitals is this: At least Alex Ovechkin doesn’t use handguns to settle disputes with his teammates.

Need I say more?

The troubles of the Capitals’ Verizon Center roommates, the Washington Wizards, have been well publicized over the last several months. Franchise player Gilbert Arenas and fellow guard Javaris Crittenton were both suspended without pay for the remainder of the 2009-2010 season when details about their misconduct in the Wizards’ locker room was made public over the winter. Both have since plead guilty to their respective charges in court – a felony for Arenas and a misdemeanor for Crittenton – which resulted from a report that the two pulled guns on each other in the arena on Christmas Eve during an argument about a gambling debt.

The team’s pains then carried over to the basketball court. The Wizards finished with a 26-56 record; only the Kings, Timberwolves and Nets fared worse in the regular season. Oh, and Andray Blatche (Excuse me, who?) led Washington in scoring in Arenas’ absence.

There’s only so much that can be said about the Wizards before depression sets in, so let’s move on to the Redskins. Undoubtedly the city’s proudest and most successful franchise in terms of complete history, they seem to have been trying very hard to change that over the last 18 years. Since their Super Bowl victory in 1991, the ‘Skins have won 10 games in a regular season just twice. Last year they went 4-12 and finished dead last in the NFC East by four games.

Owner Dan Snyder has been active since taking over the team in 1999, to say the least. He has turned the Redskins into the greatest revenue producer in the National Football League, but he has failed again and again to use that money to bring in players (see Albert Haynesworth’s 7-year, $100 million contract) and coaches (wait for it) that can win. From Marty Schottenheimer to Steve Spurrier to Joe Gibbs to Jim Zorn, Snyder’s big-name approach to hiring has ended with lots of losing, unrest and firing.

Don’t look now, but Mike Shanahan fits the mold as the next high-profile honcho who will inevitably receive an early pink slip from Snyder. And don’t be fooled by the acquisition of Donovan McNabb – he never won a Super Bowl with a better supporting cast in Philadelphia, and now he’s 33.

Finally, we come to today’s “good news” – the Nationals. In fairness, they have a winning record this season after 23 games. But it really is too easy to point out the flaws in this franchise, which has lost 100 games and finished with the worst record in Major League Baseball the last two years. They have yet to have a winning campaign in D.C. and last year misspelled “Nationals” as “Natinals” on the front of their uniforms – for a regular season home game.

Perhaps the clearest sign of the ball club’s plight is that any and all current hype surrounding the team is being created by a player in Double-A. When people think about the Nationals, they think about former San Diego State phenom Stephen Strasburg and wonder when the front office will call up the flamethrowing right-hander so that he can pitch at Nationals Park.

Granted, I’m excited about seeing what Strasburg can do in the big leagues, too. But he’s never even thrown a pitch for the Nationals, and yet he’s the face of the franchise. Would a minor leaguer ever be the biggest story concerning the Red Sox, Yankees or Phillies? No, because they’re relevant ball clubs.

Someday – maybe even someday soon – Washington will have winners to cheer for at the professional level. As the city of Tampa showed in the 2000s, an entire city’s worth of teams can all make drastic turnarounds within the same decade (see the Buccaneers’ 2002 Super Bowl, the Lightning’s 2004 Stanley Cup and the Rays’ 2008 run to the World Series). But to do that, the District will have to shake its well-earned reputation for playing host to teams that choke, break the law, underachieve or just flat-out lose.

Connor Gregoire is a freshman in the College. For Love of the Game appears in every other Friday issue of Hoya Sports.

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