SEATTLE - Forgive us, Cubs fans, if we are unable to feel your pain. At least your team made the playoffs.

We're sorry, Patriots supporters, if we can’t understand why you’d boo a team that loses one game following 21 straight regular-season victories. Even if the sun is setting on your dynasty, at least you had one.

We apologize to you, Ohio State football fans, for we fail to understand why you constantly wring your hands. You won the championship in 2002, and we do hope your Buckeyes win the big one again some day. Then please tell our local team how to win a game.

Perhaps most deserving of pity is you, the basketball fans of Oklahoma City. Because if you decide at some point in the future that the tax dollars you are currently throwing at your new NBA team would be better spent on roads or schools or public safety, then you, too, could end up feeling our pain.

With all due respect to all of those mentioned above, you don’t have a clue about misery. You really want to know pain? Stare into the sad, shell-shocked eyes of a Seattle sports fan.

No region has more lovely sights than the Puget Sound. And no region has a collection of sports teams this grotesque.

How low has Seattle fallen? The River Styx has already been crossed, and Hades is on the horizon. At least it feels that way.

The list of unpleasantness is long and painful, but since football is in full swing, we’ll begin on the gridiron.

Seattle Seahawks, NFL
Record: 2-5
Last championship: Are you serious?

Ah, the Seahawks. Just three seasons removed from a trip to the Super Bowl (they lost, of course), the Seahawks find themselves with a 2-5 record, somehow good for a tie for second place in the NFC West.

This is a division so bad, the Seahawks have won it four straight times despite being outscored over the course of two of those seasons. This sorry bunch includes the Cardinals (best known for Matt Leinart’s beer bong parties) the Rams (lamest show on turf) and the 49ers (quarterbacked by guys named J.T. O’Sullivan and Shaun Hill).

The fall has been alarming since the Super Bowl, but essentially boils down to this equation:

Management goof allows Steve Hutchinson to bolt to the Vikings + Shaun Alexander deteriorates from somewhat soft to delicate as Charmin + Matt Hasselbeck gets hurt + defense forgets that its job is to stop other team = 2-5.

To make matters worse, the 49ers might be trying to steal coach Mike Holmgren, who says he’s ready to retire — but only from the Seahawks. Hard to blame him at this point.

Washington Huskies, college football
Record: 0-7
Last championship: 1991, shared with Miami

In 2004, Tyrone Willingham was called in to lend stability to a mess left by previous coaches Rick Neuheisel and Keith Gilbertson, whose combined missteps helped turn a once-strong program into a national laughingstock.

Willingham accomplished his job initially, cleaning up the program and bringing in a wealth of fine young student-athletes (as he would call them). They’re not particularly big, and not particularly fast. But they go to class, play very hard, and never give up, which is a nice way of saying that they’re also not particularly skilled.

A lack of skill, however, does not apply to quarterback Jake Locker. The recruiting jewel of Willingham’s time at Washington, Locker could develop into a modern-day Fran Tarkenton, only bigger and faster, and without all the touchdown passes.

At this point, however, it appears more likely he’ll develop into a physical therapist. You see, Locker broke the thumb on his throwing hand — while blocking on a reverse play, of all things — and is probably done for the season.

It’s too bad for Willingham that he had to be fired, but when so few of his fine student-athletes can play football, that's the way it goes.

The good news for Huskies fans is that their squad is not the worst team in the state. That honor belongs to their rivals across the mountains.

Washington State Cougars, college football
Record: 1-7
Last championship: Surely you jest

The Cougars are not, technically, a Seattle team. Their campus is located across the state, nestled amongst the rolling fields of the Palouse, just a Ryan Leaf Hail Mary from the Idaho border. But as many young and eager WSU graduates settle in the Puget Sound region, there is hardly a shortage of Cougar-related angst in Seattle these days.

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Washington State’s football program has never been able to sustain occasional flashes of promise. Look up the phrase “Cougin It” in the urban dictionary and there is a rather colorful description of Wazzu’s amazing ability to find new and creative ways to blow surefire victories. Thoughts of surrendering late leads must give the current fan base a warm sense of nostalgia.

This season’s problems started in May, when new coach Paul Wulff lost eight scholarships, punished by the NCAA for the program’s poor academic record. By the time autumn rolled around, you wondered if the Cougars only had eight scholarship players to begin with.

Washington State's lone victory came against Portland State, a Championship Subdivision team (formerly Div. I-AA) that is 3-4. In the other seven games, the Cougars have lost by an average score of 54-9.

Worst team in Pac-10 history? That honor could be decided in the Apple Cup.

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