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Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs begin the third part of a historic quest on Thursday night, as they open the 2024 NFL season with the chance to three-peat.
[Related: Why Travis Kelce is the only Chiefs player talking of a three-peat]
But the back-to-back Super Bowl champions aren’t the only program with such an opportunity in front of them.
The UConn Huskies, led by head coach Dan Hurley — who turned down an offer from the Los Angeles Lakers to stay in Storrs — are the back-to-back men’s college basketball champions. Elsewhere, the Las Vegas Aces are currently pursuing a WNBA three-peat of their own.
For perspective on the difficulty that comes with three-peating, nine NFL teams (eight franchises) have repeated as Super Bowl champions, but all of them failed to even make it back to the championship game the ensuing season, according to FOX Sports research.
With all that in mind, let’s take a look at some teams who have managed to pull it off.
Here are some of the teams that have three-peated across a plethora of sports — both professionally and collegiately — in reverse chronological order.
Right now, it’s Manchester City’s world, and the entire Premier League is just living in it. Winners of six of the last seven Premier League championships, Man City has been a runaway freight train, headlined by the attack of Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland.
College Softball: Oklahoma (2021-24)
The Sooners have lost just 15 games over the past four years and have shown no signs of letting up under coach Patty Gasso. Oklahoma has beaten Texas and Florida State twice apiece to win its titles.
The one they call Ronaldo helped Real Madrid three-peat in the mid-2010s, along with the likes of Karim Benzema and Alvaro Morata (for one season in the three-peat stretch). Ronaldo’s final season with Real Madrid came in the final season of the team’s three-peat.
The game of basketball has treated the UConn faithful well over the past decade. Losing a whopping five games over four years (151-5), the Huskies were the unstoppable force of women’s college basketball, boat-racing teams up and down the floor. Breanna Stewart, Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis and Morgan Tuck were part of what was arguably the golden age of UConn hoops.
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Johnson drove laps around everyone in the latter half of the 2000s, winning 35 races from 2006-10 and six Cup Series championships in eight years. He ended his career with seven championships, tied with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the most in NASCAR history.
Phil Jackson retired following the 1998 season with the Chicago Bulls — until, of course, he became the head coach of the Lakers in 1999. Led by the star power of Shaquille O’Neal and an emerging superstar by the name of Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles won three straight titles, while Jackson actually claimed his sixth consecutive title as a coach, as he won in each of his final three seasons at the helm in Chicago with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.
In what was the last true Yankees dynasty, the team won four titles in five years — with the wins in the three-peat coming in convincing fashion. Sweeping the San Diego Padres in 1998 and the Atlanta Braves in 1999 and then beating the New York Mets in the 2000 Subway Series, the likes of Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte cemented their respective places in Yankees history.
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WNBA: Houston Comets (1997-2000)
The first four seasons of the WNBA were controlled by the Houston Comets, who won each of the first four league titles. As the Comets dominated the sport, Cynthia Cooper won two WNBA MVPs. Cooper and Tina Thompson each went on to have Hall of Fame careers, but the Comets disbanded as a franchise following the 2008 season.
The pride of Long Island won its first Stanley Cup in what was the Islanders’ eighth season in the sport. A run that featured Hall of Famers Bryan Trottier, Mike Bossy, Clark Gillies and goalkeeper Billy Smith saw the Islanders sweep the Stanley Cup in 1982 and 1983 and avoid a Game 7 in each of the four seasons. This run came directly after the Montreal Canadians also four-peated.
College Baseball: USC Trojans (1970-74)
The Trojans baseball program was a behemoth under manager Rod Dedeaux, winning five consecutive World Series thanks to the contributions of George Milke and Russ McQueen, among many others. To date, the five-peat remains an NCAA Baseball record, with two being the most consecutive titles by any other team.
Thought some of the aforementioned runs were impressive? Those don’t hold a candle to John Wooden’s UCLA teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s. A period that saw the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton and Curtis Rowe, among many others, put on the Bruins uniform saw UCLA win titles in nine of 10 seasons.
No NFL team has three-peated in the Super Bowl era (1966-present), but the Packers did three-peat, as they won the final NFL championship in 1965 and then the first two Super Bowls in 1966 and 1967. Near the end of Vince Lombardi’s reign as head coach, Bart Starr, Jim Taylor and Willie Davis helped lead Green Bay to three consecutive titles, including a pair of blowouts in Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II. The Packers also three-peated from 1929-31.
The Golden Gophers lost one game over their three-peat span (25-1) under head coach Bernie Bierman. Minnesota won two more titles under Bierman in 1940 and 1941. The head coach was ordered to report to the Marines during WWII, with him returning as Minnesota’s head coach in 1945.
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2024-09-04 16:18:18
