Miami Dolphins fans have waited 50 years for a team and season like this. Enjoy the journey | Opinion

The pain and disappointment intrinsic with being a sports fan is a matter of simple math. There are 124 teams in the traditional Big Four North American sports leagues — NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL — and only four of those teams and their fans get to smile into the offseason.

That’s 3.2 percent. Your team winning a championship in any given season is about as likely as you discovering that your neighbor can juggle while riding a unicycle.

The pain and disappointment does end eventually, guaranteed. It is assured to come with one’s last breath on this mortal Earth. Occasionally, if we are very lucky, it might even come during our lifetime and grant us the celebration of what we sometimes wait many decades to experience.

Miami Dolphins fans are wrapped up in this as their team faces reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City on Sunday in Frankfurt, Germany. Not since the Fins last won a Super Bowl in 1973 — during the midst of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal — have hopes of a championship been legitimately this high in South Florida.

True sports dynasties like the Yankees of the mid-20th Century, the Celtics of the 1960s and the Patriots under Tom Brady are wild anomalies. The norm is that your team more likely exists on a scale of frequent stinking to occasional competitiveness.

“There’s always next year!” is a sports invention designed to gin up hope and help keep us sane. If anything was not possible, nobody would play the lottery, right? So we hope.

Surely many baseball fans around Dallas-Fort Worth had given up on the ultimate parade but now get one at last as the Texas Rangers celebrate their first World Series since moving there in 1972.

Just this past summer the Denver Nuggets won an NBA crown for the first time in 57 franchise seasons. Two years earlier the Milwaukee Bucks won it all for the first time since 1971.

The number of fan bases waiting the longest for a first or for another championship winnows so, so slowly. Here are the 18 fandoms left who have waited at least 50 years — 50 years!

Let’s call it the “Golden Tears Club”:

75 years: Cleveland Guardians (MLB): Last championship 1948 (as Indians), last title shot 2016; current hope meter 4.

66 years: Detroit Lions (NFL): Last championship 1957, no title shot since; current hope meter 6.

63 years: Minnesota Vikings (NFL): Born 1961, never won it all, last title shot 1976; current hope meter 3.

59 years: Cleveland Browns (NFL): Last championship 1964, last title shot 1965; current hope meter 4.

58 years: Buffalo Bills (NFL): Last championship 1965, last title shot 1993; current hope meter 7.

57 years: Atlanta Falcons (NFL): Born 1966, never won it all, last title shot 2016; current hope meter 2; and Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL): Last championship 1966-67, no title shot since; current hope meter 8.

55 years: Atlanta Hawks (NBA): Moved to Atlanta 1968-69, zero championships, zero title shots; current hope meter 2; Cincinnati Bengals (NFL): Born 1968, never won it all, last title shot 2021; current hope meter 7; New York Jets (NFL): Last championship 1968, no title shot since; current hope meter 4; and Phoenix Suns (NBA): Born 1968-69, never won it all, last title shot 2021; current hope meter 8.

54 years: San Diego Padres (MLB): Born 1969, never won it all, last title shot 1998; current hope meter 5.

53 years: Buffalo Sabres (NHL): Born 1970-71, never won it all, last title shot 1999; current hope meter 3; Milwaukee Brewers (MLB): Moved to Milwaukee 1970, never won it all, last title shot 1982; current hope meter 5; and Vancouver Canucks (NHL): Born 1970-71, never won it all, last title shot 2011; current hope meter 7.

51 years: Indiana Pacers (NBA): Last championship 1972-73, last title shot 2000; current hope meter 3; and New York Knicks (NBA): Last championship 1972-73; last title shot 1999; current hope meter 3.

50 years: Miami Dolphins (NFL): Last championship 1973, last title shot 1984; current hope meter 9.

It seems almost unfathomable that 17 other teams’ fans have waited longer for a first or next championship than Dolfans have. Larry Csonka, Jake Scott, Garo Yepremian — the names from those glory days are now old family heirlooms collecting dust somewhere in our collective attic.

With due respect, even those most hallowed of franchise names, Don Shula and Dan Marino, are little more than old photos in a history book to a generation or more of Dolfans. Babies born when Marino retired are young adults now.

The jerseys of Tua Tagovailoa and Tyreek Hill pop up more and more in Dolphins crowds now as fans ache for new glory days. It has been almost 40 years since Miami last even appeared in a Super Bowl.

Now it could happen again. The feeling we may be in the midst of a franchise renaissance, of new glory days, is palpable.

A generation of Dolfans in their 20s and into their 30s is discovering for the first time how exciting and fun Dolphins football has become. Miami has the explosive offense everybody else in the NFL would want for the first time since the mid-1980s. A 14-0 deficit that once caused resigned hand-wringing now is met with a cocky confidence that had become so foreign.

We can’t know where this joyride of a season will lead as it meets its biggest challenge Sunday in Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.

It could end with a first Super Bowl championship in 50 years. It really, truly could. Might not, too.

Meantime, enjoy this.

The redemption of Tagovailoa, the electricity of Tyreek, the goofy eccentricity of a refreshing head coach in Mike McDaniel.

Enjoy every bit of it.

Don’t be so fixated on what the eventual destination might be that you don’t allow yourself to appreciate and marvel at the wonderful journey this team is taking us on.