Tim Benz: Best Pittsburgh athletes who didn’t win a championship here

The Sporting News put together a list of the top 25 athletes never to win a championship.

There are a few players with Pittsburgh ties on it: Barry Bonds, Jarome Iginla and Dan Marino.

What if we tried to come up with a similar list, but we restrict it to Pittsburgh athletes only? We’ve been pretty lucky. Most of the best to come through town have exited winners. There aren’t a lot of legends who came up short on a team level such as Barry Sanders, Ted Williams and Karl Malone around these parts.

But there are still plenty of names we can come up with who were legends that didn’t complete their careers with a title.

Let’s set some rules.

• We are going to restrict the analysis to the time served by players while they were in Pittsburgh only.

• If a player won a ring before arriving in Pittsburgh — or after leaving Pittsburgh — they are still eligible.

• If the player is still with a Pittsburgh team, they aren’t under consideration. That means, the likes of Antonio Brown, Maurkice Pouncey and Le’Veon Bell don’t count.

• We are restricting debate to the three major pro sports teams: the Steelers, Penguins and Pirates. Let’s not get bogged down on Penn State versus Pitt versus West Virginia, etc.

• Longevity matters in this argument. So guys such as Kevin Greene and Pierre Larouche didn’t make the cut.