- published: 23 Apr 2012
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A sports dynasty is a team that dominates their sport or league for multiple seasons or years. Such dominance is often only realized in retrospect. Some leagues maintain official lists of dynasties, often as part of a hall of fame (e.g., National Hockey League), but in many cases, whether a team has achieved a dynasty is often subjective, and can be a frequent topic of debate among sports fans. The most widely-accepted sports dynasties are those with multiple championships over a limited period of time, either consecutively with or without interruption (e.g., UCLA Bruins men's basketball from 1964 to 1975), or non-consecutively (e.g., Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders of the late 1970s and early 1980s, or the Liverpool football team of the 1980s). In a few cases, a dominant team without championships might be recognized as a dynasty (e.g., the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s or the Minnesota Vikings of the 1970s), though this is likely to be disputed.
In the SANFL, the Central_District_Football_Club have appeared in every Grand Final since 2000, winning 9 out of 12 Grand Finals. This is by far the greatest dominance of any of the senior leagues in Australian football history.[citation needed]
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers considered members of the same family. Historians traditionally consider many sovereign states' history within a framework of successive dynasties, e.g., China, Ancient Egypt and the Persian Empire. Much of European political history is dominated by dynasties such as the Carolingians, the Capetians, the Bourbons, the Habsburgs, the Stuarts, the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs. Until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty; that is, to increase the territory, wealth and power of family members.
A dynasty is also often called a house (e.g., House of Saud and House of Windsor), and may be described as imperial, royal, ducal or comital depending upon the chief title borne by its rulers. Dynasty is also used to refer to the era during which a family reigned, as well as events, trends and artifacts of that period (e.g. "Ming dynasty vase"). In such cases, often "dynasty" is dropped, while the name is used adjectivally; e.g., Tudor style, Ottoman expansion, Romanov decadence, etc.
Sport (or, in the United States, sports) is all forms of competitive physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Hundreds of sports exist, from those requiring only two participants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals.
Sport is generally recognised as activities which are based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with the largest major competitions such as the Olympic Games admitting only sports meeting this definition, and other organisations such as the Council of Europe using definitions precluding activities without a physical element from classification as sports. However, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. The International Olympic Committee (through ARISF) recognises both chess and bridge as bona fide sports, and SportAccord, the international sports federation association, recognises five non-physical sports, although limits the amount of mind games which can be admitted as sports.