Curse of Billy Penn and the skyline

Local lore held that after Philadelphia skyscrapers exceeded the height of the William Penn statue atop City Hall, a so-called 'Curse of Billy Penn' kept the city's major professional sports teams from winning championships for decades. The legend intensified with skyline changes in the 1980s and 2000s and was symbolically addressed when construction workers placed a small William Penn figurine atop the Comcast Center during its 2007 topping out. Sports writers and statisticians debate the significance of the correlation between building heights and team performance.