Because of the relatively small number of games played in college and professionalfootball seasons, there is a possibility that a particularly inept team will not manage to win any games. Before overtime games in the regular season was instituted, teams might tie a game without winning a game; these are still counted in lists of winless seasons. This is because, during eras before overtime was introduced to American football, leagues generally ignored tied games when calculating winning percentage.
Because NFL teams do not all play one another each season, it is possible for multiple teams to go winless (or also, for that matter, to go undefeated in the regular season). This was common in the NFL's early years as scheduling was not standardized and teams entered and left the league regularly. Since 1935, multiple simultaneous winless seasons has only happened once, in 1944 when both Brooklyn and Card-Pitt finished 0–10 in a season where rosters had been decimated (and parity disrupted) by wartime enlistments.
19-game winless streak, beginning with a loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the final game of the 2016 NFL season and ending with a victory over the New York Jets in Week 3 of the 2018 season. Ties the 2008 Detroit Lions for most losses in a single season. Coincidentally, both had perfect 4–0 preseasons. First NFL franchise to have multiple seasons with 15 or more losses, going 1–31 over two seasons, with their only win in week 16 of the 2016 season. The team would not record its next win until week 3 of 2018 season, and would go 1–35–1 between their three wins through four seasons, resulting in consecutive 17 game losing streaks; this is also the most recent winless season and last under the 16-game schedule.
Detroit was the first non-expansion team to lose every game in a full season since World War II. This was their second winless season in franchise history (1942, see below). With this season, the Lions became only the second NFL franchise with two full winless seasons, and the only one still in existence; this was also the first winless season since the institution of the 16-game schedule in 1978 (that was used until 2020).
If one includes the 1944 Card-Pitt team (see above), the Cardinals are the only NFL team to have back-to-back full seasons without a victory. (The league, however, considers Card-Pitt and the Cardinals to be separate franchises.) If the connection between Card-Pitt and the Cardinals is made, the team would have a 29-game losing streak (the most by an NFL team); between week 6 of the 1942 season and week 1 of the 1946 season, the Cardinals and Card-Pitt teams posted a combined 1–36 record.
This was the first NFL season during U.S. involvement in World War II, leading to a depletion of the player talent pool. There were talks of suspending play. However, it was ultimately decided to continue operations to boost morale on the home front.[5]
The Rochester Jeffersons went a combined 0–21–2 from 1922 to 1925, but played only partial NFL schedules in those years (0–4–1, 0–4, 0–7 and 0–6–1, respectively). They also had another winless season in 1911 going 0–1–3 in the New York Pro Football League.
One honorable mention is the 1980 New Orleans Saints. The team lost their first 14 games and finished with a 1–15 record. Their only win was in week 15 when they won by a single point. The second team to replicate this feat was the 2016 Cleveland Browns, who, as mentioned above, went winless the following season.
Dayton's final season. The third of three consecutive winless seasons for Dayton. Their final win was in 1927; they then consecutively went 0–18–1, losing every game in their final two seasons.
In 2001, the Columbus Wardogs of AF2, the minor league of the AFL, made history becoming the first American football team to go 0–16.
United Football League
The United Football League had one winless season. In their inaugural season, the 2009 New York Sentinels lost all six of their games. The team, which was a traveling team that played games in Hartford, Long Island and New Jersey (and had intended to play a game in New York City but backed out), fired its head coach and settled permanently in Hartford to become the Hartford Colonials. Under the UFL's double round robin format, only one team could finish any particular season entirely with losses, since every team played each other at least twice.
World League of American Football
The 1991 inaugural season of the World League of American Football saw the Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks fold after losing all ten of their regular-season games. The following year, the WLAF replaced that franchise with the Ohio Glory who almost met the same fate but managed one win in their lone season.
Since non-professional, semi-professional, and minor league teams are inherently unstable in their membership, it is far easier for seasons in which a team wins no games to occur. In the case of non-professional teams, neither mechanisms to force a team to shut down against its will, nor effective drafts or revenue sharing mechanisms to distribute talent evenly among teams typically exist, leading to poor teams accumulating multiple winless seasons. Four teams in football history have both lost all their games and failed to score a single point in an entire season; all played eight games or less. The 1938 Clintonville Four Wheel Drive Truckers failed to score a point in a nine-game season but managed two 0–0 ties.[7] There are at least twelve teams who have accumulated losing streaks of 20 games or more; there are also four teams who have accumulated seasons of all losses with at least 13 games.[8] In the case of minor professional football, particularly in indoor football leagues, winless seasons often result from an owner's abandonment or other financial hardship. The American Indoor Football Association had at least one winless team in five out of six seasons. The National Indoor Football League went its first three seasons without a winless season, but beginning in 2004, at least one team went winless every year until the league's collapse in 2007. Though the Spring Football League had two teams with winless seasons (the Los Angeles Dragons and the Miami Tropics), and the Stars Football League had one such team (the traveling 2011 Michigan Coyotes), they are almost never mentioned in discussions of perfect and perfectly bad seasons, since those teams only played two games each before the seasons were cut short.
AF2 was the minor league of the Arena Football League. In 2001, the Columbus Wardogs made history becoming the first American football team to finish a season 0–16.
The Legends Football League (originally Lingerie Football League), whose seasons are only three to four games long for each team, has had eight teams with perfectly bad seasons in three years of play. One such team, the Toronto Triumph, did not win a game in either of their competing seasons in 2011 and 2012.
The Princeton Tigerssprint football squad, a team consisting of players under 172 pounds, sustained 16 consecutive winless seasons before Princeton University shut the team down in 2015, citing safety concerns in allowing players to play on a team so heavily outmatched.[9]
Canadian Football League
Since 1986, the Canadian Football League's regular season spans eighteen games; from 1952 to 1985 it was generally sixteen games like the NFL from 1978 to 2020, though those teams in what is now the Eastern Division played only fourteen as late as 1973.[10] Also, the CFL did not adopt interdivisional regular season play until the early 1960s. There have been no imperfect seasons since the CFL was officially founded in 1958 (the closest any CFL team has come to a winless season since its formation are the 2003 Hamilton Tiger-Cats who went 1-17; however, there have been three other seasons in which a team won a single game under shorter standard regular season schedules since 1958) – the last imperfect season in either of the CFL's antecedent leagues was in 1949.
Imperfect seasons were common in the Canadian football during the first half of the twentieth century when fewer games were played and more leagues were challenging for the Grey Cup. There was also far more disparity between teams in early Canadian football leagues.
Also unlike the NFL, the CFL has always awarded "points" in the standings that, in effect, have always counted ties as "half-wins" so a team with only ties and losses in the standings has never been regarded as having an imperfect season.
Teams with winless seasons in the WIFU, IRFU and CFL since 1935
The National Pro Grid League, which operated from 2014 to 2016, has a season of 3 to 4 games per team plus a 4 to 8 team playoff. The Los Angeles Reign lost all ten games it played during the league's (and team's) three-year existence.
NPGL teams with no wins in a season (based on NPGL site)
Season
Team
Games
Wins
Losses
Comments
2016
Los Angeles Reign
3
0
3
2015
Baltimore Anthem
3
0
3
Debut season
2015
Los Angeles Reign
3
0
3
2014
Boston Iron
2
0
2
2014
Philadelphia Founders
3
0
3
Folded after the 2014 season.
2014
Los Angeles Reign
4
0
4
Including one playoff loss.
Lacrosse
Seasons in the National Lacrosse League and its predecessors Major Indoor Lacrosse League and Eagle Pro Box Lacrosse League have varied from eight games in the first years of competition to eighteen games today, with the extension having been gradual. The Charlotte Cobras, who played only one season before folding, are the only team in the history of the NLL to have not won a game in a season. In their sole 1996 season they played 12 games and lost them all, before folding.
PLL has never had a team record a completely winless season since its formation in 2019; only one team has recorded a winless regular season. During the 2020 season, also abbreviated by COVID-19, Chaos LC went 0–4 in the regular season, but won two games in the league's Championship Series (i.e., playoffs) before losing in the final to Whipsnakes LC.
Other North American leagues
In the other major professional sports leagues of North America it is virtually impossible that a team could lose all its games, for the simple reason that there are many more games in the regular season than in football or lacrosse.
Major League Soccer
The Major League Soccer schedule has consisted of between 26 and 34 games. No team in Major League Soccer has ever come close to losing all its games: the most losses in a MLS season is 24 from 32 games by the Kansas City Wizards, now known as Sporting Kansas City, in 1999, the year when the league used shootouts to decide all tied games. Shootouts were abandoned the following season. In 2013, D.C. United set new MLS records in futility. United won a league-low 3 games, and lost a record 24 games, tying the aforementioned Wizards.
National Basketball Association
Since the 1967–68 season, the National Basketball Association's standard regular season schedule has been 82 games long (except the 1998–99, 2011–12, 2019–20, and 2020–21 seasons were shortened, though all were at least 50 games).
The 2011–12 Charlotte Bobcats hold the record for the lowest winning percentage of any team in an NBA season, winning only 7 out of 66 games in a lockout-shortened season, for a winning percentage of 0.106. This broke the record held by the 1972–73 Philadelphia 76ers, who had a winning percentage of .110 in a full 82-game season. The 1947–48 Providence Steamrollers won an all-time NBA low of six games out of 48 (.125 winning percentage).
The 1953–54 Baltimore Bullets went 0–20 on the road. More recently, the 1990–91 Sacramento Kings managed a near-imperfect road season, winning only one of 41 away games.[11] Overall, the Kings lost 43 consecutive road games before beating the Orlando Magic 95–93 on November 23, 1991.
Women's National Basketball Association
Since its formation in 1997, the WNBA regular season has been gradually increased from 30 to the current 40-game schedule to be used starting in 2023.
The Atlantic City Seagulls of the (now defunct) summertime, minor league USBL finished the 2001 season with an 0–28 record. It was quite a turnaround for the franchise, as they were dominant in the USBL just a few years earlier; the Seagulls were USBL runners-up in 1996, then swept to three straight titles in 1997–99. In 2000, the Seagulls slipped to 12–18, fourth place, and were beaten in the first round of the playoffs; after their winless 2001 campaign, the Seagulls folded.
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League's schedule, like that of the NBA, consists of 82 games. Since the 2004–05lockout, teams receive two points for a win, one point for a loss in overtime or a shootout, and zero points for a loss in regulation time. From 1997 until 2004, teams received two points for a win, one point for a tie or overtime loss, and zero points for a regulation loss. Prior to 1997, teams received two points for a win, one point for a tie, and no points for a loss.
No team has ever come close to losing every game in an NHL season; the worst record is by the 1974–75 Washington Capitals who went 8–67–5 (8 wins, 67 losses, 5 ties). The 1974–75 Capitals and 1992–93 Ottawa Senators hold the record for fewest wins on the road with one. The NHL played an 80-game season in 1974–75, whereas in 1992–93 the schedule consisted of 84 games, thus giving the Senators the percentage record for worst road record. The Senators also set a record by losing their first 38 consecutive road games (the Senators' road statistics include a neutral site game played in Hamilton, Ontario, in which the Senators were considered the road team).
Major League Baseball
Since the early 1960s, the schedule of both leagues of Major League Baseball has been 162 games long, and before that it was 154 games long. With such a huge schedule, it is practically impossible for a team to finish with a winless season. The sabermetric baseball statistic Wins Above Replacement is calculated on the premise that even a team consisting entirely of replacement-level players, (i.e., a player that could be "replaced" by a call-up from the minor leagues without any significant statistical difference) is expected to win a baseline minimum number of games (typically 40–50, depending primarily on the caliber of the team's division) per 162-game season.
The closest to a perfectly winless season in the National League was the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders season, who finished with a record of 20-134 after its roster was looted by the owners of the team, who then stacked the best players onto the St. Louis Perfectos.
With a win percentage of .130, the Spiders are (as of 2020) the last of three major league teams to have finished a season below the Mendoza line (.200) in win percentage for a minimum of 120 games; the others were the 1889 Louisville Colonels (.196), and the 1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenys (.169), whose best players had jumped to the Pittsburgh Burghers of the newly formed Player's League.
Compared to the NBA, the college basketball season is shorter, with teams playing up to 40 games, divided into non-conference play, conference play (both regular season), conference tournaments, and postseason tournaments. Starting in 2020, Division I teams can either play 29 or 31 regular season games, with conference play ranging from 14 to 20 games. Better performing teams play more games by qualifying to conference and postseason tournaments.[13]
In the 2010–11 Ukrainian Second League (3rd tier on the Ukrainian pyramid), FC Veres Rivne lost all 14 out of 22 scheduled games before being expelled from the league due to failure of payment of league dues; in addition, they failed to score a single goal at home.
In top-level domestic league football however, a handful of teams have completed their respective seasons without winning a game. In the 2010–11 Serbian SuperLiga, FK Čukarički Stankom played an entire season winless, drawing five matches and losing 25 in a 30-game season, giving them only 5 points and finishing bottom in a field of 16. The team also only scored ten goals whilst conceding 65.
In the Bulgarian A Professional Football Group, which is the top tier of association football in the European country, three teams have all played a season without winning, with those being Torpedo Ruse (four draws out of 22 matches during 1951), Rakovski Ruse (one draw out of 30 matches during 1996/97) and Chernomorets Burgas Sofia (also one draw out of 30 matches during 2006/07). Chernomorets were however the worse performing out of these, conceding 131 goals with only eight in reply (the same number scored as Rakovski Ruse in their winless season), they still however completed the season with a minus 2 points total, because they violated a rule concerning not being able to field enough youth players.
In the 1946–47 Allsvenskan with 22 games played, Billingsfors IK tied 3 games and lost 19, the only team in Swedish football history never to win even one single Allsvenskan game in a season.
In the 2022-23 Cymru Premier the highest division in Welsh football, Airbus UK Broughton drew 2 games and lost 30 out of 32 games, ending in -4 points after a points deduction.
The open high frequency of draws in association football, coupled with the relatively long length of seasons and promotion and relegation system used in a majority of jurisdictions to automatically remove the lowest performing teams from any given league, makes winless seasons less likely to occur.
Australian rules football
VFL/AFL
In the Australian Football League (until 1990 called the Victorian Football League), seasons have ranged from twelve games per team (in 1916, when only four teams competed due to World War I) to 22 games (since 1970, except for 1993 when 20 games were played), with most seasons being of 18 or 22 games duration.
In the AFL Women's competition, seasons have ranged from six games per team (in 2020, when the season was initially scheduled for eight games each but was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic) to ten games (in 2022).
First season in the league. The AFL acknowledged an umpiring error cost Sydney a potential match-winning goal in their four-point loss to Essendon.[26]
The West Australian Football League has existed within Western Australia under various names since 1885, and until the 1980s was of equivalent standard to the VFL and SANFL. Its season was originally around six to nine games in length, later increasing to 21 games, and from 2018 is 18 games.[a][39] However, in 2020 each team played only 8 home-and-away games due to the COVID-19 pandemic delaying the start until July.
Season
Team
Wins
Losses
Draws
Remarks
1899
Rovers
0
8
0
Folded during season; Perth played the remaining fixtures.
From the time of the formation of the Victorian Football League in 1896 until it was dissolved in 1995, the VFA was the second-tier club competition in Victoria. Its home-and-away season varied erratically from 12 to 22 games in length.
Domestic basketball leagues outside of North American professional basketball have shorter seasons, typically a home-and-away regular season, with the top teams qualifying to the playoffs. Some other teams still play in continental tournaments outside of their domestic leagues, while most still play other domestic competitions.
British Basketball League
In 2013, Mersey Tigers became the first top-flight British basketball team to go a whole season winless.
This record of 0–33 in the regular season of the 2012–13 BBL Championship, was completed with a 90–57 loss away to Glasgow Rocks, but can also be extended to include their complete season of 0–35 (defeats in the first round of the BBL Cup and BBL Trophy).
The defeat in the BBL Trophy was also significant because they fell at this stage to EBL Division One side, Worthing Thunder, and in doing so, it was the first time a BBL side had been knocked out from a competition by an EBL team.
They also currently hold the longest losing streak of 34 consecutive defeats in the BBL Championship.
EuroLeague
The EuroLeague, the top continental basketball league in Europe, has had seen numerous tournament format changes. Starting in the 2016–17 EuroLeague, each team has played 30 regular season games, with each team playing every team. From 2000 to 2016, teams were split into groups, and played 10 teams starting when ULEB handled the league. From 1991 to 1996, FIBA expanded the original competition and had a 14-game regular season. From 1996 to 2000, there were two group stages, each with 10 games each. These are the teams that finished winless in the regular season stage since 1991 (excluding 1996 to 2000):
Unlike basketball leagues elsewhere, the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) usually play 3 tournaments (or "conferences") in sequence. Each team usually plays the other teams at least once in a conference, so the minimum number of games a team plays depends on how many teams there are, historically 8 to 10, but now currently 12. No team has lost all of its games in every conference in a season, although there are instances that a team did lost all of its games in a conference. These are, from 1981 and excluding guest teams:
In English first-classcounty cricket, which has a history dating back to the early nineteenth century and was until the middle twentieth century up to the highest standard of the game, seasons have varied in length. Before the 1880s, they were generally less than ten matches in length and some "first-class" counties played only against one or two different opponents, so that a team losing all its games was not uncommon. Between 1887 and 1929, seasons were gradually increased in length to a standard twenty-eight matches for all counties. However, because of the development and popularity of one-day cricket, seasons have been reduced to twenty-four games in 1969 and twenty in 1972, though this was increased by two in 1977 and 1983. With an increase to four days for all games, sixteen or seventeen games have been played since 1993.
Also, because of improvements to pitches via the heavy roller and covering to protect from rain, the proportion of games "drawn" (not finished) has steadily risen since the 1870s.
Only two county teams have ever finished a season with only losses in a program of eight or more games:
English First-Class County Teams Losing Every Game (qualification 8 or more games)
Only team to be winless without finishing bottom 24 drawn matches is most in county cricket history; four finished games is fewest in a season of more than sixteen games
There were no completely winless seasons in the Sunday League limited-overs competition during its history from 1969 to 2009.
International first-class cricket
With the exception of the Sheffield Shield since the 1970s, most first-class cricket competitions outside England have either been knock-outs or of such short length that it becomes an everyday occurrence for a team to lose all its games. Some, such as the Ranji Trophy and most seasons of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, have indeed been knockout competitions, which typically use first innings lead to decide if a match is unfinished.
There have still be some notable winless sequences in non-English first-class cricket:
between 1959–1960 and 1986–1987, Jammu and Kashmir played a total of 115 games without a win[48]
International one-day and Twenty20 cricket
In the 2012–13 season of the Australian Big Bash League, the Sydney Thunder completed an imperfect season where they lost all their eight games despite possessing the likes of Chris Gayle.
In the Rugby Football League Championship, teams initially played a variable number of games, with the maximum ranging over time from 26 to 38, and some teams playing as few as fourteen. In more modern times the fixture list has been standardised at 26 games per team.
As a result of this fairly lengthy schedule, it has been almost impossible for British rugby league teams to lose all their games, with the only exception being during World War II's so-called "Wartime emergency League" when teams were often able to arrange no more than ten games and some as few as five. The only four winless seasons since normal competition resumed after the war have been in the second and third divisions of the Championship.
In 2018, West Wales Raiders set a number of Rugby League records for futility on course to losing all 26 games, including the largest point differential (-1930 points), most points conceded (2106) and largest average number of points conceded per game (81). In addition, they were on the receiving end of Rugby League's largest ever defeat – a 144–0 loss to York City Knights.
League 1 Conceded 2106 points Set a new world record for biggest Rugby League defeat, losing 144–0 to York City Knights Finished on -4 points after fielding an ineligible player in two matches
New South Wales Rugby Football League/National Rugby League
In the New South Wales Rugby Football League, the ancestor of today's National Rugby League, seasons were initially between eight (in the event of Kangaroo tours) and sixteen games long, so that a very bad team could go through a season with only losses. As a result of the expansion of the NSWRL from 1947 onwards, the season has been lengthened gradually with a few intermissions. The following NSWRFL teams up to 1966 did not win a single game:
Longest winless season in NSWRL/NRL history. Last season with 18 games: in 1967 the season expanded to 22. Sequence of 29 winless games from Round 13 of 1965.
Disbanded at end of season after having won only one game (8–5 against Norths) in three seasons.
1918
Annandale
0
14
0
Sequence of 27 winless games: won only twice in last four seasons
Since 1967, NSWRFL and later NSWRL, ARL and NRL seasons have been between 22 and 26 games long; thus it is much less likely a very bad team could lose every single one of its games.
Brisbane Rugby League/Queensland Cup
The Brisbane Rugby League premiership began in 1909 and continued in varying forms until 1996, after which it was superseded by the Queensland Cup. Between the 1930s and the 1960s it was of comparable standard to the New South Wales Rugby Football League, but subsequently a huge drain of players to Sydney eroded the standard of play. Before World War II seasons were typically no more than twelve games long, so that a very bad team could easily fail to win a game; however as the competition grew it was expanded to 21 games, which made winless seasons much less likely.
Would finish 7–5 in 1926, but disbanded in middle of 1934 season after all players moved to rugby union.
1915
West End
0
8
0
Became "Ipswich" the following season, but did not compete after that.
Rugby union
Super Rugby, the Southern Hemisphere's principal club competition, has seen two teams go through an entire season with no wins or draws. Both seasons were in the competition's past incarnations of Super 12 and Super 14, each name reflecting the number of competing teams.
Under both Super 12 (1996–2005) and Super 14 (2006–2010) formats, each team played all other teams once, resulting in seasons of 11 and then 13 games. The competition became Super Rugby with the addition of a 15th team in 2011. The season format was also heavily revamped; the regular season now consists of 16 matches.
The Super 12 and Super 14 eras each saw one team finish a season with only losses; both teams with this dubious distinction are from South Africa. In 2002, the Bulls, based in Pretoria, finished with 11 losses from 11 matches. The other imperfect season was that of the Johannesburg-based Lions in the final season of the Super 14 format in 2010, who lost all 13 of their matches, while ending up with a final points difference of negative 300.
In 2018, the Sydney Rays finished the National Rugby Championship regular season with 0 wins and 0 draws in 7 games.
In 2019, the Austin Elite finished the Major League Rugby regular season with 0 wins and draws in 16 games. It was part of a 22 match winless streak that started in 2018 and ended with the final match of the 2020 before the season was cancelled by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In many sports winless seasons may be the norm for many, or even most, competitors; particularly those where the competition does not take place in the form of discrete 1-on-1 matches, such as running.