Imperfect season

An imperfect season (more accurately, an anti-perfect season or a perfectly bad season) is defined as a team losing all of their games. It is the antithesis of a perfect season, and is often referred to as such in a tongue-in-cheek manner. This ignominy has been suffered eleven times in professional American football, six times in arena football, thrice in professional Canadian football, once each in American professional lacrosse and box lacrosse, more than twenty-five times in major Australian football leagues, seven times in top-level rugby league, at least twice in top-level rugby union, and twice in English county cricket.

Gridiron football
Because of the short schedules of college and professional football seasons, there is a possibility that a very bad team will not manage to win any games. Before overtime was used consistently, teams might tie a game without winning one; these are generally counted in lists of winless seasons.

NFL Teams with no wins in a season (8 or more games)
The Rochester Jeffersons went a combined 0-21-2 over four seasons from 1922 to 1925, but in none of those seasons did they ever play more than seven games.

NFL Teams with only one win in a season (8 or more games)
Source: Worst NFL Teams of all time (ESPN)

Arena Football League
The short length of seasons in arena football makes imperfect seasons quite possible. The following teams have gone through an Arena Football League season without winning a game:

United Football League
The United Football League has had, to date, 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 can finish any particular season entirely with losses, since every team plays each other at least twice. The 2009 California Redwoods lost all their games except their two games against the Sentinels; they relocated from San Francisco to Sacramento (as the Sacramento Mountain Lions) for 2010. Both the Colonials and Mountain Lions made improvements on their records the following season.

Other American football leagues
Since non-professional, semi-pro and minor league teams are inherently unstable in their membership, it is far easier for seasons in which a teams 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. Five teams in football history have failed to score a single point in an entire season; all played eight games or less. 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. 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; it also had at least one team with one win or less in all six seasons, including one team (the Ghostriders/Ghostchasers) that, despite two reorganizations, lost every game in their two-year existence. 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.

Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League currently has a regular season of eighteen games; from 1952 to 1985 it was generally sixteen games as with the current NFL season, though those teams in the Eastern Division played only fourteen as late as 1973. Consequently, especially given the much smaller number of teams playing, there have been fewer imperfect or nearly imperfect seasons than in the National Football League, with the exception of the first decade or so when fewer games were played.

National Lacrosse League
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 sixteen 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 twelve games and lost them all, before folding. The Syracuse Smash in 2000 finished 1-11 and the relocated Ottawa Rebel finished 1-13 the following year.

Major League Lacrosse
In Major League Lacrosse, the season has consisted of either twelve or fourteen games since the league was formed in 2001.

The only winless season in Major League Lacrosse has been by the 2006 Chicago Machine, who went 0-12 and lost an MLL record thirteen consecutive games; the Machine eventually moved to Rochester. The New Jersey Pride in 2004 and the Bridgeport Barrage in the previous year also finished with a 1-11 record.

Other North American leagues
In the other major professional sports leagues of North America - Major League Soccer and its predecessors, the National Basketball Association and the Women’s National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball - 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
Since it began in 1996, the Major League Soccer schedule has consisted of between twenty-six and thirty-four 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 in 1999, the year when the league used shootouts to decide all tied games. Since shootouts were abandoned the following season, the most losses by a Major League Soccer team has been 22 by both Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA in 2005. Chivas also holds the MLS record for fewest wins in a season, winning only four of its thirty-two games, whilst Real Salt Lake in the same year was second worst with only five wins.

National Basketball Association
Since 1967, the National Basketball Association’s regular season schedule has been 82 games long. Originally it was 48 games long, but this was gradually expanded to an 82-game schedule by the beginning of the 1960s.

The 1973 76ers hold the record for the lowest winning percentage of any team in an NBA season, winning only 9 out of 82 games for a winning percentage of .110. This record has been threatened by the 1993 Dallas Mavericks and the 1998 Denver Nuggets, both of whom went 11-71 for a winning percentage of .134 and at various points looked likely to break the 76ers record for fewest wins in a season. The Nuggets, for instance, were on track at the beginning of February 1998 to post a 7-75 record. In the original Basketball Association of America, the Providence Steamrollers in 1947-48 won only six games of forty-eight for a winning percentage of .125.

The 1990-91 Sacramento Kings managed a near-imperfect road season. They won only one of 41 away games, 87-82 against the Washington Bullets on November 20, 1990. Overall, the Kings lost 43 consecutive road games before beating the Orlando Magic 95-93 on November 23, 1991.

The 1996–97 Boston Celtics managed only one win in 24 games against other members of the Atlantic Division, in its last such game against the Philadelphia 76ers. They overall lost 24 successive games against other Atlantic Division teams after beating the New Jersey Nets 112 to 106 on 19 April, 1996.

Women’s National Basketball Association
Since its formation in 1997, the WNBA regular season has been gradually increased from 30 to the current 34-game schedule.

No team has gone through a WNBA season without winning a game; the fewest wins in a WNBA season has been three by the 1998 Washington Mystics in their first season, and the 2011 Tulsa Shock. Two other expansion WNBA teams, the 2008 Atlanta Dream at 4-30 and the 2006 Chicago Sky at 5-29 have come closest to this record, whilst the worst record by an established WNBA franchise has been 6-28, or a winning percentage of .176, by the 2005 Charlotte Sting.

National Hockey League
The National Hockey League’s schedule, like that of the NBA, consists of 82 games. Each game is given two points for a win, one point for a tie, and no points for a regulation loss. Since 1997, one point has also been given for overtime losses; the introduction of a shootout during the 2004-05 lockout eliminated ties. From 1997 to 2004, NHL standings tables had four columns: W-L-T-OTL. From 2005 to 2010, it was reduced to three, W-L-OTL; in 2011, a "regulation/overtime win" column (ROW) was added, which excludes shootout wins; it does not change the point totals, but does serve as the first tiebreaker.

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; before that, it was 154 games long. With such a schedule it is practically impossible for a team to finish with a winless season.

The closest to a perfectly imperfect season in the National League was the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders season, who won only twenty games and lost a record 134 games after its roster was looted by the owners of the team, who stacked the best players onto the St. Louis Perfectos. The Spiders are, to this day, the only major league team to have finished a season below the Mendoza line (.200) in win percentage. Since 1900, four other teams have come closest to imperfection, the 1916 Philadelphia A's went 36-117, the 1935 Boston Braves went 38-115, the 1962 New York Mets went 40-120 and the 2003 Detroit Tigers went 43-119.

Australian Rules football
Owing to the short schedules and restricted talent pool of Australian rules football leagues, winless seasons (the term “imperfect season” never being used in Australia) are more common and better documented than in any other professional or semi-professional team sport. In the major state leagues of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, the home-and-away season was originally between twelve and sixteen games long, and is now between twenty and twenty-two games; thus a very bad team could easily fail to win any games.

VFL/AFL
In the Australian Football League, until 1990 called the Victorian Football League, seasons have ranged from fourteen games per team in its initial season and the shortened wartime seasons from 1916-18 and 1942-43 up to 22 games since 1970. As a result of this, exceptionally bad teams were quite capable of not winning a single game in a season during the competition’s early and middle periods up to the extension of the season to twenty games in 1968. Since then, the longer season has prevented any completely winless seasons, though several teams have come distinctly close, either through being lucky to achieve their only win or being on target for a winless season when they won.

VFL/AFL teams with two or fewer wins since 1968
Both St. Kilda in 1985 and Port Adelaide in 2011 has a record of two wins and nineteen losses before winning their last game; in the Saints’ case in a huge comeback upset over second-placed Footscray.

VFA/VFL
From the time of the formation of the Victorian Football League in 1896 until it was disbanded in 1995, the Victorian Football Association (VFA) was the second-tier club competition in Victoria, after which it was replaced by the current Victorian Football League (VFL) which serves as a state league and feeder to the AFL. Its home-and-away season has varied erratically from twelve to twenty games in length. Since the VFA and VFL have never possessed any mechanisms such as zoning or revenue sharing to reduce inequality of the sport’s limited talent pool, it has been quite easy for weak teams in these leagues to have seasons where they failed to win a single game.

SANFL
In the South Australian National Football League, which until the 1970s was not that far below the VFL in standard, seasons before the league was reorganised under its present name in 1927 after previously being known as the South Australian Football Association up to 1906 and as the South Australian Football League were from twelve to fourteen games long. Since then they have been between seventeen and twenty-two games long, so that winless seasons have been by no means infrequent.

WAFL
The West Australian Football League has existed since 1885 within Western Australia, and until the latter part of the 20th century was of equivalent standard to either the VFL or SANFL. Its season was originally around fourteen games in length, but because the league extended to a twenty-game home-and-away season well before the VFL or SANFL did, winless seasons have been much rarer. However, there have been quite a number of cases where a team came very close to a winless record through winning only one game by a very narrow margin, or was in danger of a winless season when it managed to win.

Rugby league
In British rugby league, it is exceedingly unlikely that a team could lose all its games because the schedule was around 38 games long when the code was first established, and has never been shorter than the current 27 games. In Australian rugby league, however, 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 NSWRL teams up to 1966 did not win a single game: Since 1967, NSWRL and later 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. Only two teams since 1967 have had only one win in a season, and in both cases that win occurred early enough that the possibility of a winless season never occurred. There have been other teams that have started the season with more winless games, but all ultimately won at least twice. NSWRL/NRL teams with two or fewer wins since 1967, plus one case with no wins in first ten games, are:

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.