List of winless seasons
A winless season is a regular season in which a sports team fails to win any of its games. The antithesis of a perfect season, winless seasons have been suffered twelve times in professional American football, six times in arena football, three times in professional Canadian football, once each in American professional lacrosse and box lacrosse, more than twenty-five times in major Australian football leagues, over twenty 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 relatively small number of games played in college and professional football seasons, there is a possibility that a particularly inept team will not manage to win any games. Before overtime 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. 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 by wartime enlistments.
National Football League
8 or more games
The Rochester Jeffersons went a combined 0–21–2 from 1922 to 1925, but played only partial NFL schedules in those years. They also had another winless season in 1911 going 0–1–3 in the New York Pro Football League.The New Orleans Saints came close to a winless season in 1980. 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.
7 games or fewer
Arena football
The previously shorter length of seasons in arena football made imperfect seasons quite possible. The following teams went through an Arena Football League or a National Arena League season without winning a game:| Year | Team | Played | Remarks | League |
| 1989 | Maryland Commandos | 4 | Only year branded as the Maryland Commandos. | AFL |
| 1991 | Columbus Thunderbolts | 10 | Moved to Cleveland the following year. | AFL |
| 1992 | New Orleans Night | 10 | Team ceased operations after season. | AFL |
| 1994 | Milwaukee Mustangs | 12 | First winless team to remain in same city during following season. Went 10–4 in 1996. Folded in 2001. | AFL |
| 1996 | Memphis Pharaohs | 14 | Relocated twice, firstly as the Portland Forest Dragons from 1997 and then as the Oklahoma Wranglers. Folded in 2001. | AFL |
| 2003 | Carolina Cobras | 16 | Went 6–10 the following season. Folded in 2004. | AFL |
| 2018 | Lehigh Valley Steelhawks | 15 | Only team in the league to be winless. Was 9–1 the season before and 2nd in the league. Folded after the season. | NAL |
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 Leagues
The United Football League of 2009 to 2012 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, 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.The United Football League of 2024 has had no winless seasons to date, nor did its immediate predecessors. It has had one team, the 2025 Memphis Showboats, that failed to win any games in regulation.
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.Other American football leagues
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. 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. 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, and the Stars Football League had one such team, 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, 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 Tigers sprint 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.
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. 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 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
National Pro Grid League
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 three-year existence.NPGL teams with no wins in a season (based on NPGL site)
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.In Major League Lacrosse, the season consisted of either 12 or 14 games from the league's formation in 2001 through the 2019 season. The 2020 season, the last before MLL merged into the Premier Lacrosse League, was abbreviated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the existence of the MLL, two teams recorded winless seasons—the 2006 Chicago Machine, who went 0–12 and lost an MLL record 13 consecutive games, and by the 2020 New York Lizards, who went 0–5 in the shortened season.
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 before losing in the final to Whipsnakes LC.