You Can't Lose for Winning: Sports' 15 Worst Divisions of the Past 20 Years

Even in the most remedial of classes, some poor fool still wound up as the top student. Every so often, the kid in the honors class who struggles to stay in the middle of the elite pack would jealously glance back and yearn to be in the remedial class to bask in all of the glory that comes with being the top dog.

Sports is no different, only the repercussions might be bigger.

The best team in one division full of also-rans might be the worst team in a different division. That same team might make it to the playoffs because of the futility of the company it keeps in its division, while other more qualified teams are bitterly left out of the playoffs.

But hey, what fun would sports be if it was an exact science?

So without further ado, the best of the worst divisions of the past 20 years.

15: 1997 NFC East (NFL)

OK, so the 1997 NFC East wasn’t downright awful, but it was mired in a slump of mediocrity. It gets the nod on the list for one statistical anomaly that reeks of failure: three ties. Three!

Somewhere, a 21-year-old Donovan McNabb was punching the wall of his Syracuse dorm room.

The Giants won the East with a 10-5-1 record, and the Redskins (8-7-1) and the Eagles (6-9-1) each finished the season with that rare non-zero under the tie column. The Cowboys fell to a 6-10 record, and the Cardinals were, well, the Cardinals and finished 4-12.

The Giants’ regular-season effort earned Jim Fassel Coach of the Year honors for turning around a team that went 6-10 a year earlier, but they were still edged 23-22 on their own turf by sixth-seeded Minnesota in the Wild Card game.

Sadly, few remember Fassel for his accolades in '97, but rather for his infamous playoff guarantee in 2000 that will forever live in YouTube lore and for getting clobbered in Super Bowl XXXV by the Ravens.

14: 2008-2009 Pacific Division (NBA)

It’s tough to include a division that boasted the NBA Champions. But remove the Lakers from the Pacific, and this unit was a bastion of bad.

The season marked the possible end of the identity-challenged Phoenix Suns, who ditched their free-flowing offense and then reinstated it midseason after the firing of Terry Porter.

Phoenix still won 46 games but missed out on the playoffs for the first time since signing Steve Nash in 2004.

The Warriors were never in contention, while both the Kings and the Clippers failed to reach 20 wins.

The Eastern Conference was the main benefactor of the NBA-worst Kings (17-65), as Sacramento nearly became the first team in NBA history to go winless against an entire conference. The Kings defeated the Knicks in their second-to-last game against the East to avoid that dubious distinction.

13: 2006 NL Central (MLB)

The Cardinals entered the postseason after bumbling through the woeful Central as the team to enter the playoffs with the third worst record ever, behind only the 1973 Mets (82-79) and the 2005 Padres (82-80), who we’ll hear from later.

If not in the Central, the Cardinals would have finished five games behind the Wild Card-winning Padres.

The Cardinals boosted the Central’s résumé by pulling off a surprising run to win the World Series and uproot the 1987 Twins as the team with the worst record to win a World Series.

The 2006 Central also housed the Cubs (66 wins) and the Pirates (67), who both had the National League’s two worst records. Aside from Houston (82-80), the rest of the division finished a combined 72 games under .500.

12: 2008 NFC West (NFL)

Larry Fitzgerald helped earn the 2008 NFC West a tad of credibility by helping carry the Cardinals to a highly unexpected Super Bowl appearance. But even so, Arizona finished just 9-7 and was a Frank Gore trip away from being 8-8 and possibly not even in the playoffs.

Arizona fared particularly bad against the AFC East with a 40-point setback to the playoff-absent Patriots and giving up 56 points to the Jets.

The Cardinals finished as the only team with a positive point-differential at a whopping one-point margin, while last-place St. Louis (2-14) finished -233 and concluded the season on a 10-game losing streak.

11: 2007-08 Southeast Division (NHL)

The Southeast Division has been dreadfully bad compared to its division counterparts since 2002. In fact, the Southeast claims the worst cumulative winning percentage of any division since 2002, and it’s not even close.

The Southeast is 810-789 in that span, winning barely more than 50 percent of its games. The next best is the Central at 859-743.

In 2008 the Southeast was particularly bad in its past six years of being in the NHL’s doldrums.

Washington was able to ride Alexander Ovechkin to be the Southeast’s only representative in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but the Capitals were ousted in the first round by sixth-seeded Philadelphia in a seven-game thriller.

10: 2007-2008 Southeast Division (NBA)

The 2007-08 Southeast owned a myriad of worst distinctions.

Orlando won the Southeast with a 52-30, which was the worst record among the six division winners in the NBA.

It had one of the worst playoff teams in recent memory, as the Atlanta Hawks broke a nine-year absence from postseason play by backing into the playoffs an astounding eight games under .500.

It also had the pitiful, injury-riddled Miami Heat, which finished with an embarrassing 15-67 record just two years removed from an NBA Championship. The Heat were just 8-44 against the rest of the East and had by far the league’s worst record.

9: 2008 NL West (MLB)

The 2008 NL West was on track to shatter the 2002 AL Central for the worst overall winning percentage for a complete season, and the Dodgers and Diamondbacks were in a "heated" pennant race that appeared to have the winner become the first MLB team to make the playoffs with a losing record.

Instead, a July 31 trade brought Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers, and his torrid hitting over the final two months of the season catapulted them to a ho-hum 84-78 record and a playoff berth.

Still, four teams in the NL Central finished with a better record than the Dodgers.

What made the West worse in 2008 was that it appeared to have finally emerged from the moniker that it had been branded with earlier in the decade—the “NL Worst.”

In 2007 the Diamondbacks won the West, and the Rockies made it to the World Series as the Wild Card after one of the hottest and most improbable finishes in baseball history.

Big things were expected from both in 2008, but Arizona treaded water all season, and the Rockies slumped to 74-88 and a third-place finish.

8: 1999 AL Central (MLB)

Sure, the Indians finished with the second best record in the American League, but no other team in the woeful Central finished with a winning record, and no one was even respectable.

The White Sox finished 21.5 games behind the Indians, while the Tigers, Royals, and Twins each racked up over 90 losses. The Central’s .454 is only a percentage point behind the all-time worst 2002 AL Central’s winning clip of .453.

Even the Indians, who were the first team since the 1950 Red Sox to score over 1,000 runs in a season, couldn’t save some face for the '99 Central.

Cleveland opened a 2-0 lead over Boston in ALDS but dropped the final three games and the series, including forgettable 23-7 and 18-12 defeats in Games Four and Five, respectively.

Manager Mike Hargrove was fired as a result of the collapse after helping orchestrate a turnaround of the woe-is-me franchise starting in 1991.

7: 2005-2006 Northwest Division (NBA)

Denver won the 2005-2006 Northwest but lost its final four games and finished 44-38, which was better than, well, no other playoff team in the Western Conference.

Its division championship warranted a No. 3 seed despite the Nuggets’ mediocre regular season. Eighth-seeded Sacramento finished the season with an identical 44-38 mark.

The Nuggets earned the unfortunate title of becoming the first team to lose a playoff series to the Clippers since their move from Buffalo to Los Angeles. Denver fell in five games to the sixth-seeded Clippers, and three of its four losses were by double digits.

Kiki Vandeweghe learned a valuable lesson from the season: Don’t lose to the Clippers. The Nuggets GM was fired after the season.

The Northwest also housed the West’s two worst teams in Portland (21-61) and Minnesota (33-49).

6: 2002 AL Central (MLB)

Two once-proud baseball franchises helped the 2002 AL Central earn the rights for the worst winning percentage for a division over a complete season at .453.

The Royals lost 100 games for the first time in franchise history, and the Tigers were 51 games under .500, losing 106 times as a precursor to Detroit’s record-setting 2003 season in futility.

No team other than the division-winning Twins finished above .500, and the second-place White Sox weren’t even close, finishing 13 games behind at 81-81.

The moribund Tigers spelled the end of manager Phil Garner and sixth-year GM Randy Smith after the team started the season 0-6. Smith presided over all six of the Tigers’ losing seasons between 1996 and 2006.

5: 2008 NFC North (NFL)

When you identify the worst team in NFL history record-wise, the division it plays in is going to be brought down with it—and the 2008 NFC North wasn’t exactly eye-popping to begin with.

Things got so bad for Lions coach Rod Marinelli that he had his quarterback run out of the back of the end zone for a safety while trying to avoid a sack, and he was famously asked by a Detroit Free Press columnist if he wished his daughter would have married a better defensive mind than son-in-law and defensive coordinator Joe Barry. No one wants to hear that.

The Vikings were the only team with a winning record against out-of-division opposition and were easily defeated by the bottom-seeded Eagles on Wild Card weekend. The Bears and Packers went a combined 4-8 against the rest of the division.

4: 2005 NL West (MLB)

Ah yes, the “NL Worst.” The Padres had a season-long flirting affair with becoming the first team to ever qualify for the playoffs with a losing record.

San Diego won its 81st game of the season on Sept. 30 to make sure they avoided that distinction, but after a three-game sweep against the Cardinals, they became the first team to make the playoffs and finish with a sub-.500 record overall (82-83).

Four teams in the NL East finished with better records than the Padres, and the last-place Nationals only finished a game worse than San Diego.

Every team in the NL West finished with a negative run differential. The Padres finished -42, and the second-place Diamondbacks were outscored by 160 runs.

3: 2008 AFC West (NFL)

The 2008 AFC West was so bad that even official Ed Hochuli had a rough time doing his job adequately while in the presence of such ghastly football.

Hochuli may have cost San Diego a win against rival Denver in Week Two, but he certainly wasn’t the reason for how awful the AFC West was.

The chronically underachieving Chargers won the West at 8-8, and that was only after winning their final four games while the bumbling Broncos dropped their final three in an epic collapse.

The Patriots (11-5) and the Jets (9-7) both finished with better records than the Chargers, and with their lackluster division win, San Diego played host to the 12-4 Colts in the Wild Card and pulled off a surprising overtime win.

The West was outscored by 213 points against other divisions, and surely the Raiders (5-11) and Chiefs (2-14) didn’t help. Heck, even the hapless 7-9 Bills earned more than half their wins against the AFC West (4-0).

2: 2004 NFC West (NFL)

How bad was the NFC West in 2004? Well, the first-place Seahawks were beaten by the second-place Rams three times, including the playoffs, and were outscored by 96 points against out-of-division opposition, falling by 30 points to the Falcons in the second round of the playoffs.

The West was so woeful against the rest of the league, it went only 13-27 against outside competition and was outscored by a whopping 306 points.

The Seahawks won the division with a 9-7 record, and the Rams backed into the playoffs with an 8-8 record but became the first .500 playoff entrant to win a playoff game—along with the 8-8 Vikings the same season—with their Wild Card win over Seattle.

Every team finished with a negative point differential, and the 49ers were particularly dismal, as they were winless outside of the West and finished 2-14 with a league-worst -193 point differential.

1: 1994 AL West (MLB)

Tony Gwynn and Matt Williams weren’t the only ones breaking bats over their knees as their quests for hollowed baseball records were shattered because of the 1994 strike that prematurely ended the season.

Stat geeks everywhere were furious as the strike ended the most realistic bid for a team to make the playoffs while finishing under .500.

The '94 AL West was beyond awful. When the season was cut short after 114 games, Texas and Oakland were embroiled in a tight pennant race while both teams were under .500 by double digits.

The first-place Rangers (52-62) would have been in last place in either the Central or the Eastern Division. The last-place Angels were 21 games under .500 and still just 5.5 games out of first place.

At the time of the strike, the West had a .437 winning percentage, which would have set the bar overwhelmingly low for future divisions to try to match its futility.