It’s a topic that comes up almost every year, and it was a topic of conversation on last night’s Lights Out Sports Podcast. Should losing teams make the playoffs in any sport? Hosts Michael Ballentine and Cheez brought the topic up after discussing the rumored 24-team college football playoff. More teams make for a watered-down playoff experience, even if none of the teams will have losing records.
Professional sports are a little different. In the NFL, there have been four teams with losing records that made the playoffs since 2014, most recently the 2025 Carolina Panthers (8-9). The 2014 Panthers went 7-9-1 and still got in. The NHL has a similar story, with teams like the 1987-88 Toronto Maple Leafs getting in, despite a 21-49-10 record. The 1990-91 Minnesota North Stars got in with a 27-39-14 record and made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals.
It happens most frequently in the NBA, which makes sense because more teams make the playoffs in basketball than in any other league (16 of 30 teams get in (53.3%). The 2024-25 Miami Heat made the playoffs with a 37-45 record, then were swept in the first round by the Cleveland Cavaliers. The 2021-22 New Orleans Pelicans made the playoffs with a 36-46 record. The NBA begs the question: if those are playoff teams, how bad were the lottery teams?
Major League Baseball is the only one of the big four that has never had a losing team make the playoffs in a full season. In the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, the Milwaukee Brewers and Houston Astros both got in with 29-31 records. In a full season, though, the worst team to make the playoffs in MLB history is the 2005 San Diego Padres, who finished the regular season 82-80.
Are Losing Teams In The Playoffs Good Or Bad For Sports?
In the case of the North Stars, their playoff appearance and Finals run provided an extra spark to the NHL. Everybody loves a Cinderella story. Their situation is rare, however, with most losing teams losing handily in the first round of the playoffs. If anything, it seems pointless to have them, especially when there is often better competition that watches ther post season from home.
Fans want the glass slipper to fit a team barely over .500, not a team several games below. There are enough hard-to-watch games in every sport that there’s no point in getting more of them on prime time during the postseason. As they say, though, it is what it is. There’s no way to fix the machine.
If any league were to pass a rule that only winning teams get in the playoffs, it would be destructive on two fronts. First and foremost, what happens when not enough winning teams qualify? How will those leagues fill out the bracket? There’s no easy answer to that question. Sometimes letting a losing team into the playoffs is necessary to make the playoffs happen at all.
Secondly, banning losing teams would defeat the point of divisions and conferences. When a losing team makes the playoffs, it is usually because they were the best team in a bad division or bad conference. Allocating playoff spots by record only, regardless of divisions, begs the question: why have divisions at all? It’s hard to imagine a league that is just a list of unseparated teams. It almost feels like that sort of league is far worse than any losing team getting swept in round one.
At the end of the day, losing teams making the postseason is neither good nor bad, since those are subjective terms. Regardless of which side of the argument a person falls on, it’s never going to change. It doesn’t happen frequently enough, or make enough people angry, to change the way it’s done. Fans will just have to choose whether they want to root for or against the losers.
