A perfect season is a sports
season
A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...
, including any requisite
playoff
The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...
portion, in which a team remains and finishes undefeated and untied. The feat is extremely rare at the professional level of any team sport, and has occurred more commonly at the collegiate and scholastic levels in the United States. A perfect regular season (known by other names outside the United States) is a season ''excluding'' any playoffs, where a team remains undefeated and untied; it is less rare than a complete perfect season but still exceptional.
A perfect season may be part of a multi-season
winning streak
A winning streak, also known as a win streak or hot streak, is an uninterrupted sequence of success in games or competitions, commonly measured by at least 4 wins that are uninterrupted by losses or ties/draws. Although sometimes claimed as a ...
, or even a streak of perfect seasons.
Exhibition games
An exhibition game (also known as a friendly, a scrimmage, a demonstration, a preseason game, a warmup match, or a preparation match, depending at least in part on the sport) is a sporting event whose prize money and impact on the player's or ...
are generally not counted toward standings, for or against. For example, the 1972 Miami Dolphins (below) lost three of their preseason ("exhibition" games in 1972 NFL vernacular) games but are considered to have had a perfect season.
Perfect season in fantasy sports is defined as follows: The league will declare a franchise to achieve the elite status of a “Perfect Season” when the following criteria have been met during the course of one season:
- The team wins all their head to head regular season matchups and is declared regular season champion.
- The team wins all their playoff matchups and is declared playoff champion.
The feat is extremely rare in high level fantasy sports, and considered almost impossible in fantasy NBA.
Basketball
Basketball leagues outside the
NBA tend to be shorter than the NBA's 82-game season, thus making a perfect season more achievable.
Khimik won the
2014–15 Ukrainian Basketball SuperLeague
The 2014–15 Ukrainian Basketball SuperLeague was the 24th edition of the Ukrainian top-tier basketball championship. The season started on October 11, 2014 and ended on May 4, 2015.
Because of the unrest in Ukraine, just 7 foreign players play ...
by winning all 30 regular season games, and winning all playoff games, for a 36–0 overall record.
Cricket
County cricket
English
first-class county cricket has existed as the top tier of domestic cricket in England since the middle nineteenth century, and until the 1950s it was 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 winning all its games was not implausible. Between
1887
Events
January–March
* January 11 – Louis Pasteur's anti-rabies treatment is defended in the Académie Nationale de Médecine, by Dr. Joseph Grancher.
* January 20
** The United States Senate allows the Navy to lease Pearl ...
and
1929
This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic ...
, 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
This year is notable for Apollo 11's first landing on the moon.
Events January
* January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco.
* January 5
**Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to ...
and twenty in
1972
Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using mean solar tim ...
, though this was increased by two in
1977
Events January
* January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group.
* January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democrat ...
and
1983
The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call.
Events January
* January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning ...
. With an increase to four days for all games, sixteen or seventeen games have been played since
1993
File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefu ...
.
Also, because of improvements to pitches via the
heavy roller
The roller is an agricultural tool used for flattening land or breaking up large clumps of soil, especially after ploughing or disc harrowing. Typically, rollers are pulled by tractors or, prior to mechanisation, a team of animals such as horses ...
and covering to protect from rain, the proportion of games "drawn" (not finished) has steadily risen since the 1870s.
Since tables of results have been kept in
1864,
[Wynne-Thomas, Peter; ''The Rigby A-Z of Cricket Records''; pp. 53 to 67. ] the only team to have competed a true perfect season — winning outright every game — was
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...
in
1867
Events
January–March
* January 1 – The Covington–Cincinnati Suspension Bridge opens between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky, in the United States, becoming the longest single-span bridge in the world. It was renamed a ...
when led by
George Freeman's and
Tom Emmett
Thomas Emmett (3 September 1841 – 29 June 1904) was an English cricket bowler in the late 1860s, the 1870s and the early 1880s.
Cricket career
Born in Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, Emmett first joined Yorkshire when almost 25 as a pr ...
's deadly fast bowling on uncovered and unrolled pitches, they won all seven county games.
Since 1868 numerous county teams in longer schedules have finished a season unbeaten,
but none have managed to win every single game outright:
American football
National Football League
Since the
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...
began in
1920, only one team has played a perfect season (both regular season and playoffs): the
1972 Miami Dolphins
The 1972 Miami Dolphins season was the franchise's seventh season and third in the National Football League (NFL). The team was led by third-year head coach Don Shula and achieved the only perfect season in NFL history. They also led the league ...
, who won all fourteen of their regular season games and three postseason games, including
Super Bowl VII, to finish the season 17–0–0.
The next year the Dolphins extended their winning streak to 18 before losing their second game to
the Oakland Raiders on September 23, 1973. It has often been reported that the surviving members of the 1972 Dolphins would, every season, either gather to drink champagne when the final undefeated team earned its first loss of the year, or send a case of champagne to the team who beat this final undefeated team. The head coach of the 1972 Dolphins,
Don Shula, denied this in a 2007 interview with ESPN. On August 20, 2013, four decades after their accomplishment, President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...
hosted the 1972 Dolphins noting that they "never got their
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...
visit".
NFL undefeated seasons (with ties) before 1932
Until the development of a playoff system in the NFL in
1932
Events January
* January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel.
* January 9 – Sakuradamon Incident: Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang fails in his effort to assassinate Emperor Hiro ...
, there were four teams who completed seasons undefeated, but with one or more tied games:
the 1920 Akron Pros,
the 1922 Canton Bulldogs,
the 1923 Canton Bulldogs, and
the 1929 Green Bay Packers. According to the 2012 NFL Record & Fact Book, under NFL practices at the time, from 1920 to 1971 tie games were not included in winning percentage (there was also no
overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:
*by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society) ...
to settle ties in the regular season until 1974) so, these four teams were recorded with perfect win percentages of 1.000.
The 1921 Buffalo All-Americans were controversially denied a similar type of near-undefeated season, when they believed that their final game,
a 10–7 loss to the Chicago Staleys, was an exhibition game which would not count in the final standings; the NFL records that game as official, and Buffalo's record as 9–1–2.
Other NFL perfect regular seasons
Apart from the 1972 Dolphins, three NFL teams have completed undefeated and untied regular seasons:
the 1934 Chicago Bears,
the 1942 Chicago Bears, and
the 2007 New England Patriots.
In 1934, the Bears played a 13–0–0 regular season and became the first NFL team to complete an undefeated regular season without tied games, but lost the
1934 NFL Championship Game
The 1934 NFL Championship Game, also known as the Sneakers Game, was the second scheduled National Football League (NFL) championship game. Played at the Polo Grounds in New York City on December 9, it was the first title game for the newly ...
against
the New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East ...
. Despite losing several players and head coach
George Halas to military service in World War II, the 1942 Bears finished 11–0–0 but again lost the
NFL Championship Game
Throughout its history, the National Football League (NFL) and other rival American football leagues have used several different formats to determine their league champions, including a period of inter-league matchups to determine a true national c ...
, this time against
the Washington Redskins.
The 2007 Patriots became the first and only team under the 16-game schedule used from
1978 to
2020
2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in t ...
to finish the regular season undefeated. The Patriots then won their divisional and conference playoff games, but were upset by
the New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East ...
in
Super Bowl XLII in
dramatic fashion, giving them a final record of 18–1.
Pre-NFL era and competing leagues
NFL predecessors such as the
Ohio League
The Ohio League was an informal and loose association of American football clubs active between 1902 and 1919 that competed for the Ohio Independent Championship (OIC). As the name implied, its teams were mostly based in Ohio. It is the direct pr ...
,
New York Pro Football League
The New York Pro Football League (NYPFL) was a professional American football league, active in the 1910s, and based in upstate New York, primarily Western New York. Between 1920 and 1921, the league's best teams were absorbed into the National Foo ...
and
Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit The Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit was a loose association of American football clubs that operated from 1890 to approximately 1940. Originally amateur, professionalism was introduced to the circuit in 1892; cost pressures pushed ...
had many perfect seasons. In Ohio, the
Massillon Tigers
The Massillon Tigers were an early professional football team from Massillon, Ohio. Playing in the "Ohio League", the team was a rival to the pre-National Football League version of the Canton Bulldogs. The Tigers won Ohio League championships i ...
(1904, 1905),
Akron Indians
The Akron Pros were a professional football team that played in Akron, Ohio from 1908 to 1926. The team originated in 1908 as a semi-pro team named the Akron Indians, but later became Akron Pros in 1920 as the team set out to become a charter mem ...
(1909),
Shelby Blues
The Shelby Blues were an American football team based in Shelby, Ohio. The team played in the Ohio League from 1900 to 1919. In 1920, when the Ohio League became the APFA (now known as the National Football League), the Blues did not join but conti ...
(1911), and
Dayton Triangles (1918) all had perfect seasons during this era. In New York, the
Buffalo Niagaras went 5–0–0 (6–0–0 including a forfeit) in a league that consisted of teams entirely from the city of Buffalo in 1918. In 1920, the
Union Club of Phoenixville
The Union Club of Phoenixville was a professional football team based in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. The team was the result of a 1919 merger between the Phoenixville Union Club and the upstart Phoenix Athletic Club. From 1907 until 1919, the U ...
, located in eastern Pennsylvania, played in a league mostly consisting of local teams and earned a perfect season, claiming for itself a
mythical national championship. In western Pennsylvania, the
1900
As of March 1 ( O.S. February 17), when the Julian calendar acknowledged a leap day and the Gregorian calendar did not, the Julian calendar fell one day further behind, bringing the difference to 13 days until February 28 ( O.S. February 15), 2 ...
and
1901
Events
January
* January 1 – The British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia federate as the Commonwealth of Australia; Edmund Barton becomes the first Prime Minist ...
Homestead Library and Athletic Club teams, as well as the 1903
Franklin Athletic Club
The Franklin Athletic Club was an early professional football team based in Franklin, Pennsylvania. It was considered the top team in professional football in 1903, by becoming the US Football Champions and winning the 1903 World Series of Foot ...
, all had perfect seasons.
The caliber of talent was neither as high nor as consistent between teams at the time, the seasons were generally shorter (7 to 11 games), and it was not uncommon for top teams to play all their games at home while lesser teams played all of their games on the road. In 1918, Dayton and Buffalo had the additional advantage of having its strongest competitors suspend operations due to the
Spanish flu
The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case wa ...
and the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, restrictions that also prevented the two teams from playing each other. Thus, it was much easier to earn a perfect season than it would become in the NFL.
1937 Los Angeles Bulldogs
The
Los Angeles Bulldogs
The Los Angeles Bulldogs were a professional American football team that competed from 1936 to 1948 (the last year as the Long Beach Bulldogs). Formed with the intention of joining the National Football League in 1937 (and turned down in favor of ...
were a member of the
second American Football League, who joined the league in 1937 after the
Cleveland Rams
The Cleveland Rams were a professional American football team that played in Cleveland from 1936 to 1945. The Rams competed in the second American Football League (AFL) for the 1936 season and the National Football League (NFL) from 1937 to 19 ...
defected to the NFL. Playing a combination of AFL teams and independent franchises (such as the
Providence Steam Roller
The Providence Steam Rollers (also referred to as the Providence Steam Roller, the Providence Steamroller and the Providence Steamrollers) were a professional American football team based in Providence, Rhode Island in the National Football Leagu ...
and the
Salinas Packers
Salinas may refer to:
People
*Salinas (surname)
Places
Americas
Latin America
* Salinas (ancient lake), in the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
* Salinas, Minas Gerais, a municipality in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil
* Playa Grande, Costa Ri ...
), the team went 16–0, with 8 of those wins coming against AFL teams. The Bulldogs’ dominance is cited as one of the key factors in the AFL's demise, and the next season as an independent with a 10–2–2 record including a 2–1–2 record against NFL teams, several of the team's players were invited to play on the "Pro All Stars" team in the NFL's first
Pro All-Star Game in Los Angeles. The Bulldogs are considered to be one of the few independent teams to have ever achieved parity with the NFL.
1948 Cleveland Browns
The
Browns were a member of the
All-America Football Conference, a professional football league that played from 1946 to 1949. In 1948, the Browns won all fourteen regular season games and the
1948 AAFC championship to post a 15–0–0 record. Cleveland's perfect 1948 season was part of a longer string of 29 straight wins, which stretched from 1947 to 1949 and included both the 1947 and 1948 title games. Overall, the Browns won all four AAFC championship games and were accepted into the NFL when the two leagues merged after the 1949 season.
Near-perfect seasons
Since the NFL expanded to a fourteen-game regular season in
1961
Events January
* January 3
** United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that the United States has severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba (Cuba–United States relations are restored in 2015).
** Aero Flight 311 (K ...
(being expanded twice since then), eleven teams have had regular seasons with one loss and no ties (or better) while failing to achieve a perfect season:
Most of these teams above suffered their only regular-season loss early in the season and, other than the 2007 Patriots (started regular season and playoffs 18–0), only the 1962 Packers (10–0), 1985 Bears (12–0), 2011 Packers (13–0), and 2015 Panthers (14–0) were on track for a perfect season when they lost. Coincidentally, the 1985 Bears’ lone loss came to the Miami Dolphins.
The best start from an NFL team who failed to complete a perfect regular season is shared by two teams: the
2009 Indianapolis Colts
The 2009 season was the Indianapolis Colts' 57th in the National Football League (NFL) and their 26th in Indianapolis. It was the first season since 2001 that the Colts did not have Tony Dungy on their coaching staff, due to his retirement from ...
, who started 14–0 before losing their final two regular season games to the
New York Jets and the
Buffalo Bills to finish 14–2, and the
2015 Carolina Panthers
The 2015 NFL season, 2015 season was the Carolina Panthers' 21st in the National Football League (NFL) and their fifth under List of Carolina Panthers head coaches, head coach Ron Rivera. This season marked the first time in team history they play ...
, who went 14–0 before losing to the
Atlanta Falcons and going on to finish the regular season 15–1. The 2009 Colts, having clinched the top seed in the AFC, sacrificed their chances at a perfect regular season and instead
rested their starters the final two games to protect them for the playoffs, on orders from then General Manager Bill Polian. The Colts faced immense criticism from their players, their fans, and the media for letting their chances of a perfect season slip away. The Colts would go on to
Super Bowl XLIV
Super Bowl XLIV was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champions New Orleans Saints and the American Football Conference (AFC) champions Indianapolis Colts to decide the National Football League (NFL) champ ...
but lost to the
New Orleans Saints
The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...
. The 2015 Panthers were not resting their starters at the time of their loss (at the time, the
Arizona Cardinals were 13–2 and still had an opportunity to surpass the Panthers for the top seed in the NFC).
Four other teams have started 13–0 before losing in their fourteenth game: the
1998 Denver Broncos,
2005 Indianapolis Colts,
2009 New Orleans Saints
The 2009 NFL season, 2009 season was the New Orleans Saints' 43rd in the National Football League (NFL). As of the 2021 season's conclusion, the Saints' 2009 campaign is the most successful in franchise history, culminating with a victory in Super ...
and
2011 Green Bay Packers (Of those near-perfect seasons, the 2005 Colts and the 2011 Packers did not win a single playoff game). The 1998 Broncos, 2005 Colts and 2009 Saints lost at least two of their final three games but the Broncos and Saints recovered to win the Super Bowl. The
1953 Cleveland Browns and
1969 Los Angeles Rams started 11–0 in twelve- and fourteen-game seasons respectively; both lost their only playoff game.
Other leagues
The following is a list of teams in minor or alternate leagues that compiled perfect seasons of six games or more, including postseason games, with no ties:
*The Hollywood Bears, a member of the
Pacific Coast Professional Football League
The Pacific Coast Professional Football League (PCPFL), also known as the Pacific Coast Football League (PCFL) and Pacific Coast League (PCL) was a professional American football minor league based in California. It operated from 1940 through 194 ...
, went 8–0–0 in 1941.
*The Hollywood Rangers were a member of the
American Football League of 1944 (formerly the Northwest War Industries League), a short-lived competitor to the
Pacific Coast Professional Football League
The Pacific Coast Professional Football League (PCPFL), also known as the Pacific Coast Football League (PCFL) and Pacific Coast League (PCL) was a professional American football minor league based in California. It operated from 1940 through 194 ...
on the West Coast. In their 1944 season, they went 11–0–0 and defeated the PCPFL champion San Diego Bombers (who had also had a perfect season in their league, going 9–0–0) in a two-game series.
*The Charleston Rockets of the
Continental Football League won all 14 games of the league's inaugural season in 1965, going on to defeat the
Toronto Rifles The Toronto Rifles were a minor-league professional American football team active between 1964 and 1967. It was based in Toronto, Ontario. The team's home fields were Maple Leaf Stadium (1965) and Varsity Stadium from 1966 to 1967.http://virology-on ...
in the league's championship.
*The
Hartford Knights went 17–0–0 in 1972 as a member of the
Seaboard Football League
The Seaboard Football League was an American football minor league that operated from 1971 to 1974.Bob Gill, with Steve Brainerd and Tod Maher, ''Minor League Football, 1960-85'' (McFarland and Co., 2002), pp84, 99-100 It folded during the 1974 ...
, including a victory over the
Chambersburg Cardinals The Chambersburg Cardinals are an American football team based in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The team plays in the Gridiron Developmental Football League (GDFL).
Founding
The team was founded in 1946 by local players returning from World War II. I ...
in the league's championship. The Knights, unhappy with the level of competition (many of the Knights games had margins of victory of 40 points or more), quit the league the following year.
In
indoor football, the following teams have had perfect seasons:
*The
Quad City Steamwheelers
The Quad City Steamwheelers were a professional arena football team. They were a charter member of the AF2 and played their home games at iWireless Center in Moline, Illinois.
The team was founded on September 1, 1999 when the Quad Cities was ...
went undefeated in the
inaugural season of
arenafootball2
The AF2 (often styled as af2, and short for arenafootball2) was the Arena Football League's developmental league; it was founded in 1999 and played its first season in 2000. Like its parent AFL, the AF2 played using the same arena football ru ...
, accruing a record of 19–0–0 including playoffs and an
ArenaCup I
The 2000 AF2 season was the first season of the af2. It was succeeded by 2001. The league champions were the Quad City Steamwheelers, who capped off a perfect season with a victory over the Tennessee Valley Vipers in ArenaCup I. This is the onl ...
win.
*The
Ohio Valley Greyhounds
The Ohio Valley Greyhounds were a professional indoor football team. They began play in 1999 as the Steel Valley Smash, a charter member of the IFL. After the league folded, they moved to the NIFL, became a charter member, and renamed thems ...
of the
National Indoor Football League
The National Indoor Football League (NIFL) was a professional indoor football league in the United States. For their first six years, the league had teams in markets not covered by either the Arena Football League or its developmental league, ...
accrued a perfect season in 2003.
*The
Sioux Falls Storm
The Sioux Falls Storm are a professional indoor football team based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Storm joined the original Indoor Football League as an expansion team in 1999 as the Sioux Falls Cobras, and first took the field for the 2000 ...
of
United Indoor Football
United Indoor Football (UIF) was an indoor football league in the United States that operated from 2005 to 2008. Ten owners from the National Indoor Football League, including one expansion (the Dayton Warbirds, which never played a game in UIF) ...
won back-to-back perfect seasons in 2006 and 2007, winning the United Bowl championship both years.
*The
Fayetteville Guard
The Fayetteville Guard was a professional indoor football team in the National Indoor Football League (NIFL) and American Indoor Football Association (AIFA). They played home games at the Cumberland County Crown Coliseum from 2005 to 2010.
The ...
won a perfect season in 2007 in the NIFL.
*The
Rochester Raiders
The Rochester Raiders were a professional indoor football team based in the Rochester, New York area. They played their home games at Bill Gray's Regional Iceplex in Rochester. The Raiders were previously a member of the Continental Indoor Foot ...
won a perfect season in
2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...
in the
Continental Indoor Football League
The Continental Indoor Football League (CIFL) was an indoor football league based along the Midwestern United States region that played nine seasons from 2006 to 2014. It began play in April 2006 as the Great Lakes Indoor Football League (GLIF ...
, but withdrew from that league during the playoffs in a dispute.
*The
Chicago Slaughter
The Chicago Slaughter were an American professional football team based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Having been inactive since 2013, the franchise was a part of the CIFL from 2007 to 2009, winning the championship in 2009. The Slaughter joined ...
won a perfect season in
2009 in the CIFL.
*The
Baltimore Mariners won a perfect season in
2010 in the
American Indoor Football Association
American Indoor Football (AIF) was a professional indoor football league, one of the several regional professional indoor football leagues in North America.
The AIFL began as a regional league with six franchises on the East Coast of the United ...
.
*The
Erie Explosion
The Erie Explosion was a professional American indoor football team based in Erie, Pennsylvania. Founded in 2007 as the Pittsburgh RiverRats, the Explosion played in the Professional Indoor Football League, the United Indoor Football League, the ...
won a perfect season in
2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...
in the Continental Indoor Football league, winning all ten regular season games, a semifinal playoff, and the CIFL Championship.
At least twenty-three other semi-professional football teams have had perfect seasons, seven of them being at least 17 games long. The
Chambersburg Cardinals The Chambersburg Cardinals are an American football team based in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The team plays in the Gridiron Developmental Football League (GDFL).
Founding
The team was founded in 1946 by local players returning from World War II. I ...
won a record 72 straight games between 1977 and 1984.
There have been no perfect seasons (or even perfect regular seasons) in the
American Association American Association may refer to:
Baseball
* American Association (1882–1891), a major league active from 1882 to 1891
* American Association (1902–1997), a minor league active from 1902 to 1962 and 1969 to 1997
* American Association of Profe ...
,
World Football League,
United States Football League
The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...
, original
XFL
XFL may refer to:
Sports
* XFL (2001), a defunct American football league that played its only season in 2001
* XFL (2020), a professional American football league
Vehicles
* Bell XFL Airabonita, a 1940 U.S. Navy experimental interceptor aircra ...
, the
Arena Football League
The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...
or the
Alliance of American Football, all of which are now defunct. The
United Football League has had two perfect regular seasons, but neither qualify for the list:
the 2009 Florida Tuskers finished 6–0, but that team lost the subsequent
championship game
In sport, a championship is a Competition#Sports, competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion.
Championship systems
Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship.
Title match sy ...
; the
2012 Las Vegas Locomotives had a record of 4–0 when the league abruptly suspended operations halfway through the season. Likewise, the
2020 Houston Roughnecks of the
second incarnation of the XFL were undefeated at 5–0 at the time the season was canceled due to the
COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
The 1933
Providence Huskies (possibly a successor to the
Providence Steam Roller
The Providence Steam Rollers (also referred to as the Providence Steam Roller, the Providence Steamroller and the Providence Steamrollers) were a professional American football team based in Providence, Rhode Island in the National Football Leagu ...
) played arguably the most perfect season ever recorded by a professional or semi-professional team: a ten-game season in which they won every game and did not concede a single point during any game.
Leagues outside North America
In the
2014 German Football League the
Braunschweig Lions
The New Yorker Lions are an American Football team from Braunschweig, Germany. Until late 2010, the team was known as the Braunschweig Lions. compiled a perfect season (12–0 postseason 3–0), losing only in the
BIG6 European Football League which is a different competition. They crowned the season with another German Bowl triumph. Similarly in the
2016 German Football League the
Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns
The Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns are an American football team from Schwäbisch Hall, Germany.
The club's greatest successes were winning the southern division title in the German Football League in 2009 and in every season played since 2011 (as of ...
achieved a perfect regular season with a 14–0 record, similarly their lone defeat came in the
BIG6 European Football League which is not considered for league standings. However, unlike Braunschweig before them, Schwäbisch Hall ultimately lost the
German Bowl
The German Bowl is the annual national championship game in the sport of American football in Germany. It is contested by the two best teams of the German Football League.
The New Yorker Lions, from Braunschweig, are the record winners of the Ger ...
, in this case to Braunschweig. In the
2017 German Football League
The 2017 German Football League season was the 39th edition of the top-level American football competition in Germany and 18th since the renaming of the ''American Football Bundesliga'' to German Football league.
The regular season started on 22 A ...
season, Schwäbisch Hall once more compiled a perfect season (14-0) but this time also won the
German Bowl
The German Bowl is the annual national championship game in the sport of American football in Germany. It is contested by the two best teams of the German Football League.
The New Yorker Lions, from Braunschweig, are the record winners of the Ger ...
, again against Braunschweig. Interestingly, their opponent in the final had also entered the game with a 14-0 regular season record. Overall the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns posted five consecutive perfect regular seasons (GFL games only) between 2016 and 2021 (both inclusive) — their only losses in that span coming in
German Bowl XXXVIII (2016),
German Bowl XLI German Bowl XLI was the 41st annual championship game of the German Football League (GFL) pitting defending champion Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns against the record champion Braunschweig Lions. In the tied lowest scoring German Bowl in GFL history whic ...
(2019), and
German Bowl XLII
The 42nd annual German Bowl was the championship of the 2021 German Football League, originally planned for the 2020 German Football League which was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Dresden Monarchs beat the Schwäbisch Hall Unicorns ...
(2021).
Association football
Domestic teams
No
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
team has ever achieved a perfect season across all competitions entered, but some have achieved a perfect record in their respective domestic league competitions, although that feat itself is rare. The earliest known perfect league season is that of
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club is a Scottish professional football club based in the Govan district of Glasgow which plays in the Scottish Premiership. Although not its official name, it is often referred to as Glasgow Rangers outside Scotland. The fou ...
of Scotland who, in
1898–99, won all of their 18
Scottish League Division One
The Scottish Football League (SFL) was a league featuring professional and semi-professional football clubs mostly from Scotland.One club, Berwick Rangers, is based in the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is located approximately 4 km sout ...
matches. Other football clubs to have achieved perfect league seasons since then are:
Racing Club of Argentina in 1919 (13 wins out of 13),
Ferencvárosi of Hungary in 1931–32 (22 wins out of 22),
Dresdner SC
Dresdner Sportclub 1898 e.V., known simply as Dresdner SC, is a German multisport club playing in Dresden, Saxony. Founded on 30 April 1898, the club was a founding member of the German Football Association (Deutscher Fussball Bund) in 1900. Th ...
of Germany in 1942–43 (23),
Sunrise Flacq United of
Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...
in 1995–96 (22), and
Nacional
Nacional, the Portuguese and Spanish word for "national", may refer to:
Airlines
* Nacional Transportes Aéreos, a Brazilian airline defunct in 2002
* Transportes Aéreos Nacional, a Brazilian airline defunct in 1961
Bank
* Banco Nacional, a ...
of
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
in 1941 (20).
FC Bayern Munich managed a 11-0-0 perfect record en-route to winning the
2019–20 UEFA Champions League
The 2019–20 UEFA Champions League was the 65th season of Europe's premier club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 28th season since it was renamed from the European Champion Clubs' Cup to the UEFA Champions League.
Bayern Munich d ...
, the first team to do so. The competition's format was reformulated in a single elimination match since the quarterfinals due to
COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and its following
lockdown
A lockdown is a restriction policy for people, community or a country to stay where they are, usually due to specific risks (such as COVID-19) that could possibly harm the people if they move and interact freely.
The term is used for a prison ...
.
Many teams have achieved an unbeaten domestic season with zero losses, but with several draws.
In women's football, Italian club
Juventus become the first to win the
Serie A
The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Cop ...
with a perfect record (22-0-0) in the
2020–21 season, an unprecedented feat in Italian men's or women's football history.
The following season,
FC Barcelona
Futbol Club Barcelona (), commonly referred to as Barcelona and colloquially known as Barça (), is a professional football club based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, that competes in La Liga, the top flight of Spanish football.
Found ...
did the same in Spain's
Primera División with 30 wins from 30 matches.
FIFA World Cup
The likelihood of a national team in the
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...
winning all its matches in regulation time to become the champion is much higher than most clubs in their domestic league, as the finals tournament in its current format lasts only seven games. This feat has been achieved three times, by
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
in the inaugural
1930
Events
January
* January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will b ...
tournament, and by
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
in
1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and ...
and
2002. This is not counting the
qualifying round
Qualification is either the process of qualifying for an achievement, or a credential attesting to that achievement, and may refer to:
* Professional qualification, attributes developed by obtaining academic degrees or through professional exper ...
of the tournament, which lasts over a year and has had a varied format since
1934
Events
January–February
* January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established.
* January 15 – The 8.0 Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maxi ...
. Only the Brazilian team of 1970 has won every game in the qualification and final rounds of a single tournament, a total of 13 games. As there was no qualifying phase for the 1930 tournament, Uruguay also won all the games they played to become champions. In 2010, the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
came very close achieving the same feat as Brazil did in 1970. The Netherlands won 8 out of 8 qualifying games and went on to win the next 6
World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
matches in regulation time only to lose in
extra time to
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
in the final, ending with a 14–0–1 record. In 1998 France became the only host nation to win all seven games of the FIFA World Cup and win the tournament. In the quarter-finals, however, they defeated Italy on penalties; wins (and also losses) on penalties are represented as a draw in statistics.
FIFA Women's World Cup
Through
2011, the likelihood of a national team winning all of its matches in the
FIFA Women's World Cup was slightly greater than in the men's version. The Women's World Cup began in
1991
File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phi ...
with 12 teams and expanded to 16 effective in
1999
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...
. Under both structures, the winning team only had to win six games (three in group play and three in the knockout stage) to win the title unbeaten. The tournament expanded to 24 teams in
2015, at which time the number of games that the champion must play increased to seven (the same total as in the men's World Cup).
The 2011 event, won by
Japan, was the first in which the champion lost in group play; the other finalist, the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, had also lost in group play. Each previous team to have won the title — the United States in 1991 and 1999,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...
in
1995
File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...
, and
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
in
2003 and
2007 — won all of its group stage matches. In fact, only one of these teams, the United States in 1999, had a knockout match go to extra time—specifically the final against
China, which ultimately went to a
penalty shootout
The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...
. Germany won all of its matches in the 2007 final tournament without giving up a goal, becoming the first team in either the men's or women's World Cup to accomplish this feat. The United States' third championship team in 2015 had one draw in the group stage; in
2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
, the United States won all seven games in regulation, by a combined score of 26–3, en route to their fourth title.
As of the 2019 tournament, four undefeated, untied Women's World Cup champions also went through their qualifying stage without a loss or draw:
* United States, 1991 (
5 wins, 49 goals for, 0 against)
* Germany, 2003 (
6 wins, 30 goals for, 1 against)
* Germany, 2007 (
8 wins, 31 goals for, 3 against)
* United States, 2019 (
5 wins, 26 goals for, 0 against)
Of the other two teams to win the Women's World Cup without a loss or draw in the finals:
* Norway went through their 1995 qualification campaign with 8 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss.
* The United States automatically qualified for the 1999 edition as hosts.
Australian rules football
Australian Football League (AFL)/Victorian Football League (VFL)
The
VFL began in 1897. Based entirely in the state of Victoria, before it expanded through the 1980s, and 1990s to become the top level national league (AFL) in the sport of Australian rules football. The length of a complete season (including finals matches) has typically been between 18 and 26 games. Throughout the history of the league, no team has ever completed a perfect season. One team, in
1929
This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic ...
, completed a perfect home-and-away season, finishing with a record of 18–0; the club won the premiership, but did not complete a perfect season after losing the
second semi-final against .
South Australian National Football League (SANFL)
The SANFL has existed since 1877 within South Australia, and until the latter part of the twentieth century was of equivalent standard to the VFL. The only perfect season to be completed was by the 1914
Port Adelaide team, known as the "Invincibles". Port won all four of its pre season matches. It finished the minor round with a 12–0 record, before winning both finals to finish with a 14–0 record and a perfect season. They also won the Championship of Australia against VFL premiers
Carlton, to extend that record to 15–0. In addition to this the club played a combined team from all the other SAFL clubs and won to extend the record to 16–0. The closest any team got to Port Adelaide was
North Adelaide
North Adelaide is a predominantly residential precinct and suburb of the City of Adelaide in South Australia, situated north of the River Torrens and within the Adelaide Park Lands.
History
Surveyor-General Colonel William Light of the colo ...
, losing by 21 points in Round 10. This is the only instance in the big three Australian football leagues (VFL/SANFL/WAFL) where a club has gone undefeated in the pre-season, season main and post season.
In 1912, Port Adelaide had a perfect minor round and then beat
West Torrens in its semi-final but lost both the final and Grand Final to
West Adelaide.
West Australian Football League (WAFL)
The
WAFL 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. The
1946 East Fremantle
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...
team was the first club in senior WAFL football to have managed a perfect season, winning all twenty-one of its games; it is noted that the playing lists of many of its opponents had been seriously depleted by World War II. The only loss for the season came against Victorian club Collingwood in a post season exhibition match. The
2018
File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the Unit ...
Subiaco team was the second team to complete a perfect season, winning all of its 18 games in the minor round before winning both their second-semi-final against
South Fremantle and the Grand Final against
West Perth.
Victorian Football Association (VFA/VFL)
The Victorian Football League, known until 1996 as the Victorian Football Association, began in 1877 and was Victoria's premier football league until 1897, and has been the second-tier league in the state since. Perfect seasons have been completed on five occasions in VFA/VFL history, but only twice in full-length seasons:
#by
North Melbourne
North Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, north-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. North Melbourne recorded a population of 14,953 at ...
during a war-shortened
1915
Events
Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix.
January
* January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction".
* January ...
, with a record of 15–0
#by North Melbourne in
1918, which was also shortened by the war, with a record of 12–0;
#by
Geelong West
Geelong West is a commercial and residential suburb of Geelong, Victoria, Australia. When Geelong was founded, the area was known as Kildare but its name was changed to Geelong West in 1875. The main street is Pakington Street. At the 2016 c ...
in
1972 Division 2, with a record of 20–0
#by
Port Melbourne
Port Melbourne is an inner-city List of Melbourne suburbs, suburb in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the Cities of ...
in
2011, with a record of 21–0.
#by the
Footscray reserves during a pandemic-shortened
2021
File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...
, with a record of 10–0
There were also cases of teams going undefeated through the season in the nineteenth century, but none completed perfect seasons because some of their matches were drawn. Of those, could be interpreted as having been perfect in
1879; it had a record of 15–0–1, and the draw came by agreement when a match which Geelong led 1–0 was abandoned due to inclement weather.
Four other teams have completed perfect home-and-away seasons, but subsequently lost finals matches:
#
North Melbourne
North Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, north-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. North Melbourne recorded a population of 14,953 at ...
in
1919
Events
January
* January 1
** The Czechoslovak Legions occupy much of the self-proclaimed "free city" of Pressburg (now Bratislava), enforcing its incorporation into the new republic of Czechoslovakia.
** HMY ''Iolaire'' sinks off the ...
won all eighteen home-and-away games before losing to Brunswick in the second-semi-final and
Footscray in the Grand Final.
#
Coburg
Coburg () is a town located on the Itz river in the Upper Franconia region of Bavaria, Germany. Long part of one of the Thuringian states of the Wettin line, it joined Bavaria by popular vote only in 1920. Until the revolution of 1918, it ...
in
1927
Events January
* January 1 – The British Broadcasting ''Company'' becomes the British Broadcasting ''Corporation'', when its Royal Charter of incorporation takes effect. John Reith becomes the first Director-General.
* January 7
...
won all eighteen home-and away games before drawing with Port Melbourne in the second semi final, losing the replay, then winning the Grand Final.
# Coburg in
1945
1945 marked the end of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It is also the only year in which Nuclear weapon, nuclear weapons Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been used in combat.
Events
Below, ...
won all twenty home-and-away games before losing to
Williamstown in the second semi-final and being eliminated by Port Melbourne in the preliminary final.
# Williamstown in
1957
1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year ...
won all twenty home-and-away games before losing to
Moorabbin
Moorabbin is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 15 km south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Kingston local government area. Moorabbin recorded a population of 6,287 at the .
Most of the ...
in the second semi final, and being eliminated by Port Melbourne in the preliminary final.
Canadian football
A true perfect season (no losses and no ties through the regular season and playoffs) has never been achieved in professional Canadian football. Only one team, the 1948
Calgary Stampeders
The Calgary Stampeders are a professional Canadian football team based in Calgary, Alberta. The Stampeders compete in the West Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL). The club plays its home games at McMahon Stadium and are the third-o ...
(in the pre-CFL era), has completed a perfect regular season; more on this can be seen below.
The current
Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...
schedule in place since 1986 would require a team to win 20 games (18 regular season, 1 playoff after bye week, and the Grey Cup championship) to post a perfect record; the closest any team has come to such since the CFL's establishment in 1958 are the 1981
Edmonton Eskimos, who went 14–1–1 in the regular season, en route to winning their fourth of five straight Grey Cup titles by winning both their playoff games, and the closest since the institution of the 18-game schedule coming in 1989, also set by the Edmonton Eskimos, by going 16–2 in the regular season, only to be upset by the
Saskatchewan Roughriders
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are a professional Canadian football team based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Roughriders compete in the Canadian Football League (CFL) as a member club of the league's West Division.
The Roughriders were founded in ...
in the West Final.
1948 Calgary Stampeders
Under head coach
Les Lear
Leslie Lear (August 22, 1918 – January 5, 1979) was a National Football League and Canadian Football League player and coach as well as an owner and trainer of Thoroughbred race horses.
Football
He grew up in Manitoba, Canada, where he playe ...
, the 1948
Calgary Stampeders
The Calgary Stampeders are a professional Canadian football team based in Calgary, Alberta. The Stampeders compete in the West Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL). The club plays its home games at McMahon Stadium and are the third-o ...
completed a perfect regular season with a record of 12–0; they had two wins and a tie during the playoffs to finish with a record of 14–0–1, the only undefeated complete season in Canadian pro history. In the
Western Interprovincial Football Union
The West Division is one of the two regional divisions of the Canadian Football League (CFL), its counterpart being the East Division. Although the CFL was not founded until 1958, the West Division and its clubs are descended from earlier leagu ...
championship (a home-and-home
aggregate series decided on total points) against the
Regina Roughriders
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are a professional Canadian football team based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Roughriders compete in the Canadian Football League (CFL) as a member club of the league's West Division.
The Roughriders were founded in 1 ...
, the first leg was tied 4–4, and the Stampeders won the second 21–10, to win the aggregate 25–14. The Stampeders then defeated the
Ottawa Rough Riders 12–7 for the
36th Grey Cup
The 36th Grey Cup was played on November 27, 1948, before 20,013 fans at Varsity Stadium at Toronto.
The Calgary Stampeders defeated Ottawa Rough Riders 12–7.
The game is remembered fondly for being the year in which Calgary fans brought pag ...
.
Despite the Stampeders' title, their achievement was only lightly regarded in the East. At the time, the Eastern and Western unions played separate regular seasons and met only in the Grey Cup. The Western union was openly regarded to be a weaker competition than the East, and Calgary's win (only the third for a Western team up to that time) was dismissed as a fluke.
Handball
In 2020–21
FC Barcelona Handbol
Futbol Club Barcelona Handbol is a Spanish handball team based in Barcelona, Catalonia. It is a part of the FC Barcelona multi sports club, and was founded on 29 November 1942. The club competes domestically in the Liga ASOBAL and in the Eu ...
had over all championships a perfect season. They won the following domestic championships:
Liga ASOBAL
Liga Asobal is the premier professional handball league in Spain. It was founded in 1958 with the name of División de Honor, changing its name to the current name in 1990.
The Liga ASOBAL, which is played under EHF rules, currently consists of 1 ...
with 34 perfect games, the
Copa del Rey de Balonmano
The Copa del Rey de Balonmano (English: '' King's Cup of Handball'') is an annual cup competition for Spanish handball teams. Organized by the Liga ASOBAL. It was originally known as the ''Copa del Generalísimo'' and was renamed ''Copa de SM El ...
,
Copa ASOBAL
The Copa ASOBAL is an annual cup competition for Liga ASOBAL teams. It was first played for in 1990 and is contested by the top four teams at the end of the first half of the Liga ASOBAL season.
Season by season
Titles by team
External ...
and the
Supercopa ASOBAL. At the European level they won the
2020–21 EHF Champions League with 20 perfect games. In total they won 61 games out of 61 in 2020–21.
Germany
In 2011–12, German handball champion
THW Kiel
THW Kiel is a handball club from Kiel, Germany. Currently, they compete in the Handball-Bundesliga and are the record champion with 22 titles.
2007 and 2012 were the most successful years in the club's history, as THW completed the treble, wi ...
achieved a perfect season of as many as 34 matches. Additionally, the team also won the national DHB Cup and the international
EHF Champions League
The Men's EHF Champions League is the most important club handball competition for men's teams in Europe and involves the leading teams from the top European nations. The competition is organised every year by EHF. The official name for the men ...
.
Spain
In the
Liga ASOBAL
Liga Asobal is the premier professional handball league in Spain. It was founded in 1958 with the name of División de Honor, changing its name to the current name in 1990.
The Liga ASOBAL, which is played under EHF rules, currently consists of 1 ...
the
FC Barcelona Handbol
Futbol Club Barcelona Handbol is a Spanish handball team based in Barcelona, Catalonia. It is a part of the FC Barcelona multi sports club, and was founded on 29 November 1942. The club competes domestically in the Liga ASOBAL and in the Eu ...
had 4 consecutive perfect seasons from the
2013–14 season to the
2016–17 season.
Croatia
In the
Premijer liga the
RK Zagreb
Rukometni klub Zagreb ( en, Zagreb Handball Club, ) is a men's professional handball club from Zagreb, Croatia. It competes in the
Croatian Premier League, SEHA League, and the EHF Champions League.
RK Zagreb won 33 national championships a ...
is unbeaten for 11 years, they won 190 consecutive games, last time they lost against
Osijek Motormodul (38:39) on 14.4.2007. In that 190 games they just have one tie with
RK Poreč
RK Poreč (Rukometni Klub Poreč) is a team handball club from Poreč, Croatia. Currently, RK Poreč competes in the Croatian First League of Handball (The "Dukat Premijer Liga) and the Croatian Handball Cup The Croatian Handball Cup ( hr, Hrvats ...
(31:31), after that game they won 178 games in a row and that row is still active.
Lacrosse
In professional
lacrosse
Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensiv ...
, the
1993
File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefu ...
Buffalo Bandits
The Buffalo Bandits are a professional box lacrosse
Box lacrosse, also known as boxla, box, or indoor lacrosse, is an indoor version of lacrosse played mostly in North America. The game originated in Canada in the 1930s, where it is more po ...
are the only team to have won a perfect season in the
National Lacrosse League
The National Lacrosse League (NLL) is a men's professional box lacrosse league in North America. The league is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The NLL currently has fifteen teams: ten in the United States and five in Canada. The N ...
. The Bandits won all eight of their regular season games and won the championship in a two-round tournament; the season was the continuation of a multi-season winning streak that dated to the Bandits’ successful run for the
previous year's championship.
In
Major League Lacrosse
Major League Lacrosse (MLL) was a men's field lacrosse league in the United States. The league's inaugural season was in 2001. Teams played anywhere from ten to 16 games in a summertime regular season. This was followed by a four-team playoff ...
, which began play in 2001,
the 2013 Denver Outlaws were the first team to complete a perfect regular season, winning all fourteen of their games. After beating
the Hamilton Nationals, the Outlaws had a sequence of twenty consecutive regular season wins despite losing
the 2012 championship. However, the Outlaws lost in the first round of the playoffs
to the Charlotte Hounds, who had only gone 7–7 in the regular season.
Mountain bike
Cross-country
In the
2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...
season the Swiss mountain biker
Nino Schurter
Nino Schurter (born 13 May 1986) is a Swiss cross-country cyclist who races for the SCOTT-SRAM MTB Racing Team.
Schurter won the world championship in men's cross-country in 2009, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 and the ...
won 6 out of 6 races and additionally at the
World Championships
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
he won the gold medal at the single and at the mixed race and the
Cape Epic.
Downhill
In the
2016
File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses duri ...
season the British mountain biker
Rachel Atherton
Rachel Laura Atherton (born 6 December 1987) is a British professional downhill mountain bike racer, and is a multiple time UCI World Champion.
Atherton began riding BMX at the age of 8 and mountain biking at the age of 11. She was both '' Su ...
won 7 out of 7 races and additionally at the
World Championships
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
she won the gold medal.
Netball
Commonwealth Bank Trophy
The Commonwealth Bank Trophy was the main national netball competition in Australia from 1997 to 2007. There were eight teams in a double round robin format and finals.
The Sydney Swifts were the only team to achieve a perfect season, winning all fourteen regular season games and both their finals matches for a record of 16–0.
ANZ Championship
The ANZ Championship, the principal netball competition for Australia and New Zealand was established in 2008 to replace the Commonwealth Bank Trophy. Comprising ten teams (five from Australia and five from New Zealand) there has so far been one perfect season, by the Mission Queensland Firebirds, based in
Brisbane, Queensland
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...
in 2011. The Firebirds won thirteen regular season games and both their finals matches for a record of 15–0. In 2010, the New South Wales Swifts managed to win all thirteen regular season games, but lost both of their finals matches and ended with a 13–2 for that year.
Rugby league
National Rugby League
The
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League (NRL) is an Australasian rugby league club competition which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership ...
has existed since 1908, being originally known as the New South Wales Rugby League and before the
Super League war of 1995 as the Australian Rugby League. In its history, only one team has completed a perfect season: the
South Sydney Rabbitohs
The South Sydney Rabbitohs are a professional Australian rugby league club based in Redfern, a suburb of inner-southern Sydney, New South Wales. They participate in the National Rugby League (NRL) premiership and are one of nine existing tea ...
in
1925
Events January
* January 1
** The Syrian Federation is officially dissolved, the State of Aleppo and the State of Damascus having been replaced by the State of Syria.
* January 3 – Benito Mussolini makes a pivotal speech in the Itali ...
, who won all twelve games contested.
Five other teams have gone undefeated but featured at least one drawn match:
Balmain (
1915
Events
Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix.
January
* January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction".
* January ...
),
North Sydney (
1921),
Eastern Suburbs Eastern Suburbs may refer to:
Places
*Eastern Suburbs (Mumbai), India
*Eastern Suburbs (Sydney), Australia
**Eastern Suburbs railway line, Sydney, Australia
Sports clubs
;Association football
*Eastern Suburbs AFC, Auckland, New Zealand
* Eastern ...
(
1936
Events
January–February
* January 20 – George V of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India, dies at his Sandringham Estate. The Prince of Wales succeeds to the throne of the United Kingdom as King E ...
and
1937) and
St George (
1959
Events January
* January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance.
* January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...
).
Brisbane Rugby League
The
Brisbane Rugby League premiership began in 1909 and continued in varying forms until 1996, after which it was superseded by the
Queensland Cup
The Queensland Cup, currently known as the Hostplus Cup for sponsorship reasons, is the highest-level regional rugby league football competition in Queensland, Australia. It is run by the Queensland Rugby League (QRL) and is contested by fou ...
. 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
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
seasons were typically no more than twelve games long; however as the competition grew it was expanded to 21 games by 1960. The only BRL teams to manage a perfect season were:
The following team managed an undefeated season but drew one game:
The following teams managed an undefeated home-and-away season, but subsequently lost finals matches:
British Rugby League
Whilst no rugby league team in Britain has completed the perfect season in the top flight, this has been achieved on four occasions in lower divisions, twic in the 2nd division and twice in the 3rd.
Hull F.C.
Hull Football Club, commonly referred to as Hull or Hull F.C., is a professional rugby league football club established in 1865 and based in West Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The club plays in the Super League competition and were ...
achieved this feat in the
1978–79 Season, where they won 26 from 26 games, gaining promotion to the top division for the second time in three seasons. This was also achieved by the
Dewsbury Rams
The Dewsbury Rams are a professional English rugby league club based in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire that compete in the Championship. They play their home games at the Tetley's Stadium, on Owl Lane. The Rams' main fanbase comes from their hometo ...
in
2009 during their
Championship 1 (third division) season where they won all 18 games from a possible 18, winning promotion immediately after being relegated the previous season where they won just two games. Since their 2009 promotion, the Rams have so far stayed in the sports' second division, including two play off finishes. The third occasion came in 2021 when
Toulouse Olympique
Toulouse Olympique or TO XIII is a professional rugby league club in Toulouse, south-west France. Founded in 1937, two years after the French Rugby League Federation, the club is a six-time winner of the French Rugby League Championship.
The ...
finished the
2021 Championship with a 100% record having won 13 games and awarded a 14th as a walkover. The season was badly affected by postponements and cancellations caused by restrictions imposed under COVID-19 regulations and Toulouse only managed to play 13 games (all away) while all the other teams in the division played 20 to 22 games.
The fourth occasion was in 2022 when
Keighley Cougars
The Keighley Cougars are a professional rugby league club from Keighley in West Yorkshire, England who compete in League 1, the third tier of English rugby league. Keighley's home ground, Cougar Park has a capacity of 7,800.
History
Early y ...
won all 20 games in taking the
League 1 title.
In
2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...
, the
Toronto Wolfpack
The Toronto Wolfpack are a Canadian professional rugby league club based in Toronto, Ontario, who compete in the North American Rugby League.
The club originally competed in the British rugby league system but withdrew in the 2020 Super Leagu ...
completed the regular reason with a perfect 15–0 record, however after the
Super 8s they finished with a 20-1-1 record. They lost in the Challenge Cup against the Salford Red Devils.
Rugby union
International Rugby
The
New Zealand All Blacks were the first professional rugby team to produce a perfect rugby test season in 2013. They successfully defeated four times, three times, and twice and also beat , and in their incredible winning run. They produced a record of 14–0–0, defeating the top 5 ranked teams below them in the IRB world rankings. have matched this feat after producing a perfect test season in 2016 after recovering from getting knocked out of their own
World Cup
A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...
in
2015.
Super Rugby
The Southern Hemisphere's principal team competition,
Super Rugby, established as Super 12 in 1996 and later known as Super 14 before adopting its current name in 2011, has seen only one perfect season. The
Crusaders
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were in ...
, based in
Christchurch
Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon Rive ...
and representing a large portion of the
South Island of New Zealand, finished the
2002 Super 12 season
The 2002 Super 12 season was the seventh season of the Super 12, contested by teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The season ran from February to May 2002, with each team playing all the others once. At the end of the regular seas ...
with an 11–0–0 record and went on to win both of their finals matches to claim the season crown unbeaten.
One other team has won a championship unbeaten: in
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
, the
Auckland Blues (known simply as "Blues" since 2000), which at the time represented the central and southern parts of the
Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about ...
area plus some adjacent regions to the south, finished the regular season with one draw from 11 matches. They also won both of their finals matches to claim the title.
Tennis (team)
In 2011 and 2012, the
Washington Kastles
The Washington Kastles is one of eight franchises that compete in World TeamTennis.
Based in Washington, D.C., since 2008, the Kastles won the WTT championship in the 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 seasons. The team is named for Kastle S ...
of
World Team Tennis
World TeamTennis (WTT) is a mixed-gender professional tennis league played with a team format in the United States, which was founded in 1973.
The league's season normally takes place in the summer months. Players from the ATP and WTA take a ...
completed back-to-back perfect seasons, the first pro sports franchise in the United States to do so. The Kastles swept each of the 2011 and 2012 regular seasons with a perfect 14–0 record, then in each season went on to win their two postseason games and league's championship, amassing a 32-game winning streak in the process. This streak stands one short of the all-time professional sports record in the United States by
the 1971–72 Los Angeles Lakers.
Volleyball
In the 2012–13 Season,
Vakıfbank İstanbul won all 52 games and reached five championship trophies in
*2012–13
Turkish Women's Volleyball League
The Turkish Women's Volleyball League ( tr, Türkiye Kadınlar Voleybol 1. Ligi) officially called the Sultans League (Turkish: Sultanlar Ligi), is the highest professional women's volleyball league in Turkey. It is run by the Turkish Volleyball Fe ...
,
*
2012–13 Turkish Women's Volleyball Cup,
*
2012–13 CEV Women's Champions League
The CEV Champions League was the highest level of European club volleyball in the 2012–13 season and the 54th edition. It ran from 22 October 2012 until 11 March 2013.
Fenerbahçe were the winner of the previous year.
VakıfBank İstanbul w ...
,
*2013 Turkish Women's Volleyball Super Cup and
*
2013 FIVB Women's Club World Championship
The 2013 FIVB Women's Club World Championship was the 7th edition of the event. It was held in Zurich, Switzerland, from 9 to 13 October 2013. Vakıfbank Istanbul won the title and Jovana Brakočević was named Most Valuable Player.
Qualificat ...
.
Vakıfbank İstanbul won 6 games in
Turkish Women's Volleyball Cup
The Turkish Women's Volleyball Cup ( tr, Türkiye Kadınlar Voleybol Türkiye Kupası), is a national cup for professional women's volleyball in Turkey, organized by the Turkish Volleyball Federation since the 1994-95 season. Between 2003 and 2008 ...
, 12 games in
CEV Women's Champions League
The Women's CEV Champions League, formerly known as CEV Champions Cup (from 1960 to 2000), is the top official competition for women's volleyball clubs of Europe and takes place every year. It is organized by the Confédération Européenne de V ...
, 29 games (22 league, 7 play-off games) in
Turkish Women's Volleyball League
The Turkish Women's Volleyball League ( tr, Türkiye Kadınlar Voleybol 1. Ligi) officially called the Sultans League (Turkish: Sultanlar Ligi), is the highest professional women's volleyball league in Turkey. It is run by the Turkish Volleyball Fe ...
, 1 game in Turkish Women's Volleyball Super Cup and 4 games in
FIVB Volleyball Women's Club World Championship
The FIVB Volleyball Women's Club World Championship is an international women's club volleyball competition organised by the '' Fédération Internationale de Volleyball'' (FIVB), the sport's global governing body. The competition was first conte ...
, and never lost in the 2012–13 Season. In addition, they won all 51 games they played in year 2013.
Having started Turkish Women's Volleyball League's 2013–14 Season with 13 wins and
2013–14 CEV Women's Champions League with 8 wins, they extended their winning streak to 73 games as of January 23, 2014.
Other North American professional sports leagues
In North America's three other major professional sports leagues (
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
, the
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
, and the
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
) it is almost impossible for a team to play a “perfect” season, primarily because there are substantially more games in the regular season (82 in the NBA and NHL, and 162 in Major League Baseball). The
Women's National Basketball Association
The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...
‘s season has been between 28 and 36 games long, and it too has never produced a perfect season.
It is possible for a baseball
pitcher
In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...
to achieve a perfect season, taking at least one win and any number of no-decisions throughout the year. This has happened 1,813 times in baseball's history, though the majority (1,171) were 1–0 seasons, mostly by
relief pitcher
In baseball and softball, a relief pitcher or reliever is a pitcher who enters the game after the starting pitcher is removed because of fatigue, ineffectiveness, injury, or ejection, or for other strategic reasons, such as inclement weat ...
s. The best perfect season belongs to
Tom Zachary
Jonathan Thompson Walton Zachary (c. May 7, 1896 – January 24, 1969) was a professional baseball pitcher.
Career
Zachary had a 19-year career in Major League Baseball that lasted from 1918 to 1936. He played for the Philadelphia A's, Wash ...
of the 1929
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one of ...
, who posted a 12–0 record in 119.2 innings. No pitcher has ever achieved a perfect season while qualifying for the
ERA
An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth.
Comp ...
title.
In the NHL, the
1976–77 Montreal Canadiens
The Montreal CanadiensEven in English, the French spelling is always used instead of ''Canadians''. The French spelling of ''Montréal'' is also sometimes used in the English media. (french: link=no, Les Canadiens de Montréal), officially ...
played nearly a perfect home season. They went 39-1 (.975) at home, their lone loss coming on October 30, 1976 against the
Boston Bruins
The Boston Bruins are a professional ice hockey team based in Boston. The Bruins compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference. The team has been in existence since 1924, making t ...
. The Canadiens only lost 8 games all year, finishing with a 60-8-12 record.
In the NBA, the
1985–86 Boston Celtics played a nearly perfect home season. During the regular season, they were 40–1 (.976) in front of their home crowd. The
Celtics' only regular-season home loss occurred on December 6, 1985, to
the Portland Trail Blazers, by the score of 121–103. The Celtics would also win all 10 of their home games in the postseason, to finish 50–1 at home. The
2015–16 San Antonio Spurs
The San Antonio Spurs are an American professional basketball team based in San Antonio. The Spurs compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division. The team plays its home ...
also played a nearly perfect home regular-season with a 40-1 (.976) record in front of their home crowd, with their only home loss occurring on April 10, 2016 vs. the
Golden State Warriors by the score of 92–86. The Spurs were eliminated in the Western Conference Semi-Finals by the
Oklahoma City Thunder
The Oklahoma City Thunder are an American professional basketball team based in Oklahoma City. The Thunder compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Northwest Division. The team plays i ...
in the
2016 NBA Playoffs
The 2016 NBA playoffs was the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s 2015–16 season. The tournament ended with the Eastern Conference champion Cleveland Cavaliers defeating the defending NBA champion and Wester ...
. The Spurs played a total of 5 home games in the post season, finishing 43–3 at home, losing twice to the Thunder. The three-on-three basketball league
BIG3
Big3 (stylized BIG3) is a 3-on-3 basketball league founded by hip hop musician and actor Ice Cube and entertainment executive Jeff Kwatinetz. The league consists of 12 teams whose rosters include both former NBA players and international play ...
, which featured an eight-game regular season and two-round playoff, had a perfect team in its inaugural season of
2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...
when
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games, and are less common in other art forms. Three-part wor ...
swept all ten games on their schedule.
Individual professional sports
For other sports leagues for individuals, such as the
PGA Tour
The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also ...
or
Formula One
Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...
, a perfect season would represent winning every event in a season. Considering the number of tournaments or races in those leagues, and the fact that each individual faces over 40 opponents as opposed to one, a perfect season is almost impossible.
Auto racing
In
Formula One
Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...
, prior to 1991, a driver could only count a certain number of their best results towards the championship, meaning it was possible to score 100 percent of the maximum championship points without winning every race in the season. This was accomplished by
Alberto Ascari
Alberto Ascari (; 13 July 1918 – 26 May 1955) was an Italian racing driver and a two time Formula One World Champion. He was a multitalented racer who competed in motorcycle racing before switching to cars. Ascari won consecutive world titles ...
in 1952 and twice by
Jim Clark in 1963 and 1965, both of his championship seasons. The record for the highest percentage of wins in a season is held by Ascari for his 1952 effort in which he won 6 out of 8 (75.00%) races on the calendar..
In 1988, the McLaren team won 15 of the 16 Grands Prix held that year. The only race victory that eluded them was the Italian Grand Prix, where their driver Ayrton Senna was eliminated after a collision in the closing stages whilst leading the race
Colin McRae
Colin Steele McRae, (5 August 1968 – 15 September 2007) was a Scottish rally driver. He was the 1991 and 1992 British Rally Champion, and in 1995 became the first British driver and the youngest person to win the World Rally Championship ...
won every round of the 1992
British Rally Championship
The British Rally Championship is a rallying series based in the United Kingdom. The first championship was run in 1958 and it has been licensed by the Motor Sports Association (MSA) since 1999. MSA has opted not to run the series in 2015, ins ...
, driving a
Subaru Legacy
The is a mid-size car built by Japanese automobile manufacturer Subaru since 1989. The maker's flagship car, it is unique in its class for offering all-wheel drive as a standard feature, and Subaru's traditional boxer engine. The Legacy was sol ...
for the
Prodrive
Prodrive is a British motorsport and advanced engineering group based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. It designs, constructs and races cars for companies and teams such as Aston Martin, Bahrain Raid Xtreme and Team X44. Its advanced technolo ...
team.
In IndyCar,
A. J. Foyt
Anthony Joseph Foyt Jr. (born January 16, 1935) is an American retired auto racing driver who has raced in numerous genres of motorsports. His open wheel racing includes United States Automobile Club Champ cars, sprint cars, and midget cars. H ...
won 10 out of 13 races on his way to his 4th national championship in
1964
Events January
* January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved.
* January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarc ...
. In
NASCAR
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and ...
,
Richard Petty holds most of the records for most wins in a season; he won 27 races out of 48 appearances in 1967, 10 of which were consecutive. Since the number of races in a season was reduced from upwards of 50 to approximately 30 in 1972, Petty also holds the "modern-era" record for most wins in a season with 13, a record he shares with
Jeff Gordon
Jeffery Michael Gordon (born August 4, 1971) is an American former professional stock car racing driver, who is the Vice Chairman for Hendrick Motorsports. He raced full-time from 1993 to 2015, driving the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick M ...
.
Professional motorcycle racer
Ricky Carmichael had perfect seasons in 2002 and 2004.
In 1997,
road racer Tommy Kendall started the 13-race
SCCA
The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) is a non-profit American automobile club and sanctioning body supporting road racing, rallying, and autocross in the United States. Formed in 1944, it runs many programs for both amateur and professional ...
Trans-Am Series
The Trans-Am Series is a sports car racing series held in North America. Founded in 1966, it is sanctioned by the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA).
Primarily based in the United States, the series competes on a variety of track types includ ...
season 11–0, the longest documentable win streak in worldwide professional road racing. In the 12th race, Kendall was battling for the lead on the final lap, but spun out and finished second.
The feat would be extremely difficult in a series with a longer schedule, such as the
NASCAR Cup Series which has 36 race seasons, the
British Touring Car Championship
The Kwik Fit British Touring Car Championship is a touring car racing series held each year in the United Kingdom, currently organised and administered by TOCA. It was established in 1958 as the British Saloon Car Championship and was renamed as ...
which typically has 30 race seasons, or
Formula One
Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...
which typically has between 17 and 23 race seasons.
Golf
Golf instead considers the
Grand Slam
Grand Slam most often refers to:
* Grand Slam (tennis), one player or pair winning all four major annual tournaments, or the tournaments themselves
Grand Slam or Grand slam may also refer to:
Games and sports
* Grand slam, winning category te ...
, a sweep of the four
men's major golf championships
The men's major golf championships, commonly known as the major championships, and often referred to simply as the majors, are the most prestigious tournaments in golf. Historically, the national open and amateur championships of Great Britain a ...
deemed to be the most difficult contests in professional golf, to be analogous to perfection.
The only time the Grand Slam has been swept in any given year was 1930, when
Bobby Jones won all four majors (at the time,
The (British) Amateur Championship and
U.S. Amateur
The United States Amateur Championship, commonly known as the U.S. Amateur, is the leading annual golf tournament in the United States for amateur golfers. It is organized by the United States Golf Association and is currently held each August ov ...
were still considered majors); since 1934, when
The Masters
The Masters Tournament (usually referred to as simply The Masters, or the U.S. Masters outside North America) is one of the four major championships in professional golf. Scheduled for the first full week of April, the Masters is the first ma ...
was added as a major, no player has won all four in one year.
Tiger Woods
Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer. He is tied for first in PGA Tour wins, ranks second in men's major championships, and holds numerous golf records.
*
*
* Woods is widely regarded as ...
is the only professional golfer to win four consecutive professional majors; he did so over two years in 2000 and 2001. The record for most consecutive wins in professional golf is 11, set
Byron Nelson
John Byron Nelson Jr. (February 4, 1912 – September 26, 2006) was an American professional golfer between 1935 and 1946, widely considered one of the greatest golfers of all time.
Nelson and two other legendary champions of the time, Ben Hoga ...
in 1945; Nelson would win 18 tournaments overall that year, a year when wartime manpower shortages were still limiting the number and quality of professional golfers for Nelson to compete against.
Tennis
Tennis also uses the term
Grand Slam
Grand Slam most often refers to:
* Grand Slam (tennis), one player or pair winning all four major annual tournaments, or the tournaments themselves
Grand Slam or Grand slam may also refer to:
Games and sports
* Grand slam, winning category te ...
for winning all four major tennis tournaments in a single year. This has only been achieved by 5 players:
Don Budge
John Donald Budge (June 13, 1915 – January 26, 2000) was an American tennis player. He is most famous as the first tennis player — male or female, and still the only American male — to win the Grand Slam, and to win all four Grand Slam e ...
,
Rod Laver,
Maureen Connolly
Maureen Catherine Connolly-Brinker (née Connolly; September 17, 1934 – June 21, 1969), known as "Little Mo", was an American tennis player, the winner of nine major singles titles in the early 1950s. In 1953, she became the first woman to win ...
,
Margaret Court
Margaret Court (''née'' Smith; born 16 July 1942), also known as Margaret Smith Court, is an Australian retired former world No. 1 tennis player and a Christian minister. Considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, her 24 maj ...
and
Steffi Graf. Graf was the most recent to achieve the feat, in 1988.
3 other players have won four consecutive major tournaments in a row, but not in a single year:
Novak Djokovic
Novak Djokovic ( sr-Cyrl, Новак Ђоковић, translit=Novak Đoković, ; born 22 May 1987) is a Serbian professional tennis player. He has been ranked world No. 1 for a record total 373 weeks, and has finished as the year-end No. 1 ...
,
Martina Navratilova and
Serena Williams
Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is an American inactive professional tennis player. Considered among the greatest tennis players of all time, she was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for ...
.
American collegiate sports
NAIA Football
In 1966 Waynesburg College went 11–0 after a 9–0 regular season record. In December 1966 Waynesburg defeated New Mexico Highlands in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the playoff game and defeated Whitewater Wisconsin in the NAIA Champion Bowl at Tulsa Oklahoma.
NCAA Football
Due to relatively short seasons through most of
college football history, the
list of undefeated Division I football teams
This is a list of undefeated NCAA Division I football teams, which describes all teams that finished a college football season in the NCAA's Division I, or historic equivalent, without any losses.
Division I Football Bowl Subdivision
NCAA Divisi ...
includes dozens of teams.
[Dolphin Historical Football Rankings]
Retrieved December 7, 2006 The highest level of college football, the
Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (introduced as Division I-A in 1978), did not use a playoff to determine a champion prior to the introduction of the four-team
College Football Playoff
The College Football Playoff (CFP) is an annual postseason knockout invitational tournament to determine a national champion for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the highest level ...
(CFP) in
2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
. The system replaced by the CFP relied on a combination of polls and computer rankings to choose two teams to play one
title game in a system known as the
Bowl Championship Series. Prior to 1992, no attempt was made to match up the top two teams in a championship game, further increasing the chances of multiple teams achieving a perfect season. The record for most wins in an undefeated FBS season is 15–0 accomplished in
2018
File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the Unit ...
by
Clemson and in
2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
by
LSU
Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...
. Following that the record is 14–0, accomplished in
2002 by
Ohio State
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...
, twice in
2009 by
Boise State and
Alabama
(We dare defend our rights)
, anthem = "Alabama"
, image_map = Alabama in United States.svg
, seat = Montgomery
, LargestCity = Huntsville
, LargestCounty = Baldwin County
, LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham
, area_total_km2 = 135,765 ...
, in
2010 by
Auburn, and in
2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...
by
Florida State
Florida State University (FSU) is a public university, public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher e ...
.
The
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...
's FBS record 64-game unbeaten streak included five straight perfect seasons from 1909 to 1913.
The
University of Oklahoma's FBS record 47 game winning streak included three straight perfect seasons from 1954 to 1956.
Many teams had undefeated seasons in which they never allowed another team to score a point against them. The 1901–02 Michigan Wolverines football team outscored its opponents 550–0.
NCAA Division I Basketball
Men
Before the establishment of the
National Invitation Tournament in 1938 and the
NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in 1939, perfect seasons were more common; each season consisted of fewer games and top teams from different parts of the country might never meet.
Eight teams have completed perfect seasons, including postseason tournament victories, since the tournament era began in 1938:
*
1939 LIU Blackbirds (24–0) —
NIT champion, which at the time was more prestigious than the NCAA tournament
*
1956 San Francisco Dons (29–0) — NCAA champion
*
1957 North Carolina Tar Heels (32–0) — NCAA champion
*
1964 UCLA Bruins (30–0) — NCAA champion
*
1967 UCLA Bruins (30–0) — NCAA champion
*
1972 UCLA Bruins (30–0) — NCAA champion
*
1973 UCLA Bruins (30–0) — NCAA champion
*
1976 Indiana Hoosiers (32–0) — NCAA champion
In addition, four other teams in the tournament era had unbeaten records, but did not play in any postseason tournament:
* 1940
Seton Hall Pirates
The Seton Hall Pirates are the intercollegiate athletic sports teams representing Seton Hall University, located in South Orange, New Jersey. The Pirates compete as a member of the NCAA Division I level (non-football sub-level), primarily compet ...
(19–0) — not invited to either the NCAA Tournament or NIT.
*
1944 Army Cadets (15–0) — not invited to either the NCAA Tournament or NIT. (Given that this season was during World War II, it is also possible that Army chose to turn down tournament invitations.)
*
1954 Kentucky Wildcats (25–0) — declined a bid to the NCAA Tournament due to an NCAA ruling that graduate students could not compete.
* 1973
NC State Wolfpack (27–0) — ineligible for postseason competition due to rule violations earlier that season.
The UCLA Bruins are the only team to have back-to-back perfect seasons (1971–1972, 1972–1973), and all four of the college's perfect seasons were under Hall of Fame head coach
John Wooden.
The following teams completed a perfect regular season, but lost in the
NCAA tournament or other postseason action:
*
1939 Loyola Ramblers
The Loyola Ramblers (also called the Loyola Chicago Ramblers) are the varsity sports teams of Loyola University Chicago. Most teams compete in the Atlantic 10 Conference, which the school joined in 2022 after leaving the Missouri Valley Confer ...
(finished regular season 20–0 and lost in the NIT final to
LIU
/ ( or ) is an East Asian surname. pinyin: in Mandarin Chinese, in Cantonese. It is the family name of the Han dynasty emperors. The character originally meant 'kill', but is now used only as a surname. It is listed 252nd in the classic text ...
to finish 21–1)
*
1941 Seton Hall Pirates
The Seton Hall Pirates are the intercollegiate athletic sports teams representing Seton Hall University, located in South Orange, New Jersey. The Pirates compete as a member of the NCAA Division I level (non-football sub-level), primarily compet ...
(finished regular season 19–0; lost in the NIT semifinals to
LIU
/ ( or ) is an East Asian surname. pinyin: in Mandarin Chinese, in Cantonese. It is the family name of the Han dynasty emperors. The character originally meant 'kill', but is now used only as a surname. It is listed 252nd in the classic text ...
and third-place game to CCNY to finish 20–2)
*
1951
Events
January
* January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950).
* January 9 – The Government of the United ...
Columbia Lions
The Columbia University Lions are the collective athletic teams and their members from Columbia University, an Ivy League institution in New York City, United States. The current director of athletics is Peter Pilling.
Ivy League athletics
Th ...
(finished 21–1 after losing in the first round)
*
1961 Ohio State Buckeyes (finished 27–1 after losing in the
championship game
In sport, a championship is a Competition#Sports, competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion.
Championship systems
Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship.
Title match sy ...
to
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...
)
*
1968 Houston Cougars (finished regular season 28–0, then lost the semifinal and consolation games at the
Final Four)
*1968
St. Bonaventure Bonnies (finished regular season 22–0, lost in regional semifinals)
*1971
Penn Quakers
The Penn Quakers are the athletic teams of the University of Pennsylvania. The school sponsors 33 varsity sports. The school has won three NCAA national championships in men's fencing and one in women's fencing.
School colors
There are s ...
(finished the regular season 26–0, lost in the regional finals)
*
1971 Marquette Warriors (finished regular season 26–0, lost in regional semifinals)
*
1975 Indiana Hoosiers (finished regular season 29–0, but lost to
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...
in the
Mideast Regional final)
*1976
Rutgers Scarlet Knights
The Rutgers Scarlet Knights are the athletic teams that represent Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus. In sports, Rutgers is famously known for being the "Birthplace of College Football", hosting the first ever intercollegiate football ...
(finished regular season 28–0, won 3 more games in the
NCAA tournament to go to 31–0, but lost in the Final Four to
Michigan
Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...
and in the consolation game to
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
)
*
1979 Indiana State Sycamores (finished regular season 29–0, but lost in the
championship game
In sport, a championship is a Competition#Sports, competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion.
Championship systems
Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship.
Title match sy ...
to
Michigan State
Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It i ...
. Finished 33–1.)
*1979
Alcorn State Braves
The Alcorn State Braves and Lady Braves represent Alcorn State University in Lorman, Mississippi in intercollegiate athletics. They field 15 teams including men's and women's basketball, cross country, golf, tennis, and track and field; women's- ...
finished the regular season with a perfect 27–0 record, but were not invited to the NCAA Tournament. The Braves lost in the second round of the
National Invitation Tournament to
Indiana
Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
.
*
1991 UNLV Runnin' Rebels (entered the tournament 30–0, lost in the
Final Four to eventual champion
Duke
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are rank ...
. Finished 34–1.)
*
2004 Saint Joseph's Hawks (finished the regular season 27–0, lost to
Xavier in the quarterfinals of the
2004 Atlantic 10 men's basketball tournament. Finished 30–2 after losing to
Oklahoma State
Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...
in the NCAA East Regional final.)
*
2014 Wichita State Shockers (entered the tournament 34–0, lost to eventual runner-up
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...
in the
round of 32
A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...
. Finished 35–1.)
*
2015 Kentucky Wildcats (entered the tournament 34–0, lost to
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
in the
Final Four. Finished 38–1.)
*
2021 Gonzaga Bulldogs (entered the tournament 26–0, but lost to
Baylor in the
championship game
In sport, a championship is a Competition#Sports, competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion.
Championship systems
Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship.
Title match sy ...
. Finished 31–1.)
Women
In the women's game, the following national championship teams have had perfect records since the
AIAW
The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was founded in 1971 to govern collegiate women's athletics in the United States and to administer national championships (see AIAW Champions). It evolved out of the Commission on Interc ...
began sponsoring a championship tournament in 1972 (which was followed by the
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
tournament in 1982):
* 1973
Immaculata Mighty Macs
Immaculata University is a private Roman Catholic university in East Whiteland Township, Pennsylvania. It was founded by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The university is composed of 1,427 traditional undergraduate and ad ...
(20–0)
* 1975
Delta State Lady Statesmen (28–0)
* 1981
Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters
Louisiana Tech Bulldogs and Lady Techsters, commonly abbreviated La. Tech and Dawgs, refer to the sports teams of Louisiana Tech University, in Ruston, Louisiana. The teams compete in Division I of NCAA sports. Since 2013, Louisiana Tech has bee ...
(34–0)
*
1986 Texas Longhorns (34–0)
*
1995 Connecticut Huskies (35–0)
*
1998 Tennessee Lady Vols (39–0)
*
2002 Connecticut Huskies (39–0)
*
2009 Connecticut Huskies (39–0)
*
2010 Connecticut Huskies (39–0)
*
2012 Baylor Lady Bears (40–0)
*
2014 Connecticut Huskies (40–0)
*
2016 Connecticut Huskies (38–0)
The following teams completed perfect regular seasons, but lost in the
NCAA tournament or other postseason action:
* The 1983
Oral Roberts Lady Titans (now nicknamed Golden Eagles) finished the regular season 24–0, but were not invited to
the NCAA tournament. They played in the
National Women's Invitational Tournament
The National Women's Invitational Tournament (NWIT) was a post-season tournament for women's intercollegiate basketball programs that was contested from 1969 to 1996. The original sponsorship information appears to have been lost over the ensuin ...
, losing to
Memphis State
}
The University of Memphis (UofM) is a public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students.
The university maintains the Herff College of Engineering, the Center for Ea ...
(now known as Memphis) in the second round. After winning a consolation game against
Weber State
Weber State University (pronounced ) is a public university in Ogden, Utah. It was founded in 1889 as Weber Stake Academy. It is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.
History
Weber State University was founded ...
, they finished the season 26–1.
* The
1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...
Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters
Louisiana Tech Bulldogs and Lady Techsters, commonly abbreviated La. Tech and Dawgs, refer to the sports teams of Louisiana Tech University, in Ruston, Louisiana. The teams compete in Division I of NCAA sports. Since 2013, Louisiana Tech has bee ...
entered the NCAA Tournament at 28–0, but lost in the Final Four to
Auburn to finish 32–1.
* The
Vermont Catamounts
The Vermont Catamounts are the varsity intercollegiate athletic programs of the University of Vermont, based in Burlington, Vermont, United States. The school sponsors 18 athletic programs (8 men's, 10 women's), most of which compete in the NCAA ...
were unbeaten entering the NCAA Tournament in both 1992 (29–0) and 1993 (28–0). They lost in the first round to
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
in
1992 and
Rutgers
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and w ...
in
1993
File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefu ...
.
* The
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
Connecticut Huskies
The UConn Huskies (or Connecticut Huskies) are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Connecticut, located in Storrs. The school is a member of the NCAA's Division I and the Big East Conference. The university's foo ...
entered the NCAA Tournament at 30–0, but lost in the final of the Midwest Regional to eventual national champion
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
, finishing 33–1.
* The
1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...
Liberty Lady Flames entered the NCAA Tournament 28–0, but were seeded #16 in the Mideast Region and matched against Tennessee, with the Lady Vols crushing the Lady Flames 102–58.
* The
2003 Connecticut Huskies finished the regular season at 29–0, but lost to
Villanova in the final of the Big East tournament, ending their then-record winning streak at 70 games. The Huskies went on to win the
NCAA tournament, finishing 37–1.
* The 2007
Duke Blue Devils
The Duke Blue Devils are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Duke University, located in Durham, North Carolina. Duke's athletics department features 27 varsity teams that all compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association ...
finished the regular season at 29–0, but lost in the semifinals of the
ACC tournament to
North Carolina State
North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The unive ...
. In the
NCAA tournament, they lost in the semifinals of the Greensboro Regional to
Rutgers
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and w ...
to finish 32–2.
* The
2010 Nebraska Cornhuskers finished the regular season at 29–0, but lost in the semifinals of the
Big 12 Tournament to
Texas A&M
Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...
. In the
NCAA tournament, they lost in the semifinals of the Kansas City Regional to
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...
to finish 32–2.
* The
2014 Notre Dame Fighting Irish entered the NCAA Tournament at 32–0 and lost in the championship game to Connecticut, finishing 37–1.
* The
2015 Princeton Tigers entered the NCAA Tournament at 30–0 and lost in the second round to
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
to finish 31–1.
* The
2017 Connecticut Huskies entered the NCAA Tournament at 32–0 and lost in the national semifinals to
Mississippi State
Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a public land-grant research university adjacent to Starkville, Mississippi. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univer ...
to finish 36–1.
*The
2018 Connecticut Huskies entered the NCAA Tournament at 32–0 but lost to
Notre Dame to finish 36–1.
Notably, the 2015–16 season saw ''all three'' NCAA women's champions finish with unbeaten seasons. In
Division II,
Lubbock Christian went 34–0. In
Division III
In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below.
Association football
*Belgian Thir ...
,
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord ...
went 33–0 for the second straight season.
NCAA Ice Hockey
Among schools in the top level of men's ice hockey, the 1969–70
Cornell Big Red went 29–0–0 in the University Division (the predecessor to today's Division I) en route to a national championship.
Since Cornell's 29–0–0 season in 1969–70, the closest Division I Men's Ice Hockey Team to having a perfect season was the 1992–93
Maine Black Bears
The Maine Black Bears are the athletic teams that represent the University of Maine. A member of the America East Conference, the University of Maine sponsors teams in eight men's and nine women's NCAA sanctioned sports. The men's and women's ice ...
, who finished that year at 42–1–2, including a national title game victory against
Lake Superior State
Lake Superior State University (colloquially Lake State, Lake Superior State, Soo Tech, and LSSU) is a public college in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It is enrolls approximately 2,000 students. Due to its proximity to the Canadian border, and th ...
. Their only loss came on February 19, 1993, against
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
, where they lost 7–6 in overtime, and their only ties were on October 24 against
Providence, 3–3, and on January 15 against
Clarkson, 4–4.
The last men's team to finish unbeaten and untied and be national champions was the 1983–84
Bemidji State Beavers
The Bemidji State Beavers are the athletic teams that represent Bemidji State University, located in Bemidji, Minnesota, in NCAA Division II intercollegiate sports. The Beavers compete as members of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference fo ...
(31–0–0), who were then competing in
Division II, a level of competition that no longer conducts a championship.
The 1955–56 Clarkson Golden Knights were undefeated and untied (23–0–0), but skipped the NCAA tournament because as the team had seniors with four years of college play which was against NCAA tournament rules, although not ''regular'' season rules, at that time.
The 1967–68
Iona Gaels went 16–0–0 in their inaugural season as an independent in Division III, but did not participate in a national championship as none existed for Division III at that time.
The most recent unbeaten and untied season in NCAA ice hockey at the highest level was in
2012–13
1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...
when
the Minnesota Golden Gophers became the first NCAA women's team ever to accomplish the feat (41–0–0).
ACHA Hockey
The 2007–08
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...
Fighting Illini
The Illinois Fighting Illini () are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The university offers 10 men's and 11 women's varsity sports.
The University operates a number of athletic faci ...
, a club team, are the only
American Collegiate Hockey Association team to record a perfect season with a record of 38–0–0.
Canadian collegiate sports
U Sports Canadian Football
1975 University of Ottawa Gee Gees
In 1975 the number-one-ranked University of Ottawa Gee Gees had the first Canadian Interuniversity Sport (now U Sports) undefeated season. After completing their perfect regular season at 8–0, the Gees Gees won their first play-off defeating the number-two-ranked Toronto Varsity Blues 14–7. The Gees Gees then demolished the Windsor Lancers 45–6 to win the Yates Cup and the right to play for the national championship and the Vanier Cup. The undefeated season was completed on November 21, 1975, when the Gee Gees defeated the University of Calgary Dinos 14–9 at CNE Stadium in Toronto. That night the Gee Gees became the first undefeated team in CIS and Vanier Cup history. The 1975 Gees Gees roster had a big impact on the CFL. Gee Gee Players from the 1975 team played in the CFL for a cumulative total of 96 years and throughout their professional careers in the CFL accomplished: one Canadian Football Hall of Fame Inductee, one Grey Cup Canadian MVP, two Frank M. Gibson Trophies for Outstanding Rookie Eastern Division, two CFL Leo Dandurand Trophy Outstanding Lineman Eastern Division, twenty CFL and Divisional All-Star Selections, twenty-three Grey Cup Appearances and a total of twelve Grey Cup rings.
2003, 2005 Saskatchewan Huskies
In 2003 and 2005, the
Saskatchewan Huskies completed perfect regular seasons. However, in both years they lost in the playoffs: in the
Vanier Cup
The Vanier Cup (french: Coupe Vanier) is the championship of Canadian university football. It is organized by U Sports football and is currently played between the winners of the Uteck Bowl and the Mitchell Bowl. It is named after Georges Vanier ...
to the
Laurier Golden Hawks
The Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks, commonly shortened to Laurier Golden Hawks, is the name used by the varsity sports teams of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The university's varsity teams compete in the Ontario University ...
in 2005, and in the Canada West semi-final to
Alberta Golden Bears
The Alberta Golden Bears and Pandas are the sports teams that represent the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Alberta athletics teams have won a total of 93 national championships, including 79 U Sports sanctioned sports, making ...
in 2003.
2007 Manitoba Bisons
A perfect season was attained in 2007 by the
Manitoba Bisons
The Manitoba Bisons are the athletic teams that represent the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The football team plays their games at Investors Group Field. The soccer team play their home games at the University of Manit ...
, the football squad representing the
University of Manitoba
The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.[Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749, ...](_blank)
. The Bisons were undefeated in
Canada West Universities Athletic Association play during the 8-game schedule. In the playoffs, Manitoba comfortably handled the
Calgary Dinos
The Calgary Dinos are the athletic teams that represent the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. They were known as the "Dinosaurs" but usually referred to as the "Dinos" until 1999, when the name was officially shortened. Some of its venue ...
27–5 in the opening round. The Bisons followed up with a 48–5 defeat of the
Regina Rams in the
Hardy Trophy
The Hardy Trophy is a Canadian sport trophy, presented annually to the winner of the Canada West Universities Athletic Association Football Conference of U Sports, the country's governing body for university athletics. It is named for Evan Hard ...
and a strong 52–20 showing against the perennial contenders from the
University of Western Ontario
The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thames R ...
, the
Western Ontario Mustangs
The Western Mustangs are the athletic teams that represent Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. The school's athletic program supports 46 varsity teams. Their mascot is a Mustang named J.W. and the school colours are purple and whi ...
, in the
Mitchell Bowl
The Mitchell Bowl is one of the two semifinal bowls of U Sports football, Canada's national competition for university teams that play Canadian football. It is held in the more westerly location of the two semifinal venues. The winner of this game ...
. On Friday, November 23, 2007, two days before the 95th Grey Cup game in
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
, the Bisons defeated the
Saint Mary's University squad, known as the
Saint Mary's Huskies, 28–14 to claim their first
Vanier Cup
The Vanier Cup (french: Coupe Vanier) is the championship of Canadian university football. It is organized by U Sports football and is currently played between the winners of the Uteck Bowl and the Mitchell Bowl. It is named after Georges Vanier ...
championship since 1970, and third overall title. That victory capped their perfect 12 win season.
2010 Laval Rouge et Or
In 2010, the
Laval Rouge et Or
The Laval Rouge et Or (, ''Red and Gold'') are the athletic teams that represent Université Laval, located in Quebec City, Quebec. Home games are all held in the PEPS indoor and outdoor sports facilities.
Varsity teams
Laval Rouge et Or teams co ...
located in
Quebec City
Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the metropolitan area had a population of 839,311. It is t ...
, had a perfect season of 13–0. They were undefeated with an 8–0 record in the QUFL. During the playoffs, they beat the
Bishop's Gaiters
The Bishop's Gaiters is the men's and women's athletic teams that represent Bishop's University in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. The name Gaiter is a nickname used to refer to garments worn over the shoe and lower pants leg, worn by Anglican bishops ...
56–1 in the opening round. The Rouge et Or won the QUFL championship and the
Dunsmore Cup
The Dunsmore Cup (french: Coupe Dunsmore) is a Canadian sports trophy, presented annually to the winner of the university-level football competition conducted by Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ), the governing body for all student sport ...
by a close win of 22–17 against the
Sherbrooke Vert et Or
The Sherbrooke Vert & Or ("Sherbrooke Green & Gold") is the athletic teams that represent the Université de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. The team plays in Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (French for "Quebec Student Sports Netw ...
. They followed with a win of 13–11 against the
Western Ontario Mustangs
The Western Mustangs are the athletic teams that represent Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. The school's athletic program supports 46 varsity teams. Their mascot is a Mustang named J.W. and the school colours are purple and whi ...
in the
Uteck Bowl
The Uteck Bowl is one of the two semifinal bowls of U Sports football, Canada's national competition for university teams that play Canadian football. It is held in the easternmost of the two semifinal venues. The Uteck Bowl champion moves on to f ...
. Finally, on Saturday, November 27, 2010, in their home stadium in
Quebec City
Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the metropolitan area had a population of 839,311. It is t ...
, they won the
Vanier Cup
The Vanier Cup (french: Coupe Vanier) is the championship of Canadian university football. It is organized by U Sports football and is currently played between the winners of the Uteck Bowl and the Mitchell Bowl. It is named after Georges Vanier ...
29–2 against the
Calgary Dinos
The Calgary Dinos are the athletic teams that represent the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. They were known as the "Dinosaurs" but usually referred to as the "Dinos" until 1999, when the name was officially shortened. Some of its venue ...
, capping a 13–0 season.
U Sports Hockey
Men
The 1972–73 University of Toronto Varsity Blues (22–0–0) are the only men's hockey team in U Sports to win a national championship with no losses and no ties in the regular season and post season. The Varsity Blues won all 17 regular season games to place first in the Ontario University Athletics Association's East Division. In sudden death OUAA playoff action, the U of T defeated the University of Waterloo 13–2 and the University of Western Ontario 8–1. The University of Toronto downed the University of Alberta 5–2 and 5–3 in the University Cup semi final at Edmonton and shaded St. Mary's University 3–2 in the University Cup final at Toronto.
CCAA Hockey
Men
The 1975–76 St. Clair College Saints (26–0–0) of Windsor, Ontario were the first of two Canadian Colleges Athletic Association men's hockey teams to go unbeaten and untied in the regular season and post season en route to a national title. After winning all 20 regular season games to finish atop the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association's Western Division, St. Clair outscored Fanshawe 5–2 and 6–3 to win the division playoff series and advance to the conference championships where they topped Algonquin 8–2 and Humber 11–2. At the CCAA Hockey National Championships in
Camrose, Alberta
Camrose ( ) is a city in central Alberta, Canada that is surrounded by Camrose County. Located along Highway 13 it had its beginnings as a railroad hub.
History
The area around Camrose was first settled by Europeans around 1900. At that time t ...
, St. Clair downed Cape Breton 10–4 in the semi final and Selkirk 11–2 in the final.
The 1984–85 Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) Ooks (33–0–0) of Edmonton won all 25 of their regular season games in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference prior to sweeping the Camrose Lutheran College Vikings in a best-of-three conference semifinal series and the Red Deer College Kings in a best-of-five conference final series. At the CCAA Hockey National Championships in
Moose Jaw
Moose Jaw is the fourth largest city in Saskatchewan, Canada. Lying on the Moose Jaw River in the south-central part of the province, it is situated on the Trans-Canada Highway, west of Regina. Residents of Moose Jaw are known as Moose Javian ...
, Saskatchewan, NAIT outscored the Cariboo College Chiefs 8–2, the Seneca College Braves 5–2 and the Victoriaville College Vulkins 9–2 to hoist the CCAA Championship Bowl.
See also
*
Winless season
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, this ignominy has been suffered twelve times in professional American football, six times in arena football, three times ...
, the opposite of a perfect season, where a team either fails to win any game or loses every game
*
The Invincibles (football)
In football, "The Invincibles" is a nickname used to refer to the Preston North End team of the 1888–89 season, managed by William Sudell, and the Arsenal team of the 2003–04 season managed by Arsène Wenger. Preston North End earned ...
, name given to some teams who finish unbeaten
*
Winning streak
A winning streak, also known as a win streak or hot streak, is an uninterrupted sequence of success in games or competitions, commonly measured by at least 4 wins that are uninterrupted by losses or ties/draws. Although sometimes claimed as a ...
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perfect Season
National Football League lists
Sports terminology
Terminology used in multiple sports
Association football terminology
Basketball terminology
Cricket terminology
Rugby league terminology
Rugby union terminology
Motorsport terminology
Superlatives in sports
National Football League records and achievements