And now, the final of the big four leagues, and it's the biggest of them: the NFL.
The NFL has a vaguely similar history to MLB. There was initially one league, whose name started with "National." A competing league, whose name started with "American," later formed. The two began to have an inter-league championship, and ultimately became a single entity. The difference is, in football this happened much later. The first Super Bowl was contested after the 1966 season (it also wasn't known as the Super Bowl until the third such contest).
I had a few choices to make here: In baseball, I didn't consider anything that happened before the first World Series, but that was in 1903. In football, I feel like 1966 is too recent. I decided to go back to the first NFL championship without the APFA, which was 1933.
The next consideration: Should I factor in the AFL from before the Super Bowl era? For now, I opted for "no" on this one, but I might change my mind later. So we begin in 1933. Until 1966, I'm only looking at one league, with two "conferences" (I think they were technically called divisions, but we'll consider them to be conferences - the first way of breaking down a league into smaller chunks). That means anything related to divisional stats doesn't factor until 1966.
For now, I'm not considering tie-breaker playoffs either. This mostly was only a factor before 1966. So, it was technically possible for a team to get the "best overall" record but still not make the playoffs - because if they lose the tiebreaker game, they didn't make it into the playoffs. As with MLB, "advancing in playoffs" is only considered when multi-round playoffs began in 1966.
Currently, NFL has the smallest divisions of any of the big four sports, with only four teams per division. Which means there's a higher probability of a team to get the best/worst record in their division (since 2002). Also, because fewer games are played in the NFL, there's more identical win/loss records. When I recorded the data for best/worst in division/conference/overall, I only looked at the records, without considering any tiebreaker scenario (point differential, head-to-head records, etc). So if four teams have the best overall record in the NFL, all four get recorded as "best overall."
Finally, there are a few metro areas in NFL that have limited history. Memphis hosted the Oilers (now the Titans) for one season. Las Vegas has only had the Raiders for three seasons. The Lions were in Portsmouth for one season. Unless there's something interesting about these metros, I'm going to discard their results.
Now, on to the stats.
Regular Season
Best/Worst in Division
Detroit is one of the ultimate hard-luck sports cities when it comes to football. They've only finished top in their division 3 times since 1966. Phoenix has as well, but they haven't had a team there for as long. Atlanta, New York (surprisingly) and Jacksonville have pretty poor records on topping their division as well.
City | Best in Division |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Detroit | 3 | 5.26% |
| Phoenix | 3 | 8.57% |
| Atlanta | 6 | 10.53% |
| New York | 15 | 13.16% |
| Jacksonville | 4 | 14.29% |
Who's best at being the worst? Just like in baseball, Tampa Bay has had a rough time, finishing last in their division for over half of the seasons they've had a team. Cleveland, Phoenix, Houston and Chicago also have poor records.
City | Worst in Division |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Tampa Bay | 25 | 53.19% |
| Cleveland | 22 | 40.74% |
| Phoenix | 14 | 40.00% |
| Houston | 20 | 38.46% |
| Chicago | 21 | 36.84% |
Best/Worst in Conference
The trend here is "cities that haven't had teams for very long." Houston has had a team for the most time, but none of these cities had teams that predate the Super Bowl era.
City | Best in Conference |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Phoenix | 0 | 0.00% |
| Jacksonville | 1 | 3.57% |
| Houston | 2 | 3.85% |
| Tampa Bay | 2 | 4.26% |
| Indianapolis | 2 | 5.13% |
And when it comes to being the worst in the conference, Phoenix is prominent here too.
City | Worst in Conference |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Phoenix | 7 | 20.00% |
| Chicago | 20 | 17.09% |
| Cincinnati | 9 | 15.79% |
| Philadelphia | 14 | 15.56% |
| Houston | 8 | 15.38% |
Best/Worst Overall
Phoenix is the only city with an NFL franchise that has never had the best overall record. After that, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Houston, and St. Louis follow. Those four have all had the best overall record exactly once, so it comes down to number of seasons they've had a team.
City | Best Overall |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Phoenix | 0 | 0.00% |
| Cincinnati | 1 | 1.75% |
| New Orleans | 1 | 1.79% |
| Houston | 1 | 1.92% |
| St. Louis | 1 | 2.04% |
For most frequently worst overall, Tampa Bay rules here just like they do in baseball.
City | Worst Overall |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Tampa Bay | 6 | 12.77% |
| Houston | 6 | 11.54% |
| Jacksonville | 3 | 10.71% |
| Indianapolis | 4 | 10.26% |
| Chicago | 12 | 10.26% |
Postseason Stats
Winning Percentage in Finals
Houston and Jacksonville have never had a team reach the Super Bowl (or NFL championship). Of the cities that remain, a full 8 cities have had a team reach the Super Bowl, but fail to win it. Buffalo and Minneapolis top this list, with each of their franchises having reached the Super Bowl four times, but never winning it. It probably hurts a bit more with Buffalo, since that was in four consecutive years in the early 90's. Seattle is next - although Seattle fares better in football than they do in baseball, they've got a poor record of winning the Super Bowl. Following them is Denver (at least you eventually won a couple, John Elway) and Los Angeles.
City | Made Finals | Winning % in finals |
|---|
# |
|---|
| Buffalo | 4 | 0.00% |
| Minneapolis | 4 | 0.00% |
| Cincinnati | 3 | 0.00% |
| Atlanta | 2 | 0.00% |
| Charlotte | 2 | 0.00% |
| Nashville | 1 | 0.00% |
| Phoenix | 1 | 0.00% |
| San Diego | 1 | 0.00% |
| Seattle | 3 | 33.33% |
| Denver | 8 | 37.50% |
| Los Angeles | 8 | 37.50% |
Reaching the Finals Per Playoff Appearance
Four cities are tied here. We add Cleveland and Detroit to the mix, because this stat is only considering seasons with multi-round playoffs: Neither of them have had a team make the finals in the Super Bowl era. After them, New Orleans, San Diego, Nashville, and Indianapolis have similarly poor records (you can partially blame that last one on Peyton Manning's playoff history).
City | Reached finals per playoff |
|---|
| Cleveland | 0.00% |
| Detroit | 0.00% |
| Houston | 0.00% |
| Jacksonville | 0.00% |
| New Orleans | 7.14% |
| San Diego | 7.69% |
| Nashville | 10.00% |
| Indianapolis | 10.53% |
Advancing in Playoffs Per Playoff Appearance
Detroit has the worst record of advancing in the playoffs when they make it, and it's not close. They're a full 20+ percentage points worse than the next city, Cincinnati, who only recently broke their own playoff success drought.
City | Advanced in playoffs per playoffs |
|---|
| Detroit | 8.33% |
| Cincinnati | 31.25% |
| St. Louis | 37.50% |
| Kansas City | 43.48% |
| Miami | 45.83% |
Qualifying for the Playoffs, per season
St. Louis teams make the playoffs the least frequently in football, at a rate of only 16.33%. Detroit, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Chicago are next. We can call this one the Cardinal Curse: three of these cities (St. Louis, Phoenix, and Chicago) have all been home to the Cardinals at some point.
City | Made Playoffs |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| St. Louis | 8 | 16.33% |
| Detroit | 17 | 19.10% |
| Phoenix | 7 | 20.00% |
| Atlanta | 13 | 22.81% |
| Chicago | 28 | 23.93% |
Advancing in the Playoffs, per season
It should come as no surprise given earlier information about Detroit's playoff success that they do not fare well in advancing their team in the playoffs.
City | Advanced in Playoffs |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Detroit | 5 | 5.62% |
| St. Louis | 3 | 6.12% |
| Cincinnati | 5 | 8.77% |
| Phoenix | 4 | 11.43% |
| Tampa Bay | 6 | 12.77% |
Reaching the NFL Championship / Super Bowl, per season
Again, Houston and Jacksonville haven't made the finals ever, so they top this list. New Orleans, San Diego, and Phoenix come next. Nashville has also only had one finals appearance, but because they haven't had a team as long, they don't make the bottom five (and in fact, their percentage is better than Atlanta's, who has two Super Bowl appearances but a 3.51% rate of reaching it, compared to Nashville's one appearance and 4% rate of reaching it).
City | Made Finals |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Houston | 0 | 0.00% |
| Jacksonville | 0 | 0.00% |
| New Orleans | 1 | 1.79% |
| San Diego | 1 | 1.96% |
| Phoenix | 1 | 2.86% |
Winning the NFL Championship / Super Bowl, per season
There's so many cities that have never won an NFL title, it's hard to sort them out. So I'm going to show the top 14. I thought it was going to be Buffalo, but because the Vikings have been around slightly longer, they are the top city for chasing a title and never quite getting it. 'grats on being bad, Vikings.
City | Seasons | Titles |
|---|
# | % |
|---|
| Minneapolis | 62 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Atlanta | 57 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Buffalo | 57 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Cincinnati | 57 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Houston | 52 | 0 | 0.00% |
| San Diego | 51 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Phoenix | 35 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Charlotte | 28 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Jacksonville | 28 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Nashville | 25 | 0 | 0.00% |
| New Orleans | 56 | 1 | 1.79% |
| St. Louis | 49 | 1 | 2.04% |
| Seattle | 47 | 1 | 2.13% |
| Indianapolis | 39 | 1 | 2.56% |
One final note: these stats would definitely change a bit if I consider AFL championships, which I'm not currently doing. The Bills actually did win one of those. If I factor those in, I'll make an update with the new data.
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