A Poor Four-For-Four
It could soon be four straight non-winning seasons for Philly sports teams.
One of the advantages in having a team in each of the four major sports is that rarely is the time when none are good ... "good" here being defined as finishing with a record over .500.
Ladies and gentlemen of Philadelphia, welcome to "rarely."
Assuming the NHL season is shot — and all indications are that it is — and that Andrew Bynum is no closer to appearing in a Sixers game than I am, it will be four consecutive seasons that none of the Philly teams will have finished over .500. That will be the third-longest stretch of mediocrity for the city since the Flyers debuted in 1967 to make it a four-for-four town.
The city went six straight seasons (1971-72) without a club with a winning record once, and five straight (1993-94) another time.
Conversely, there is the stretch of 19 consecutive winning seasons by the four teams, running from the 1977-78 winter campaigns through the 1982 Phillies. (And boy, what we wouldn't give for that kind of run now.)
Below are the seasons (chronologically) in which each team finished with a record over .500. The "P" column indicates number of rounds advanced by that team in the postseason.