The 29 most hopeless fan bases in professional sports

26. Miami Dolphins

Last championship: 1973

Last winning season: 2008

The good news: the Miami Dolphins endure as the only team to go undefeated for an entire NFL season. And on the back of that, they followed up that season with yet another Super Bowl win the following season.

Now the bad news: that was 43 years ago. Since then, the Dolphins have done little to nothing in the way of meeting expectations. In the early 80s, under the guiding hand of Don Shula and the arm of Dan Marino (later on, anyway), the Dolphins twice reached the Super Bowl, and were twice defeated handily. Since that time, the Fins have bided their time striking a clumsy balancing act between missed expectations and simply being a flat-out disappointment.

From 1990 to 2001, the Dolphins regularly made the playoffs, but never moved past the divisional round. As a matter of fact, in Marino’s tenure, the Dolphins made the playoffs 10 times, but did not move past the divisional round after 1992. In Marino’s final three playoff trips, the Dolphins lost elimination games by a combined score of 117-13.

So the lows have not just been low; they’ve been one-foot-in-the-grave. Speaking of which, that’s the margin by which the Dolphins avoided becoming the first NFL team to go ‘defeated’ in 2007, when an overtime victory salvaged their only win of the season. Over the proceeding 14 years, the Dolphins have made only one playoff appearance and have not had a winning record since 2008.

Miami will always have an undefeated season to hang its hat on. Beyond that, though it’s been a whole lot of cloudy days rolling over South Beach.

Next: 25. New York Knicks