Syracuse Football, Basketball On Pace for One of Worst Combined Seasons in 40 Years

I hate losing. I hate when my teams lose. And I especially hate when Syracuse teams lose. As you may have guessed, that means I've hated a lot about the last six months of Orange sports. It make all of this (college fandom, writing, etc.) less fun, as I'm sure you'd all agree. But just how historically bad have things been for Orange football and basketball for 2014-15?

Historically, so, actually.

Going back on when Jim Boeheim started in 1976-77, and running through now, this would be the first time neither program made it to any sort of postseason. It's among just five instances where there wasn't a bowl game or NCAA Tournament appearance. And the current combined winning percentage of the two teams (.514) is currently third-to-last in the examined timeframe. With eight games left, we can sink as low as last for this year, or as high as high as seventh-to-last. That's... bad.

The rundown of the 10 worst seasons (with this year's included based on current basketball W-L). I promise I'll get to the positive end of this spectrum shortly.

Due to simply having more games, the basketball team is always going to have a larger effect on the overall winning percentage, which was the main impetus behind including postseason results as well. Every NIT season but one (2001-02) is included above, and the 1992-93 basketball team's postseason ban season actually had plenty of wins, so it's much higher up on the list. Also, for a further glimpse into how your humble #disloyalidiot became the cynic he is, you'll notice two of the six worst seasons occurred while he was on campus (2007-08 and 2006-07). The 2008-09 season (which I was around for as well) is also on there. Things were rough from 2006-10, as most of know.

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Not to be all gloom-and-doom, however, we can take a look at the top 10 seasons too. There are some of the expected ones in there for sure, and perhaps some less-than-expected ones as well.

Something we've never really considered when it comes to Syracuse sports is that many of the most successful football seasons seem to coincide with the most successful basketball seasons -- there's only one season in the top 10 that doesn't have a bowl game, and even then -- it wasn't all that far away (SU went 5-7 in 2011). Also of note, just one Final Four season is above, which seems weird until you (regrettably) remember that a lot of the Orange's most successful regular seasons did not end the way they were "supposed to."

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Since there are more than 20 seasons in the Jim Boeheim era, you probably want to see the entire list, sorted by winning percentage too. I've included that below:

(*note that in several seasons, win percentage may not appear to match up to the numbers -- these seasons featured ties in football, which count as .05 toward the overall win percentage).

So there it is. We're already pre-destined for this season to be a disaster, historically, and it could very well be the worst one when it's all said and done. And to avoid ending on a super-negative note: the National Championship season being so middle-of-the-road just seems strange to me.

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But what do you think? Obviously there are few trends to grab onto here -- the best seasons are followed up by the worst ones, and vice versa (see, in particular, last year vs. this one). But anything else folks would like to glean from all of this, have at it.