Elimination from possibility of reaching postseason

History

In the early days of organized sports, clubs were essentially gate-driven enterprises that depended on ticket sales for most of their revenue. Elimination from contention to reach the postseason (or, if there was no postseason, to win the league championship) often served to seriously diminish interest in the team's remaining schedule from their fan base.

Compounding this issue was that sports leagues in this era generally operated on the principle that a visiting team was entitled to a percentage of the gate receipts. If this cut was insufficient to meet the costs of making the trip, the visiting team would often be reluctant to travel, let alone play, especially if they were also out of championship contention.

Often, especially in the early days of baseball, team owners deemed it more profitable to forfeit scheduled league games in order to play more lucrative exhibition contests.

The establishment of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs in 1876 was the first serious effort to eliminate this practice, as the NL adhered to a strictly-enforced policy of expelling teams that refused to honor scheduling commitments. Further to this, in the early days of the NL, the league had (and often enforced) a policy of moving games to an opponent's stadium in the event that the paid attendance fell to the point where visiting teams would be left unable to meet their expenses to make the trip.

The most notorious case of this came in 1899, when the Cleveland Spiders recorded the worst season in Major League Baseball history. At the time, games moved to opponents' stadiums were recorded as road games, and with paid attendances in Cleveland being anemic, the Spiders had 35 of their 77 home games moved. They finished with 101 road losses, a record that cannot be broken under modern MLB scheduling rules, and the Spiders folded after the 1899 season.

Modern era

While a team that has been officially eliminated must still play its remaining games, the team's behavior may differ from one that is striving for the postseason or has already clinched the playoffs. And among those "eliminated" teams, the team's behavior will vary.

Oftentimes a team would be eliminated from clinching a division title, home field advantage or other postseason advantages but the wildcard or lower seeded spot might still up for grabs thus some teams may play with an effort to win in order to choose its first round opponents.

When the team is eliminated entirely from postseason contention it does not need to worry about winning to qualify for the postseason, the urgency to win may be lower. As a result, coaches may give playing time to backup and other lesser players who would not be used when a win is urgent, thereby giving them some real-game experience in an attempt to develop them. This is especially true at the high school and college levels, especially if a coach sees a number of players that are "promising." Former starters (such as seniors on a high school or college team) will often still be asked to play a role in helping develop their younger teammates, but their roles may be different than before. Additionally, a team may take greater risks during the remaining games in order for players to master new skills or try plays a coaching staff believes will help them win in the future. And if a team has many younger players the coaching staff will sometimes play different combinations of players to see which ones work best together, another building block for future seasons.

Often, an eliminated team will now have the opportunity to play the role of spoiler – that is, possibly eliminate one or more teams from contention that had a chance to make the playoffs (especially if they were "on the bubble," or holding one of the lowest qualifying positions while still in contention and, as a result, their own qualification depends on the outcomes of other games and/or other teams' performances) or – if the opponent is in the playoffs, cause them to get a lower seed in the elimination tournament and/or lose home field advantage they had already provisionally secured.

Pride and opportunity also play into eliminated teams still striving to achieve victory on multiple occasions. These teams often want to go down swinging – that is, play their best even if there isn't a realistic chance they can defeat, much less compete with, future opponents. Sometimes, teams will still have to play an opponent they have a good chance of defeating, even if the opponent has made the playoffs: The teams may match up well on the field and have comparable playing ability, despite a disparity in win-loss records; the other team has players who are unavailable (starters are resting, key players are injured or suspended, etc.); or the opponent is from a lower division and, even with the opponent's excellent win-loss record, the team with the losing record can rather easily outmatch the opponent and, although with some work, readily achieve victory. For cases such as a divisional or geographical rivalry, a losing team nearly always puts in effort against their rival as it would be considered bad form by the fans of either team, along with the players and outside observers to not play with a full effort against a team which is considered the rival most identified with by a team.

Other reasons eliminated teams still try hard to win include achieving an improvement over the previous year's record, attempting to finish the season with a winning record (especially if winning the final game is needed to achieve that goal), or the team wants to avoid the stigma of a last place finish or worse, if they have yet to win, a winless season. For teams in sports that have been eliminated from a wild-card berth but qualifying is still possible by winning a conference tournament, the objective might be to win as many games as possible to try to earn as high of a seed as possible for the conference tournament, thereby increasing their chances of making the playoffs after all.

Teams that operate as for-profit operations may still be compelled to put a competitive product on display, to ensure fans continue to attend the games and purchase tickets. This is less of an issue at the major professional levels, where a greater portion of revenue comes from television rights fees that are locked into contracts years in advance. In league systems that operate using promotion and relegation, even if a team may be eliminated from a postseason tournament, it may have to continue to play at a competitive level to avoid being relegated to a lower league (and thus lose revenue).

In some cases, a team with a bad losing record may attempt to achieve the worst record in the league in order to attain a high draft pick. This is sometimes referred to as "tanking" the remainder of the season, and is sometimes done by putting players on the field that are too young and/or inexperienced to realistically be expected to win many games. Conversely, if the team is planning on making changes to its roster or coaching staff as a result of the poor performance, it may do so during this time in order to give new players and coaches some experience and try to keep players – those who may be sought by other teams – with their team.^[1]

Still, in some cases, a team with a losing record – or one that has yet to win – may not even try to win and/or play very poorly in the remainder of their games; in other words, they "quit," even against other teams that are eliminated and/or have performed exceptionally poorly during the season. Here, the philosophy might be that the current season is best forgotten once concluded, and that with changes (sometimes wholesale) during the offseason things will be better in the future. Often, these cases arise when:

• Team and/or player morale is poor.
• A coach is seen as a poor fit or otherwise does not relate well with others – players and other coaches, the media, his superiors and so forth – and a change in leadership is apparently forthcoming or desired. Often, there will be rumors of a coach's departure – often by dismissal or forced resignation – once the season is concluded, with said rumors often beginning several games before the end of the season. This will be true, even at the high school level.
• With most or all pre-season goals – and new and adjusted goals made as the season progresses – no longer achievable, the team no longer sees any value or worth in their remaining games, even if some of those games are considered by others to be "winnable."
• In sports where there is a high rate of injury, the risk of going onto the field for a meaningless game, and subsequently suffering a serious injury, outweighs the mostly nonexistent benefits. (See also: resting the starters)
• The team is protesting against the league. In 2003, St. Bonaventure University's basketball team protested sanctions the NCAA levied against the team (the NCAA stripped the team of all their wins and barred them from the 2003 Atlantic 10 Men's Basketball Tournament for having a transfer student with inadequate academic credentials on the squad) by outright forfeiting the last two games of the season.^[2]

The National Hockey League and National Basketball Association both impose a draft lottery to discourage teams from deliberately tanking the rest of their season for a higher draft pick. The injection of random luck into the draft process can have the unintended consequence of depriving a team that is legitimately deprived of talent the opportunity to acquire a top prospect (this is especially true of the NHL, where because players are drafted at a younger age compared to the NFL or NBA and must typically complete junior and minor league development before reaching the majors, there is typically only one NHL-ready prospect in any given draft).