Methodology
How the Misery Score works
The Misery Score is one number, 0 to 100, for how much a team has made its fans suffer. Higher is more miserable. It is built to be defensible: the same inputs always produce the same score, the rules are the same for every team, and nothing here is a matter of opinion.
One number, computed the same way for everyone
Every franchise is run through the identical formula. The Misery Score does not know which team you back, and it cannot be nudged by fame, market size, or narrative. Two teams with the same history get the same score — that neutrality is the whole point, and it is what makes the number worth arguing about.
The same formula runs for every team, and the data it reads is public. The app, the share card, and the head-to-head duel all read from that one formula — there is no second, secret version of the number.
The five things it measures
Five emotional signals feed the score. Each captures a different flavor of suffering:
Title drought
The seasons piling up since the last championship. A new title resets the count to zero.
Title scarcity
How rarely the team has ever won it all. A few titles ease the ache; none leaves it raw.
Final heartbreak
Defeats in the title-deciding game. The cruelest near-misses, replayed for decades after.
Losing seasons
Sub-.500 years stacking up one after another. The slow grind, not the single gut-punch.
Collapses
Postseason implosions — blowout exits, and favorites folding when it mattered the most.
How the signals become a score
Each signal is measured against a fixed reference — the point at which that kind of pain is as bad as it realistically gets. A drought saturates at 40 seasons, 3 championships fully relieve title scarcity, 4 final losses is peak heartbreak, and 6 collapses is peak trauma.
The signals are then blended into a single 0–100 number. Each league sets how much every signal counts — a sport where a single game decides the title leans harder on heartbreak than one decided by a long series. Winning always pulls the score down: a recent title shortens the drought and eases the scarcity in the same pass.
What the number means
The 0–100 range splits into four named bands. The color of a score is fixed to its band:
Where the history comes from
The season-by-season record each score is built on is compiled from public results into a static dataset the app ships with. No hand-picked lowlights, no editorializing — just the record, run through the same formula for every team. If you think a number is wrong, it is a question about the data or the weights, and both are out in the open.