The 8 Most Unlikely Champions Who Staged The Biggest Turnarounds In Sports History

It’s hard not to appreciate a good underdog story, and the world of sports has produced countless tales on that front. That includes a number of teams that managed to overcome decades of irrelevance or rebound from a dark period before winning a title after staging a turnaround most people never saw coming.

These teams staged the most impressive turnarounds in sports history on their way to winning a championship

Every sports team experiences its fair share of ups and downs, and fans can only hope they’ll eventually be rewarded for enduring the lowest of lows by seeing their squad turn things around to win a championship.

Remaining optimistic is easier said than done when your team is down bad, but there are some notable examples that provide a glimmer of hope.

Indiana Hoosiers Football

We’ll kick things off with the onus for this list: the Indiana Hoosiers, who headed into the 2024 season with one of the worst winning percentages and the most losses of any FBS team.

Curt Cignetti inherited a program that was coming off a 3-9 season and had never won a national championship despite having a history stretching all the way back to 1887.

He didn’t waste any time working his magic by leading Indiana to an 11-2 record while clinching a spot in the College Football Playoff, and while they fell short that year, they rebounded by going 16-0 during a season where Fernando Mendoza became the first Hoosier to win the Heisman and led his team to a title.

Team USA Hockey

The Soviet Union headed to the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid as the overwhelming favorite to win the gold medal in men’s hockey for the fifth time in a row.

I previously did a deep dive into just how outmatched the United States was heading into the tournament, and there was nothing to suggest the ragtag squad comprised of college hockey players was going to be able to hold their own against the de facto professionals from the USSR.

However, Team USA managed to do exactly that in what was deservedly dubbed the Miracle on Ice, as they secured a 4-3 victory before going on to beat Finland to win the gold.

The “Miracle Mets”

The Mets played their inaugural season in 1962, and the team never came close to sniffing a winning record while finishing at or near the bottom of the National League standings during the first seven seasons of its existence.

The 73-89 record the Mets posted in 1968 was the high-water mark for the young franchise, but there wasn’t really any evidence to suggest they were going to transform into contenders at any point in the immediate future.

However, the team that was nicknamed the “Miracle Mets” ended up going 100-61 to finish at the top of the NL East in 1969. They swept the Braves in the NLCS and defeated the Orioles in five games to earn one of the most shocking World Series victories in MLB history.

Chicago Cubs

The Red Sox overcame plenty of adversity to bring the “Curse of the Bambino” to an end after 86 years in 2004, but they had fielded a fairly competitive team in the years leading up to that cathartic triumph.

The same cannot be said for the Cubs, who headed into the 2015 season in the midst of a stretch where Chicago missed the playoffs six years in a row while posting a losing record in five consecutive campaigns.

However, they showed some major progress by clinching a wild card spot with a 97-65 record and made it to the NLCS before getting swept by the Mets.

The team returned with a vengeance in 2016 and won the NL Central with a 103-58 record. They beat the Giants and Dodgers to punch their ticket to the World Series before defeating Cleveland in seven games to bring a 108-year title drought to an end.

St. Louis Rams

The Rams were a perennial playoff contender in the 1970s and 1980s, but they were riding a nine-year postseason drought while posting a losing record in all of those campaigns heading into the final year of the millennium in 1999.

The franchise had been trending in the wrong direction since relocating to St. Louis in 1995, as they’d gone 7-9, 6-10, 5-11, and 4-12 in the four seasons leading up to that one. However, they not only managed to avoid going 3-13 but ended up with the top seed in the NFC with a 13-3 record.

Kurt Warner emerged as an incredibly unlikely hero who was named the MVP of the regular season, and he also earned the same honor after leading the Rams to a 23-16 win over the Titans in Super Bowl XXXIV.

San Francisco 49ers

There aren’t many scenarios where an NFL team is happy about finishing at 6-10, but the 49ers had to be somewhat satisfied with that result in 1979 after going 2-14 in back-to-back seasons.

Bill Walsh was responsible for the second one after getting off to an inauspicious start as the head coach in San Francisco in 1978, and there was still plenty of work to do after he tripled their win total.

The 49ers also came out of nowhere to win the NFC with a 13-3 record in 1981, and they beat the Giants in the divisional round before “The Catch” helped them advance past the Cowboys. They faced off against the Bengals in Super Bowl XVI and won the first of the four Super Bowls they’d secure by the time the 1980s wrapped up.

Dallas Cowboys

This one is slightly less notable than the other two NFL examples I’ve mentioned so far, as the Cowboys won two Super Bowls in the 1970s and made the playoffs 18 times in 20 seasons starting in 1965.

However, they experienced a vicious downturn after that streak came to an end when they posted a 7-9 record during the 1986 season. They treaded water by going 7-8 record the following year before cratering to 3-13 in 1988, and Jerry Jones did not inspire much confidence when they went 1-15 during his first season as their owner.

However, Dallas rebounded and was just three years removed from that dismal showing when they won the NFC East with a 13-3 record en route to defeating the Bills in Super Bowl XXVII, the first of back-to-back championships and the start of a dynasty that saw the Cowboys win three in four years.

Leicester City

Leicester City is commonly cited as one of the most unlikely underdog stories in the history of sports, and there’s a reason that’s the case.

The club had a history stretching back to the start of the 1890s but had never come close to becoming an English soccer powerhouse. They earned a promotion to the Premier League ahead of the 2014-15 campaign, but finished in 14th place before heading into the next one listed as 500-1 underdogs to hoist the cup for the first time.

The world was subsequently treated to an Cinderalla story for the ages as Leicester City got off to a hot start and simply refused to cool off. They still had two games remaining on the schedule when they clinched the Premier League title on May 2nd, 2016,  and while they were eventually relegated to the Champions League, they’ll always have that magical moment.