This weekend the Kansas City Chiefs nearly had to forfeit their game against the New England Patriots. One of the shipping containers with equipment for about half the team didn’t get unloaded from the plane on Saturday. Normally the team equipment managers have the locker rooms all set up on Saturday, but Foxboro stadium was hosting state championship games on Saturday, so the problem wasn’t discovered until Sunday morning. By that time the plane was in Newark NJ. The equipment made it to the stadium just a couple of hours before game time on Sunday, but if it hadn’t gotten there the Chiefs would have had to forfeit the game.
Which made me wonder, when was the last time a professional sports team actually had to forfeit a game?
The 1995 dodgers forfeited a game to the Cardinals. Fans throwing souvenir baseballs onto the field I believe. That was the most recent MLB forfeit. Not sure about other sports.
Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but in 2002 Sheffield United had 3 players sent off in a game against West Bromwich Albion, in a First Division league game (which, confusingly, was the second tier of English professional football at the time). Two of their remaining players then suffered injuries, leaving them with only 6 men on the field, at which point the referee abandoned the match due to a team fielding insufficient players (the guideline minimum being 7). This resulted in Sheffield United forfeiting the game, it being recorded as a 0-3 loss (which was also the score at the time of the abandonment; I’m not sure if this fact was relevant or just coincidental, as a nominal score of 3-0 is often awarded in the case of a walkover, but this situation was a bit different).
Middlesborough voluntarily didn’t show up to a premier league football game in 1996 against Blackburn - the team apparently had the flu. Was greeted with incredulity IIRC as even if this was true you’d play the reserve side rather than forfeit the match which is unheard of in football. Even at lower tiers of the game that would be unusual let alone the top flight.
They were docked 3 points and fined, and ended up being relegated that season adrift by two points. So it was an extremely bad and costly decision to forfeit the match.
Even if they couldn’t set up everything in the locker room on Saturday, you’d think they could have taken an inventory; count up the number of containers, or something. I find it interesting that a team travels with so much stuff that when helmets and pads for 30 players are missing it’s not immediately obvious.
I know, right? I mean, I’m sure the airline is responsible for unloading the plane, but I would expect the equipment managers to have a manifest that they check against to make sure everything is loaded and unloaded. Someone really dropped the ball, no pun intended.
Women’s pro basketball in the US (WNBA) had a forfeit last year. The Las Vegas Aces spent 25+ hours traveling to Washington to play the Mystics. After the travel nightmare, the Aces requested that the game be postponed to another date, and refused to play. The league later declared it to be a forfeit.
Somehow I highly doubt the game would have been a forfeit. The NFL would have moved it to Monday night since the scheduled Monday night game is a stinker. They’d show Giants/Eagles in those markets and then Chiefs/Pats nationwide.
I know NFL games have been shifted but I couldn’t remember which ones. Per Wikipedia:
[ul]
[li]December 26, 2010 game between the Vikings and Eagles was moved to Tuesday, December 28 because of a snowstorm. [/li]
[li]In November 23, 2014, the Jets and Bills game in Buffalo was moved to Detroit for November 2.[/li]
[li]Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were postponed from September 10, 2017 to November 19 because both had bye weeks at that date.[/li][/ul]
After reading, I remember that the Jets and Bills got moved to Detroit. I thought that was an odd choice, but they had to play somewhere.
But CBS, which was broadcasting the Kansas City/New England game would have protested losing that game to ESPN, which broadcasts the Monday night game.
And when would you play the already scheduled Eagles/Giants game? You couldn’t get them to a stadium in time to play on Sunday. So you’d have to play two games on Monday.
And, relatedly, the White Sox had to forfeit the second game of a double-header against the Tigers in 1979 due to the infamous “Disco Demolition Night” incident, which damaged the field.
Not entirely what I was expecting. The game was called a forfeit with 1 out in the bottom of the 9th. The final score is listed as a 2-1 STL victory (not the standard 9-0 forfeit score).
For the last forfeit in MLB without a pitch being thrown, I think we’d have to go back to Disco Demolition Night in 1979 when the CHW were forced to forfeit the second game of a doubleheader against DET. Strangely, that game is listed on Baseball Reference as a DET victory with a 0-0 score in 0 innings (again, not the standard 9-0 score).
NFL moved all the games on the weekend after 9/11 to January. Baseball took a couple days off after 9/11. NBA and NHL were in preseason or training camps so there was little impact.
