The 2011 New York Giants tilted the NFL on its axis. Ever since the institution of the salary cap in 1994, the league had always been defined by the shifting sands created by its parity. But the playoffs and a 16-game regular season had done a good job weeding out the riffraff. There might’ve been new and surprising Super Bowl champs on occasion, but the trophy ceremony always made sense. Parity with purpose, or so it seemed.

The Giants changed the paradigm in 2011. They were exceedingly mediocre throughout the regular season, and they made the playoffs despite a 6-6 record with four games left. They squeaked into the postseason mixer with a 9-7 mark and ended up winning the whole thing. It remains one of the feats of modern sports.

But it also raises a good question. Purely in terms of wins and losses, the Giants are the “worst” Super Bowl winner in history. Which means there’s never been a Super Bowl winner that finished the regular season at .500, let alone with a losing record. Even the league that flaunts its parity above all other leagues, arguably the first in the world to hammer that nail with this kind of consistency and hard cap restriction, hasn’t been that much of a blender.

What about MLS?

You’ve heard ad nausium the argument that good regular season teams aren’t rewarded nearly enough in the postseason. After a 34-game schedule, it’s kind of a crapshoot over the final vaults to the tape. As a result, MLS has endured endless tweaks to a playoff format that’s still on the move. The away goals rule was the newest implementation this year, and it notably kept the Sounders from the MLS Cup. The one thing you can count on in this league is more change, so don’t get too cozy with the current format just yet.

Now that MLS has played through 19 seasons (the NFL’s cap turned 21 this year, so we can make our comparisons with a free conscience), we can start pulling out trends. Notably, how MLS stacks up in terms of parity with an American pro sports landscape that follows the formula with similar fervor. Even Major League Baseball couldn’t avoid a luxury tax for over-spenders. We obviously can’t look abroad, but we can turn the gaze inward to see just how much MLS values and rewards parity.

First, here’s a quick glimpse at every MLS Cup champion since 1996, their record and their points total. Please note that from 1996-2000 teams played 32 games, they played a mixture of 27 and 28 games in 2001, 28 games in 2002, 30 in 2003-04, 32 games in 2005-06, 30 games in 2007-09 and 34 since 2010. So records reflect some of that change, but nothing drastically different.

1996

D.C. United (16-16-0, 46 points)

1997

D.C. United (21-11-0, 55 points)

1998

Chicago Fire (20-12-0, 56 points)

1999

D.C. United (23-9-0, 57 points)

2000

Kansas City Wizards (16-7-9, 57 points)

2001

San Jose Earthquakes (13-7-6, 45 points)

2002

LA Galaxy (16-9-3, 51 points)

2003

San Jose Earthquakes (14-7-9, 51 points)

2004

D.C. United (11-10-9, 42 points)

2005

LA Galaxy (13-13-6, 45 points)

2006

Houston Dynamo (11-8-13, 46 points)

2007

Houston Dynamo (15-8-7, 52 points)

2008

Columbus Crew (17-7-6, 57 points)

2009

Real Salt Lake (11-12-7, 40 points)

2010

Colorado Rapids (12-8-10, 46 points)

2011

LA Galaxy (19-5-10, 67 points)

2012

LA Galaxy (16-12-6, 54 points)

2013

Sporting Kansas City (17-10-7, 58 points)

2014

LA Galaxy (17-7-10, 61 points)

MLS had flirted with championship teams that lost more than they won in the regular season. The first MLS champ in history finished a flat .500, and the 2005 Galaxy knocked off No. 1 Earthquakes 4-2 on aggregate in the first round despite a 13-13-6 record. Mathematically, that’s a .500 season. But 2009 was a historic year for professional sports in America. In a few ways.

The worst team to ever win a championship in a major professional sport were the 1937-38 Chicago Blackhawks. Their .385 winning percentage revealed a 14-25-9 record that garnered 37 points out of a possible 96. The only other team to ever win a championship in one of the traditional four major American pro sports with a losing record were the Toronto Maple Leafs, who went 22-25-13 in the 1948-49 NHL season. There had not been another until 2009. When RSL joined the party.

It’s understandable that ESPN’s stats bureau left off MLS in their calculations considering it isn’t a traditional member of the power four, which were under collective scrutiny. But now that the hegemony is changing (or has changed, depending on your reliance of attendance figures over TV ratings), it’s time we included 2009 Real Salt Lake in these calculations. Which would put them in mighty rarified air.

RSL won 40 of a possible 90 points in 2009 (remember, 30-game schedule). That’s a percentage of 44 percent, the worst for an American pro sports team that won a championship in 76 years. The 2011 Giants, in sum, have nothing on 2009 Real Salt Lake. RSL is the only team to win a professional championship in America with more regular season losses than wins since the Eisenhower administration.

The fact that MLS has had three champions with a .500 regular season record or worse in its relatively short 18-year history speaks loudly and abrasively about the league’s parity. To put it succinctly, even other American leagues that use a cap and allocation mechanisms aren’t. Even. Close. And it’s also telling that RSL’s mad season didn’t come during the MLS 1.0 period when everything seemed up for grabs. This was in the DP era.

It is important to note that in any league, championship teams with poor regular season records are outliers. A significant number of MLS’ trophy winners hit the upper 50’s in points, and the average is 54.7. But it’s also notable that even amongst American leagues that value the blinding lack of consistency created by parity-driven roster jumbles, MLS stands alone.

Reasons are beyond the scope of this column, and frankly beyond the scope of any one column. But an intensely restrictive salary cap that forces an incredible roster churn and kills depth, especially among teams that rely on three DPs, creates openings for enterprising teams that endured brutal regular season runs. Look at New England’s up-and-down 2014.

In any case, MLS will continue tweaking its playoff format as it tries to better reward regular season success without killing a postseason it has decided to marry. In the meantime, MLS teams will continue to set their own playoff agenda, winning record or not.