For the purposes of this site:
The first NFL season is the 1933 season
The first NBA season is the 1946-47 season
The first MLB season is the 1901 season
The first NHL season is the 1917-18 season

All division games in standings are considered a subset of conference games, except for the MLB standings, where the league games are the games against the other division(s) in that team's league.

For the MLS, I have decided to treat the results like the rest of the leagues, with "visitor at home", "wins-losses-ties", etc. Call it being an ugly American on my part but I can't follow what's going on the "soccer" way.

In creating the standings during the season, tie-breakers are not applied. They ARE reflected in the final standings, however, except for the college football standings.

Teams on probation are not taken into account when figuring college football standings or NCAA tournament results.

If two or more teams are tied at a given percentage, they're ranked by the number of wins, for example:
2-2 is tied with 2-2-x, and ranked above:
1-1, which is tied with 1-1-x, and ranked above 0-0-x.
Also, 4-2 is ranked above 2-1; 1-2 is ranked below 2-4; 0-3 is ranked above 0-4.

MLB tie games are treated as if they never existed, since they were never listed in the standings, and aren't on this site, either.

The Baltimore Bullets folded in the middle of the 1954-55 NBA season, and later their games were eliminated from the standings for all the teams. As a result, any games they played that season are not listed here. A new Baltimore Bullets franchise resurfaced during the 1963-64 season.

The Washington Capitols folded in the middle of the 1950-51 NBA season. However, their games did count in the standings. Therefore, their games are listed here.

For the NBA, MLB, and NHL final standings, I have a convention for showing which team won each game in a given playoff series. There is a capital W or L when the home team won, lowercase when the visiting team won, and w's of either upper or lowercase when the winner of the series won that game. So every series ends with a 'w' of some sort. Hopefully you'll recognize the pattern :)