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petecldUnless you plan to double print cards ahead of time like the 33 Goudey set, and of course there can be exceptions to the rule, but from a printing (production) view point it is expensive to halt production to delete one or more teams and add another to produce more cards of that team. It's certainly possible, but not probable.
Your statement "...The other possiblity is that the collectors kept the cards of the better teams while disregarding the poor team's cards...." makes complete sense to me.