One evening after the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff concluded with four blowout games staged on campus, ESPN host Scott Van Pelt and football analyst Tim Hasselbeck held a conversation that mirrored many like it taking place on social media and in barrooms.
The host teams won by an average of 19.3 points, and the closest outcome was Notre Dame’s 10-point victory against Indiana. Two games — Penn State over SMU (28 points) and Ohio State over Tennessee (25) — were non-competitive. Texas’ 14-point win against ACC champion Clemson was decisive as well.
“Are these the games you want?” Van Pelt asked the former NFL quarterback. “No one can be sitting there and going, ‘You want these blowout games.’”
Hasselbeck responded, “We’re going to have blowouts in these NFL games, too.”
The loud and contentious debate about whether Indiana and SMU deserved CFP at-large bids overshadowed the reality of postseason football in both college and the NFL. There are at least as many blowouts as there are memorable finishes. That was true in the four-team Playoff era, which began in 2014, and as Hasselbeck pointed out, it’s true in the NFL during the same time frame.
Since the Playoff system debuted following the 2014 season, there have been 40 CFP games. The average margin of victory in those games is 17.5 points. During the same time frame, there were 124 NFL playoff games, including 10 Super Bowls. The average margin of victory was 11.1 points per contest.
One fact has emerged from the CFP and NFL playoff data. No matter the round, location, level or seeding, it’s a coin flip whether postseason football produces a competitive game or a blowout. The numbers bear that out.
CFP average margin of victory
| Games | Margin | |
|---|---|---|
|
First round |
4 |
19.3 |
|
Quarterfinals |
4 |
14.5 |
|
Semifinals |
22 |
16.5 |
|
Championship |
10 |
20.1 |
|
Total |
40 |
17.5 |
CFP data
The non-competitive nature of the CFP’s first round produced knee-jerk reactions and wild takes largely because of the participants. But the scoring margin was comparable to what transpired in the previous decade. Three of the four first-round CFP games were decided by at least 11 points, and two had victory margins exceeding 20 points.
Pundits largely scoffed at Indiana, which scored two late touchdowns at Notre Dame before falling 27-17 in the first-round curtain raiser. But of the 10 CFP games this season, it has had the third-closest result.
“This team earned it, the right to be here,” Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said afterward. “I’m not sure we proved that tonight to a lot of people.”
Regarding CFP history, Indiana’s loss ranked in the upper third as far as competitive final scores. Since the CFP’s debut in 2014, there were more games decided by 20-plus points (17) than by one score (12). More than two-thirds of the games (27) featured a margin of at least 11 points.
In 10 seasons, the CFP’s least competitive round was the championship. Only three of the 10 were decided by one score ,and all three took place from 2015-17 between Alabama and either Clemson (twice) or Georgia (once). The Bulldogs’ 65-7 romp over TCU concluding the 2022 season pushed the average margin to 20.1 points for the title round. While that score was an outlier, five of the 10 championship margins exceeded 20 points.
“These types of margins that we experienced in the first round of the College Football Playoff happen all the time,” Fox college football analyst Joel Klatt said on his podcast following the first round this year. “It’s been happening in the College Football Playoff four-team model forever. We’ve had some absolute duds for semifinals and in the championship game.
“And hey, by the way, there’s large margins in the NFL as well.”
NFL playoff margin of victory since 2014
| Games | Margin | |
|---|---|---|
|
Wild card |
54 |
11.9 |
|
Divisional |
40 |
9.9 |
|
Championship |
20 |
12.6 |
|
Super Bowl |
10 |
8.4 |
|
Total |
124 |
11.1 |
NFL Playoff data
The NFL playoff model largely mirrored college football’s postseason results. Five of the six wild-card games last weekend were decided by at least 12 points — two eclipsed 20 points — and the average margin of victory was 15.2 points per game.
There was little variance between the AFC and NFC. In the 54 wild-card games, the average margin was 11.9 points per game (12.7 in the AFC, 11.2 in the NFC). Of the games at non-neutral sites, the divisional round featured the closest margin of victory on average with 40 contests decided by 9.9 points per game (10.9 in the AFC, 8.8 in the NFC). The championship round victory margin was 12.6 points per game (10.7 in the AFC, 14.4 in the NFC).
The Super Bowl’s recent run of competitive contests has become an anomaly to the overall data. Once derided for perpetual disappointment on the big stage — from 1982 through 1996 every NFL title game except for two featured at least a 10-point margin — the NFL championship game generated the closest outcomes of any playoff round (8.4 points per game). Six of the most recent 10 Super Bowls have been decided by one score, and only one featured a margin beyond 14 points.
But for the 114 NFL playoff games at home sites, the percentage of competitive NFL contests alongside blowouts was comparable to the college game.
Home field, one-score games
Perhaps the most coincidental statistic concerns home-field advantage. In both the AFC and NFC, home teams were 38-19 (76-38 combined) in 10-plus seasons, winning exactly two-thirds of the playoff games from the 2014 postseason onward. Home teams won by an average of 13.1 points per game, while road teams won by 7.9 points per contest.
In 10 seasons, top-seeded teams in both the AFC and NFC were 14-4 in the postseason, combining for a 28-8 overall record. Top seeds won by an average of 14.1 points per game, and their losses came by an average of 5.8 points per game.
With home-field advantage, seeding impacts the NFL much more than in college football, which applied it for the first time this year. All four teams hosting CFP games won, but the top four seeds earned a bye and have yet to host a game on campus. Combining the four on-campus contests with the 36 neutral-site CFP games, the higher seed posted a 21-19 overall record but was just 3-9 in games decided by one score. In one-sided contests featuring victories by more than one score, the higher-seeded team won 64.3 percent of the time. Top-ranked teams were 12-7 in CFP action, winning by 21.1 points per game and losing by 13.9 points per game.
Since 2014, the NFL postseason featured almost an even split between one-score games and blowouts. Of the 114 playoff games played at host sites, 59 (51.8 percent) were determined by one score while 53 (46.5 percent) were decided by 11 points or more.
College football has a lower percentage of one-score CFP contests with 12 of the 40 (30 percent) fitting in that category whereas 27 (67.5 percent) had margins that exceeded 11 points. Perhaps in the clearest difference between the NFL and college football, 42.5 percent of CFP games featured a margin of at least 20 points while only 16.7 percent of NFL games landed in that category.
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; Photos: David Madison, Perry Knotts, Joseph Weiser / Getty Images)
