The Blowout Directory

The NFL craves parity. Failing that, it will take basic competitiveness, and the league largely succeeds in that goal. In just six NFL games last season, the defeated team lost by 35 points or more. Even the 2-14 Bengals only had four games decided by more than two touchdowns.

Meanwhile, during the 2019 college football season, 158 games ended with one team ahead by at least 35 points. Talent and resource disparities, stylistic differences, and the sheer number of additional games in college explain the existence of the gulf, but that number’s also been going up over time. To be fair, college football teams have added a significant number of games over that stretch. The 2019 season, including bowls and the Playoff, had 888 FBS games. That’s 78 more than were played in 2009 and202 more than were played in 1999.

35’s a somewhat arbitrary number to draw the line between blowout/non-blowout. Notre Dame lost the 2013 BCS National Championship to Alabama by 28, and nobody thought “well, that was a squeaker!” But at 35 points, the losing team would’ve needed at least five scores just to tie the game. A loss by fewer points might be a blowout; getting beat by 35 or more is indisputably so.

Using that definition of blowout, I compiled some data from 1990 through 2019 to see which teams have handed out the most extirpations over that span.

I also made this list of teams who have been on the business end of a blowout the most.

A few interesting tidbits from those two sets:

• Iowa State and Northwestern are the two Power 5 teams with the fewest blowouts delivered (10 each).
• The Pac 12 only has one team in the top ten for blowouts delivered (Oregon, with 53). USC and Washington are somehow tied with 36 blowouts handed out a piece; Oregon State’s won more games like this (20) than UCLA (19).
• Alabama, LSU, and Ohio State are the only three active FBS schools who haven’t suffered a 35+ point loss since 1990. UPDATE: A helpful reader pointed out Alabama got blown out by Arkansas in 1998; upon further review, I rechecked the numbers and yup, all three have lost at least one blowout. All of these numbers come from the very helpful folks over at Sports Reference; we apologize for operator error.

Are we done with charts and tables? Friend, we are certainly not. Here’s those two datasets combined so you can see which schools wins more blowouts than they lose (or vice versa) and the number of blowouts they participate in on either side.

And if you’re more interested in single-season accolades, here’s every school that won at least five games by 35 points or more in a year.

Finally, here’s every matchup between FBS programs where one team’s beaten the same opponent in a blowout at least six times.

I give you this data trusting that you will use it for the only two true purposes of the sports internet: boasting and berating. Go forth, and follow whichever path you find truest.