What do the numbers say about postseason competitiveness for the NFL and college football?

One night after the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff concluded with four big games on campus, ESPN host Scott Van Pelt and football analyst Tim Hasselbeck had a conversation that mirrored many similarities to what was happening on social media and in bars.

The host teams won by an average of 19.3 points, with the closest result being Notre Dame’s 10-point win 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 also decisive.

“Are these the games you want?” Van Pelt asked the former NFL quarterback. “Nobody can sit there and say, ‘You want these blowout games.’”

Hasselbeck responded, “We’re going to have blowouts in these NFL games, too.”

The loud and contentious debate over whether Indiana and SMU deserved at-large bids from the CFP 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 that started in 2014, and as Hasselbeck noted, it’s true in the NFL in the same time frame.

Since the Playoff System debuted after the 2014 season, there have been 40 CFP games. The average winning margin in those matches is 17.5 points. In the same time frame, there were 124 NFL playoff games, including 10 Super Bowls. The average margin of victory was 11.1 points per game.

One fact has emerged from the CFP and NFL playoff data. No matter the round, location, level or seeding, it’s a toss-up whether postseason football delivers a competitive game or a blowout. The numbers confirm that.

GVB data

The non-competitive nature of the first round of the CFP caused knee-jerk reactions and wild withdrawals, thanks in large part to the participants. But the scoring margin was similar to what happened in the previous decade. Three of the four CFP first-round games were decided by at least 11 points, and two had a margin of victory greater than 20 points.

Pundits largely scoffed at Indiana, which scored two late touchdowns at Notre Dame before falling 27-17 in the first round. But of the ten CFP games this season, it had the third result.

“This team earned it, the right to be here,” Indiana coach Curt Cignetti said afterward. “I’m not sure we proved that to many people tonight.”

As far as CFP history goes, Indiana’s loss ranked in the top third in competitive final scores. Since the CFP’s debut in 2014, more games have been decided by more than 20 points (17) than by one score (12). More than two-thirds of the games (27) had a margin of at least 11 points.

In ten seasons, the least competitive round of the CFP was the Championship. Only three of the 10 were decided by one score, and all three occurred from 2015-17 between Alabama and Clemson (twice) or Georgia (once). The Bulldogs’ 65-7 romp over TCU at the end of the 2022 season pushed the average margin to 20.1 points for the title round. While that score was an outlier, five of the ten 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 after this year’s first round. “It’s been happening forever in the four-team College Football Playoff model. We’ve had some absolute duds in the semifinals and in the championship game.

“And by the way, there are big margins in the NFL, too.”

NFL Playoff Data

The NFL playoff model largely mirrored college football postseason results. Five of last weekend’s six wildcard matches were decided by at least 12 points – two exceeded 20 points – and the average margin of victory was 15.2 points per match.

There was little difference 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). Among games at non-neutral sites, the divisional round averaged the largest margin of victory, with 40 games decided by 9.9 points per game (10.9 in the AFC, 8.8 in the NFC). The margin of victory in the championship round was 12.6 points per game (10.7 in the AFC, 14.4 in the NFC).

The recent run of competitive Super Bowl games has become an anomaly in the overall data. Once derided for perennial disappointment on the big stage — from 1982 through 1996, every but two NFL title games had a margin of at least 10 points — the NFL championship game generated the best results of any playoff round (8.4 points per games). Six of the most recent ten Super Bowls were decided by one score, and only one had a margin of more than 14 points.

But for the 114 NFL playoff games at home sites, the percentage of competitive NFL games next to blowouts was similar to that of the college game.

Home court, 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 playoff games starting in the 2014 postseason. Home teams won by an average of 13.1 points per game, while road teams won by 7.9 points per game.

In ten seasons, the top-seeded teams in both the AFC and NFC were 14-4 in the postseason, for a combined 28-8 record. The top seeds won by an average of 14.1 points per game, and their losses averaged 5.8 points per game.

With home field advantage, seeding has much more impact in the NFL than in college football, where it was implemented for the first time this year. All four teams that hosted CFP matches won, but the top four seeds earned a bye and have yet to host an on-campus match. Combining the four on-campus games 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 games with wins by more than one score, the higher-seeded team won 64.3 percent of the time. The 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 has featured a nearly even split between one-score games and blowouts. Of the 114 playoff games played at host sites, 59 (51.8 percent) were decided by one score, while 53 (46.5 percent) were decided by 11 points or more.

College football has a lower percentage of single-score CFP games, with 12 of 40 (30 percent) fitting into that category, while 27 (67.5 percent) had margins greater than 11 points. Perhaps the most obvious difference between the NFL and college football was that 42.5 percent of CFP games had a margin of at least 20 points, while only 16.7 percent of NFL games ended up in that category.

(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletics; Photos: David Madison, Perry Knotts, Joseph Weiser / Getty Images)