What do the numbers tell us about postseason competitiveness in college football, the NFL?

One evening after the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff concluded with four blowout games on campus, ESPN host Scott Van Pelt and football analyst Tim Hasselbeck had a conversation that mirrored much of what was happening on social media and in bars. We shared it.

Host teams win by an average of 19.3 points, with the closest result being Notre Dame’s 10-point win over Indiana. Two games, Penn State (28 points) against SMU and Ohio State (25 points) against Tennessee, were not competitive. Texas’ 14-point win over ACC champion Clemson was also decisive.

“Is this the game you want?” Van Pelt asked the former NFL quarterback. “No one can sit there and say, ‘I want this explosive game.’”

Hasselbeck responded, “We’re going to get hit hard in this NFL game as well.”

The loud and contentious debate over whether Indiana and SMU deserve a CFP at-large bid has overshadowed the reality of postseason football in both college and the NFL. There are as many explosions as there are memorable finishes. That was true even in the four-team playoff era that began in 2014, and as Hasselbeck points out, it was true in the NFL during that same period.

There have been 40 CFP games since the playoff system was implemented following the 2014 season. The average winning score for those games is 17.5 points. During that same period, there were 124 NFL playoff games, including 10 Super Bowls. The average winning point per contest was 11.1 points.

CFP and NFL playoff data reveal one thing. Regardless of the round, location, level or seed, it’s a coin flip whether postseason football produces competitive games or explosive results. The numbers back it up.

CFP data

The non-competitive nature of the first round of the CFP evoked knee jerk reactions and harsh reactions, largely from the participants. However, the scoring margin was similar to what has occurred over the past decade. Of the four CFP games in the first round, three were decided by a margin of at least 11 points, and in two games the margin of victory exceeded 20 points.

Pundits largely derided Indiana. Indiana fell 27-17 in a first-round curtain raiser after scoring two second-half touchdowns at Notre Dame. However, it was the third closest result out of 10 CFP games this season.

“This team has earned the right to be here,” Indiana coach Kurt Signetti said after the game. “I’m not sure we proved that to many people tonight.”

Indiana’s loss ranks among the top three in contested final score in CFP history. Since the CFP debuted in 2014, there have been more games decided by 20 points (17) than by 1 point (12). More than two-thirds of the games (27) had margins of at least 11 points.

For 10 seasons, the CFP’s least competitive round was the Championship. Only three of the 10 have been decided by a single score, and all three came between Alabama and Clemson (twice) or Georgia (once) in 2015-17. The Bulldogs close out the 2022 season with a 65-7 win over TCU, boosting their title round average margin to 20.1 points. Those scores were outliers, but five out of ten championship margins were over 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 the first round this year. “This has been happening forever in the four-team model of the College Football Playoff. We had some absolute failures in the semi-finals and championship games.

“By the way, there are big margins in the NFL as well.”

NFL playoff data

The NFL playoff model primarily reflects college football’s postseason results. Of the six wild card games last weekend, five were decided by at least 12 points (two were over 20 points), and the average points per game was 15.2.

There was little difference between the AFC and NFC. In the 54 wild card games, the average margin per game was 11.9 points (AFC 12.7 points, NFC 11.2 points). Among games at non-neutral sites, the divisional round had the closest average win percentage, with 40 contests decided by 9.9 points per game (AFC 10.9 points, NFC 8.8 points). The championship round winning score was 12.6 points per game (AFC 10.7 points, NFC 14.4 points).

The recent Super Bowl rivalries have shown up strangely in the overall data. From 1982 to 1996, the NFL Championship Game, derided as a constant disappointment on the big stage, had margins of at least 10 points in all but two of the NFL title games. The NFL Championship Game produced the closest result (8.4 points per game) of any playoff round. Of the last 10 Super Bowls, 6 have been decided by 1 point, with only 1 having a margin of more than 14 points.

But in the 114 NFL playoff games played at home stadiums, the rate of competitive NFL contests with blowouts has been similar to that of college games.

Home field, one score game

Perhaps the most consistent statistic concerns home field advantage. In both the AFC and NFC, home teams are 38-19 (76-38 overall) over 10-plus seasons and have won exactly two-thirds of their playoff games since the 2014 postseason. Home teams win by an average of 13.1 points per game, while road teams win by 7.9 points per game.

Over 10 seasons, top-seeded teams in the AFC and NFC have gone 14-4 in the postseason, with an overall record of 28-8. Top seeds win by an average of 14.1 points per game and lose by an average of 5.8 points per game.

With home-field advantage, seeding has a much bigger impact in the NFL than in college football, which implemented it for the first time this year. All four teams hosting CFP games have won, but the top four seeds received byes and have yet to host a game on campus. Combining the four on-campus contests and 36 neutral site CFP games, the top seed has a 21-19 overall record but is just 3-9 in games decided by one point. In a one-sided contest where the team wins by more than 1 point, the higher seeded team had a 64.3% chance of winning. Top teams are 12-7 in CFP games, winning by 21.1 points per game and losing by 13.9 points per game.

Since 2014, the NFL postseason has been almost evenly split between one-score games and blowout games. Of the 114 playoff games played in the host city, 59 games (51.8%) were decided by 1 point, and 53 games (46.5%) were decided by 11 points or more.

College football has a lower percentage of one-point CFP contests, with 12 of 40 (30%) fitting that category, while 27 (67.5%) have margins exceeding 11 points. Perhaps the most obvious difference between NFL and college football is that 42.5% of CFP games had a margin of at least 20 points, while only 16.7% of NFL games fell into that category.

(Image: Will Tullos / athletic; Photo: David Madison, Perry Knotts, Joseph Weiser / Getty Images)