Here is the result in plain text:
Are these the games you want? No one can be sitting there and going, ‘You want these blowout games.’
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.
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.
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.
These types of margins that we experienced in the first round of the College Football Playoff happen all the time. 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.
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.
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.
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