SMQ: Are we really seeing more blowouts in bowl games in 2017?

1952-1953 bowl season (Avg. MOV: 21.1 points over 7 games)

In the seasons between the 1944 postseason and the 1952 postseason, double-digit margins of victory started to become a new normal in college football. Only the 1950-1951 bowl season finished with an average margin under 10 points between its nine games. But this outlier transpired through a completely different means than its 1944 counterpart.

Florida, which finished just 3-3 in SEC play but went 7-3 overall in the regular season, took down Missouri Valley Conference runner-up Tulsa 14-13 in the Gator Bowl. Wisconsin fell to USC in the Rose Bowl 7-0. And Tennessee was still technically within two scores as they fell 16-0 against Texas in the Cotton Bowl.

Georgia Tech took down Ole Miss 24-7 in an all-SEC Sugar Bowl, and Pacific beat Southern Miss 26-7 in the Sun Bowl. Really, there are just two outliers within this outlier season that tipped the scales from top-five to second-highest margin of victory on average of any bowl season in Division I history.

So what were those outliers?

In one of the two blowouts that skewed the overall averages for margin of victory, Tennessee Tech fell 33-0 in the Tangerine Bowl to Texas A&M-Commerce. It was a matchup that would currently classify as an interdivisional battle between a Division II program and a school from the FCS. Back then, this sort of matchup was just what happened in a wilder time when powerhouses still hadn’t fully formed and smaller schools still held some major clout in the game.

The other game, however, was a mismatch in what was supposed to be one of the marquee games of the year. Alabama, despite finishing fourth in the SEC standings, took on independent Syracuse in the Orange Bowl. The Crimson Tide were up 21-6 by halftime on the Orangemen, and things really got out of hand after the break. Harold Drew’s Tide squad found another gear on offense, thanks to the play of Bobby Luna and Tommy Lewis. Luna did a little bit of everything, kicking extra points while also catching a touchdown pass and running for another score.

Instead of one or two games pulling the averages down lower than the median, this time around it was a matter of the averages pulling up the median.