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

The second Saturday stood out for offering some close contests. But have the bowl games in 2017 really provided more blowouts than years past?

More: Complete 2017-2018 bowl schedule

After the first full week of bowl games, it feels like fans have been treated to one blowout after another. Before the second Saturday, eight of the first 10 bowl games played so far had finished with a margin of victory in double digits. Six out of the 10 completed before the Saturday leading into the Christmas holiday were won by 20 or more points.

That made December 23 stand out that much more starkly against the curve. The Birmingham Bowl and Armed Forces Bowl both went down to the wire, offering a modicum of suspense for a change. Of course, the Dollar General Bowl in Mobile set things back in order as Appalachian State shut out Toledo 34-0.

The Mountaineers victory seemed to set the universe back into alignment. So far this postseason we have seen Florida Atlantic romp to a 50-3 takedown of Akron. Louisiana Tech took down SMU 51-10, Ohio routed UAB 41-6, and we had the aforementioned App State win that finished with a margin of victory over 30 points as well.

But have there really been more blowouts than usual?

This week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback looks into that question, drawing upon bowl results going back to 1933. (The short-lived return of the Dixie Classic augured in an era where the Rose Bowl game was no longer the only postseason game featured on the calendar. The following year, the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl came online, with the Cotton and Sun and other bowl games soon following.

So let’s ask a few questions today. What is the average margin of victory for bowl games over time? How has the increase in the number of bowls impacted the margin of victory? Is there any correlation that can be explained between the two numbers?

To find out the answers to these questions and more, keep reading.

Looking at the bowl results data

The first step to determining whether we have really seen more blowouts this season is to look at how bowl results have historically shaken out in college football. (You can also access the full dataset by following the link to this spreadsheet.)

First of all, we have seen a steady increase in the number of bowls over time, as we talked about last week in our look at the history of bowl games. That has effectively served to dilute the quality of teams that ultimately find themselves playing in bowl games, as a glut of teams hovering around .500 are now eligible for the postseason where previously the depressed supply of invitations meant only the strongest national contenders went to bowls.

But while the trendline for the average margin of victory points steadily upward over time, the reality is that fluctuations are a natural part of the game. Sometimes the opponents matched up against one another are simply mismatched.

Today  let’s look at three bowl seasons.

These are the two seasons that have historically finished with an average margin of victory across all games higher than the current pace of the 2017 bowl season. As you can see from this table, a season of historic moments is potentially witnessing one more statistical outlier to wrap the chaos up neatly.

The 2017 bowl season is seeing a historic rate of blowouts. Already we have witness more blowouts of 20 or more points than there were bowl games after the 1944 season, and after the Hawaii Bowl concludes on Christmas Eve we will have already seen twice as many bowl games as there were in 1952.

There have also already been more bowl games played than there were in the 1976-1977 postseason. Over a nearly equivalent number of games, 2017 has seen games end by a gap more than two and a half points higher than fans saw in the Bicentennial season. The drop between the top three on the list and the bottom three is presented more for the sake of showing why this has been an anomalous bowl season to date.

But with 27 more games on the schedule, there are plenty of opportunities to normalize. Let’s look a bit closer at these two historic seasons to see where the mismatches came and which games allowed the stats to normalize somewhat. Then we can finish by seeing how this year’s campaign might finish over the next few weeks.

1944-1945 bowl season (Avg. MOV: 22.2 points over 5 games)

The postseason that wrapped up the 1944 season in college football featured four games that were decided by at least a two-score deficit and one nailbiter. Duke took down an Alabama team that finished third in the SEC with a late comeback to win 29-26 in the Sugar Bowl. The newspaper reporters assigned to the game got an exciting tale of Hugh Morrow’s 78-yard interception return in the the fourth quarter to put the Crimson Tide up 26-20, and the meticulous comeback capped by George Clark’s 20-yard touchdown run.

The other games, however, proved to be blowouts. The SEC went 0-3, as conference champion Georgia Tech lost 26-12 to Tulsa in the Orange Bowl and conference runner-up Tennessee fell 25-0 to USC in the Rose Bowl. Missouri Valley Conference champion Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) blew out Southwest Conference king TCU 34-0 in the Cotton Bowl.

And, showing the exhibition nature of bowl games especially in this period, the Sun Bowl in El Paso featured independent Southwestern University against a team from UNAM in Mexico City. The Pirates of Southwestern routed the Pumas 35-0 to win a second straight Sun Bowl.

What explains the blowouts?

A few things could explain the wide margin of victory. First and foremost, there were only five games played. The exclusive nature of the postseason back in the wartime era meant that some teams simply missed out on the postseason. As a result, the polls concluded their voting after the regular season, and the stakes were pride and victory alone.

With both Army and Navy sitting out the postseason as the war effort on multiple fronts precluded playing additional games, it was a diluted field to be sure. Undefeated Big Ten champion Ohio State also sat out the bowl season. And that is even before one of the five bowls turned its game into a full-fledged exhibition.

That only partially explains the anomaly, though. The previous five seasons before the New Year’s Day 1945 slate of slaughters featured equivalently sized postseasons that featured similar games and much smaller margins. The 1944-1945 postseason was an outlier spike in the historical chart of average margins.

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.

What does this all mean about 2017?

In terms of the way this year has played out so far, there are far more games falling in the 20-plus points range for average margin of victory than there are under that mark. This year looks more like 1944 than 1952 in that regard.

A pair of close games on the two weekends so far are all that separates 2017 from passing the two historic years it is chasing for this absurd if interesting record. Given the rise in offense, it almost seems more strange that we have never previously seen a bowl season average more than 20 points per game between the winning score and losing score.

There is still plenty of time to normalize to right around where we might expect. The current highest season of the 21st century came in 2015, and this year is on pace to add five points per game to the record. That 2015 season, though, was more like 1952 than 1944 in terms of having a few statistical outliers from an otherwise normal rate of scoring.

Next: 2017 bowl game predictions

But as of now, we have seen a little slice of history be put on the table. It is something of a dubious record, given the fact that it means suspicions that there have been a lot of mismatches is confirmed. The best part, though, is that it might also mean we’ve seen the vast majority of the true blowouts that will naturally transpire over the course of any postseason this large.

Stay tuned to see if teams make history over the next few weeks, or whether the games get more competitive over the stretch run of 2017 and into the new year.