Deciphering the Football Blowout

Ful disclosure: I am only a casual football fan. But I am an avid sports fan, and so I think I have the ability to write down my thoughts. This has been a question that has bothered me for quite some time: what does it mean for a football game to be a blowout, and how can we compare different blowouts.

For example, Oregon beats Tennessee at home in week 3 by a score of 59-14.
Alabama beat Tennessee at home in week 9 by a score of 45-10.

It seems pretty clear that both Oregon and Alabama are significantly better than Tennessee this year. But can we use these games against common opponents to determine which team is better?

At first glance, it would seem that the Oregon defense is about 30% worse than Alabama while the offense is about 25% better. So the offense/defense comparison doesn't seem to work, since 5% is really a very small amount. But we know that neither team actually tried after the second quarter, at which point Alabama led 35-0 and Oregon led 38-7. You can jump to all sorts of conclusions based on this, too: Oregon was able to score more points but couldn't keep Tennessee from scoring, so they must be worse.

But that's all missing the bigger picture: both Oregon and Alabama had their respective games in the bag at the start of halftime. In reality, it was clear about halfway through the 1st quarter that the game would be a blowout. Strange things happen in blowouts. Offenses start slowing down and stop playing at their normal intensity. Defenses start playing prevent, knowing they don't have to give it 100% on each play. And, at a certain point, the second string teams come in to play, leading to even fewer points scored and more points allowed.

In the world of college football, the timing of games is incredibly important. These two games were separated by 6 weeks, which is enough time for an entire Georgia team to get injured and fall out of the national title talk. Lots can happen. The team that played at Alabama was not the team that played at Oregon. At Oregon they were excited and overly energized for a new season against a strong opponent, and it led to several mistakes but some excitement early on. The team in Alabama was worn down from a tough string of games and looked defeated after the first Bama touchdown.

Basically, you can't compare two football games. I would even argue that you can't compare games in back-to-back weeks. Teams have good days and bad days, and sometimes it can be as little as the food the quarterback ate last night that determines the outcome of a jump ball.

A blowout is a blowout, and I don't see any reasonable way to compare these two games other than knowing that both Alabama and Oregon are both significantly better than Tennessee.