Which college football teams play tightest games? Texas, Nebraska lead schools featured in most nail-biters

Some conferences play more one-score games than others, while some make a habit of featuring blowouts. If you’re a fan looking for games that are close and exciting, the data suggests you should focus your efforts on Big 12 and ACC games and do everything in your power to avoid all those blowouts in the Big Ten.

As interesting as those numbers are, however, what if they’re slightly misleading? For example, we learned that in the College Football Playoff Era (since 2014 but ignoring 2020), 46.85% of Big Ten conference games have been blowouts (final margins of 17-plus points). What that number doesn’t tell us, though, is if it’s a conference-wide problem or if there’s one school skewing the result.

So, I decided to take things a step further. Instead of looking at conferences, I did the same research into the teams themselves. Which programs constantly play one-score games, and which ones find themselves in blowouts?

Once again, I looked at all conference games since 2014 and excluded 2020. I am not including independents (for obvious reasons), and I’ve eliminated any program that does not have a sample size of at least 40 games. Sorry, FBS newcomers. Give it a few more years.

We’ll start with the programs playing games you can usually turn off late in the third quarter to find more entertaining affairs elsewhere. The results here are not likely to shock you.

This looks like bad news for the Big Ten. It features four of the top six programs with the highest blowout rate, and the league is adding the program with the 10th-highest blowout rate (Oregon). Then there’s Penn State at No. 14. All of this suggests what seems obvious: the Big Ten East was dominated by a few teams, while the Big Ten West was more competitive.

Elsewhere, it’s no surprise to see Georgia and Alabama ranked in the top 15. They’ve been the most dominant programs in the SEC. Nor should it be a shock to find Vanderbilt, seeing how the Commodores are often on the receiving end. Tennessee was a bit of a surprise, but for those wondering, the Volunteers have been on the losing end of blowouts more often than the victorious side, going 16-21 in such games.

The ACC had the lowest rate of blowouts as a league at 37.67%, and the results here reflect it. Clemson has the highest blowout rate in the conference (excluding SMU, which joined this year) at 46.58%, ranking No. 28 overall.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are the teams that shorten the lifespan of all their fans. The ones constantly playing close games that can flip on the bounce of a ball. Here are the 15 programs most often playing a one-score game: 

I wasn’t surprised in the least to see Nebraska crack the top five. There have been millions of words written about how horrible the Cornhuskers have been in one-score games (they’re 11-30 since 2014). Virginia was a bit of a surprise — I thought they’d be involved in more blowouts than they have been — but the Bronco Mendenhall Era had fans clutching for the Pepto Bismol plenty of times.

Given what we learned about the Big 12 and ACC playing so many one-score games, it’s no surprise that the top three teams on this list are from those conferences. What fascinated me was that of these 15 schools, only four have winning records in these games (Coastal Carolina, Iowa, Northern Illinois and Old Dominion), and of those four, only Iowa resides in a “power” conference. It gives a strong impression that it’s hard to be good when you’re playing a lot of close games.

Finally, let’s show some love to the teams that do neither. These are the schools that play two-score games. The ones that are too close to turn off late but never seem to deliver the exciting finish. These programs are always good enough to hang around but not good enough to consistently put teams away.

Would NC State and Wisconsin fans be insulted if I said these results didn’t surprise me in the least? Always good but never elite. Also, it has to sting the fine folks of Mississippi to see their two schools are in the same boat.