With just one game left in the NFL’s Wild Card round, football fans across the country have resoundingly made their voices heard on one issue regarding playoff football at both the professional and college level: Quit it with the blowouts, please.

Of the 10 College Football Playoff games contested thus far, just two have finished within two scores. Through the first five NFL Wild Card games, just one finished within two scores. So far this postseason, between both pro and college, just 20% of games have finished with a score differential of eight points or fewer.

Fans are predictably moaning about it. With both the college and NFL playoff formats recently undergoing expansion, the quality discrepancy between higher and lower-seeded teams has become an easy target.

Yet, in its first year in the 12-team format, seeding made little difference in the College Football Playoff. Sure, the better seed won each of the first round games by multiple scores. Those teams also played at home. And those same teams all “upset” the four teams with first-round byes the following round. The seven and eight seeded teams are playing for a national title next Monday. In the old format, those teams wouldn’t have even gotten a shot.

College football has always been full of blowouts. That is the history of the sport.

We watch 40+ games every Saturday so the handful of close games end up standing out. When one gets a spotlight, it often isn’t great TV.

This isn’t new. Volatile sport played by young people

— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) December 21, 2024

The Athletic’s Chris Vannini perhaps said it best after the first round games had concluded. “This isn’t new. [College football is a] volatile sport played by young people.”

The data would seem to suggest this as well. Of the 10 seasons where a four-team playoff was contested, just one-third of those games finished within one possession. In other words, the old playoff format would provide approximately one good game per year. Now, with eleven playoff games each season, the probability that at least a few of those games turn out to be exciting goes way up.

That’s certainly a better alternative than hoping for one exciting playoff game per year, right?

NFL fans might have more of a legitimate gripe. Since expanding its postseason from 12 to 14 teams in 2021, just 38% of Wild Card round matchups have finished within one score. In the five years prior to expansion, 60% of Wild Card round matchups were one-score games.

That discrepancy doesn’t actually seem so bad when looking at the volume of close games, however. With the Wild Card round expanding from four to six games each season, the percentage of one-score games has decreased, but the total number of one-score games has stayed relatively flat. In the five seasons since expansion, there have been 11 one-score Wild Card games (with one yet to be played). In the five prior seasons, there were 12 one-score Wild Card games.

One could argue that, based off the data, the NFL essentially just added two blowouts to its schedule, sure. But that hasn’t taken away from the number of games that do actually end up exciting. Not to mention, five seasons is a pretty small sample size.

Football is a high-variance sport where plenty of factors can determine if a game is close or not. In 2023, the expanded Wild Card had four one-score games. In 2017, the old Wild Card had zero.

Some years there are close games and some years there are not. Every blowout isn’t an indictment on the sport, its playoff format, or if some team is deserving of being in the postseason.

Whether or not we as fans are rewarded with exciting games during the postseason is purely a matter of luck. Of course, we all hope they’ll happen. But when they don’t it’s really not worth moaning about.

Just be patient. A good game will come.