What counts as an upset
A game counts as an upset when at least one of these is true:
- The underdog won outright. The winner was getting at least 3 points on the closing betting line. A 1.5-point underdog winning is close to a coin flip, so it doesn’t count on its own.
- An unranked team beat a ranked team in the AP Top 25.
- A lower-ranked team beat a higher-ranked team, like No. 21 beating No. 4.
Ranks are the AP poll each team carried into the game. Bowl games use the final regular-season poll. At least one team has to be FBS.
Upset size
Every upset gets a size so the shocks rise above the near-misses. It adds two things:
- Points overcome. How many points the winner was getting on the closing line. A 7.5-point underdog starts at 7.5.
- Ranking bonus. An unranked team beating No. N earns half of (26 − N), so beating No. 1 is worth 12.5 and beating No. 25 is worth 0.5. A ranked team beating a better-ranked one earns half the gap: No. 21 over No. 4 is worth 8.5.
Example: unranked Oklahoma beat No. 1 Texas as a 7.5-point underdog. That’s 7.5 points overcome plus a 12.5 ranking bonus, for an upset size of 20.
Lines and polls come from CollegeFootballData.com. The closing line is the consensus line when available.
NFL upsets
The NFL has no poll, so an NFL upset is simpler: the underdog won outright while getting 3.5 or more points on the closing line, more than a field goal. Three points is the most common NFL line, and a field-goal underdog wins often enough that counting them would make almost a quarter of all games upsets.
NFL upset size is the points overcome, on the same scale as college. Where moneylines exist (2006 on), each upset also shows the chance the betting market gave the winner, with the bookmaker’s margin taken out. NFL scores and lines come from nflverse and go back to 1999.
Try the what-if page to pick this week’s upsets yourself.