How Much Do Blowouts Matter?

When discussing Scoring Margin in NERDstat Land, the first thing almost everyone thinks about are KenPom's articles on basketball scoring margin. He led the charge of "guys, it really does matter if you beat Maryland-Eastern Shore by 33 instead of 19" when it comes to college basketball NERDstats. And because most everyone thinks of that – especially his "coaches not running up the score isn't really a thing" comments – many in college football NERDstat Land have adopted his "the scoring margin is the scoring margin" approach.

But is it true? Find out on this episode of... NERDstats with Robert.

Let's go way back on scoring margin. Here's a quote from KenPom on the topic from 2013. Again, this is college basketball, but the concept still holds across all college football predictive metrics. They intentionally ignore "right, but they kind of ran up the score, right?":