Big 12, ACC beat out SEC, Big 10 in percentage of one-score games played in football

With SEC Football Media Days underway, what one reporter called a “major talking point” has been debunked -- and that reporter provided math to show the Big 12 actually does the SEC in one category.

Zach Barnett, a college football writer for FootballScoop and radio host on Dallas-Fort Worth station 96.7, noticed while in attendance at SEC media days that the number of one-score games played amongst SEC teams was being mentioned by a number of those also attending.

Barnett managed to put together some numbers and his math shows that in terms of both total number of games and by overall percentage of games played, the Big 12 actually outdoes the SEC significantly in terms of one score games. 

In 2023 alone, the Big 12 featured 27 one-score games on their 64-game conference slate, while just 18-of-57 SEC games were in that range. That makes up 42% of Big 12 conference matchups, but just 31 percent of SEC matchups.

Based on math by HailWV, on the whole last year, the ACC was neck-and-neck with the Big 12 in terms of one-score matchups with 42% of league games being contested in that range as well, with the Big 10 featuring one-score games in roughly 36% percent of its matchups.

While we didn’t tally this data for the ACC and Big 10, one “X” user also posted the side-by-side data for the SEC and Big 12 in this category since the beginning of the College Football Playoff era. The SEC, due to having a higher number of teams during most of that span, managed 209 one-score games to the Big 12’s 203, but in terms of percentage of one-score games played, it was the Big 12 (42%) over the SEC (35%) during that span as well.