Let’s define major college sports as Division I football and basketball, the two that bring in by far the biggest revenue, ratings, attendance, and so forth. What was the greatest upset to ever happen in that group?
Virginia definitely has the worst major college sports upset ever ... and the second-worst one, too
Let’s look at both basketball and football.
Chaminade University
Football’s list is full of contenders, but each has a reason it doesn’t tower over all the others.
Those include:
- 1921 Centre over Harvard. Centre was pretty decent and had played the Crimson tough the year prior.
- 1926 Carnegie Tech over Notre Dame, though the Tartans were three scores away from going undefeated.
- 1942 Holy Cross over Boston College had a bizarro margin of victory, but the two were old rivals, and Holy Cross had just won shutouts in the two weeks prior.
- 1950 Navy over Army, though an even worse Navy had tied another undefeated Army two years prior.
- 1957 Notre Dame over Oklahoma, snapping OU’s record victory streak, but can Notre Dame really ever be a greatest underdog?
- 1998 Temple over Virginia Tech, which, uh ... at least Temple was Division-IA?
- 2007 Appalachian State over Michigan, but App State was an FCS power.
- 2007 Stanford over USC. The Cardinal had been terrible and were 40-point underdogs, but were still a power-conference team.
- A bunch of other games in which a bad power-conference team beat a good power-conference team, but based on what basketball is about to bring to the table, I don’t think those even rate mentions.
- And even 2017 Howard over UNLV, though the Vegas point spread had no business being anywhere near 45 points.
In basketball, the list is simpler.
Virginia’s now had two results that will forever seem totally impossible.
- Everyone heard the story of UMBC catching fire against No. 1 UVA in the 2018 NCAA tournament, becoming the first men’s 16 seed to ever win.
- And that meant No. 1 Virginia’s 1982 loss to NAIA Chaminade surged back into the consciousness. (This also means it’s time to remember 1988 Alaska Anchorage, a Division II team, beating No. 2 Michigan.)
There have been other big upsets, but nothing that approaches those, so that’s the men’s list. Done.
The biggest stunners in women’s basketball aren’t quite as ludicrous. For example:
- 1998 16 seed Harvard’s win came against an injured Stanford, not a relatively healthy UVA, and Harvard was 22-4 with two years of tourney experience, not a 25-11 newbie like UMBC.
- Mississippi State’s 2017 win over UConn was a shocking streak-ender, but MSU was an elite power, not an NAIA member. And all streaks end. If we were to go with this as hoops’ biggest upset, then we’d have to name ‘57 Notre Dame football’s greatest underdog. See how weird that’d be?
Football just can’t compete with this level of oddity.
In football, most people argue for App State these days. Well, the Mountaineers weren’t NAIA, they would’ve ranked better than a 16 seed in a Week 1 all-DI tournament (if nothing else, they would’ve entered ahead of all other FCS teams), and Michigan would’ve been a 2 seed, not a 1. Either of UVA’s losses was way stranger than the most popular modern pick for football’s greatest upset.
There are reasons basketball seems more upset-prone, such as its greater number of games (more chances for upsets to happen) and smaller number of players (more room for one player to totally wreck everything), but that’s a side debate.
UVA has the two worst losses in major college sports history, though we’ll probably spend a few decades arguing which was worse.
Chaminade wasn’t even an NCAA team, much less a Division I team, but 1982 UVA’s trip to play the Silverswords in Honolulu was a pre-Christmas side quest, not a game the Cavs had reason to take all that seriously, and star center Ralph Sampson had been sick.
UMBC was a 20-point underdog that cruised by 20 points, though the Retrievers were DI and had an enrollment of far bigger than Chaminade’s 800 ... plus an actual, full-time head coach, unlike the Silverswords.
I’ll view UMBC’s win as major college sports’ greatest upset ever, because of the stage on which it happened and the flip-flopped margin of victory, and Chaminade’s as the most unbelievable, because it’s amazing the Silverswords landed a game against a DI power to begin with, let alone stayed within 50 points, let alone won.
How about you?
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