Curb Stomp Battle / Sports

"The fight started like their first one— Brock used his secret technique of being fifty times stronger to hold Frank down by his neck and face and punch him. The only moves Frank managed to land were several thumbs up to his corner to signal that he was still alive, somewhere under the feasting manananggal."

Seanbaby, "The 5 Greatest Revenge Matches in MMA History"

Running up the score (as it's known) is generally frowned at, due to the perceived lack of class and sportsmanship. However, some sports coaches justify this by stating that their job is to score points, and it was the opposing team's job to keep their team from scoring.

American Football

NFL

• The 1940 NFL championship game remains the most lopsided defeat in NFL history. Final score: Chicago Bears 73, Washington Redskins 0. Towards the end of the game, the referee asked the Bears to run or pass for their conversions instead of kicking field goals (the two-point conversion did not exist yet), as the officials were running low on footballs^note at the time, there was no net behind the endzone to catch field goals or extra points, and they were afraid that if the Bears kept scoring, the game would have to be called.
• September 28, 1951: on the first Sunday of the season, the Los Angeles Rams hosted the now-defunct New York Yanks and absolutely pulverized them, jumping out to a 34–0 lead midway through the second quarter, en route to a 54–14 triumph that was even more impressive since the Rams held the Yanks offense scoreless (their touchdowns were on a punt return and a fumble return), and outgained them in total yardage by an otherwordly (especially for 1951) 735-166. The game holds a special place in NFL history, not so much because of the Rams' domination, but one specific aspect of it: Rams QB Norm Van Brocklin passed for 554 yards, which is incredibly still the NFL single-game record, even after over seven decades, the evolution of football towards the passing game, and all the legendary QBs who you might have assumed would've broken the record.^note The closest anyone else has come to the record is 527 yards, by Warren Moon in 1990 and Matt Schaub in 2012. Tom Brady's career high is 517.
• On December 4, 1976, on the very same field as the 1951 game listed above (the LA Memorial Coliseum), the Rams struck again, running up a 59–0 tally against the Atlanta Falcons (leading 24–0 at the half and 38–0 after three quarters). This, alongside the New England Patriots beating the Tennessee Titans by the exact same score in 2009 (see below), are the largest margins of victory in the Super Bowl Era
• Super Bowl XIX was expected to be an epic struggle between two great teams: the 1984 Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers. The first quarter proceeded as everyone had expected; that it would be a fantastically exciting battle between the top two offenses - between Dan Marino and Joe Montana. Then they played another three quarters... The Dolphins went scoreless after halftime and the 49ers ended up winning 38–16.
  • Another notable one involving Marino was his final pro game, a 2000 playoff game where the Jacksonville Jaguars clown-stomped his Dolphins 62–7.
  • The 49ers had a tendency to do this a lot during their "dynasty" years during the late 1980s-early 1990s. They stomped the John Elway-led Denver Broncos 55–10 in Super Bowl XXIV; this 45-point win is the largest margin of victory in Super Bowl history.
  • The 49ers did it again in 1995 with a 49–26 victory in Super Bowl XXIX over San Diego, a team that was just happy to be there. In fact, the Chargers weren't even expected to make the playoffs that season! It was only due to great performances by Stan Humphries and Junior Seau. Also, they achieved one of the most shocking upsets of the '90s when they beat the heavily-favored Pittsburgh Steelers 17–13 in the 1994 AFC Championship Game. To be fair, San Diego tried their best, scoring 26 points against an elite Niners defense, but they couldn't live up to Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Deion Sanders, and a lot more superstars on the 49ers team. Even the Vegas betting odds knew this, where San Francisco was favored by 18½ points, which remains a record to this day for the largest margin a team has been favored by in a Super Bowl.
  • In the 1993 NFC Divisional Round, the 49ers clobbered the New York Giants 44-3. Marking it is the worst lost for the Giants in the Lawrence Taylor era and it was also the last game for the hall of fame linebacker as he retired a few weeks after the game. It was also the final game for Phil Simms as he would turn to television right after his retirement.
  • The Giants seven years earlier in 1986 beat down the 49ers 49-3 in the Divisional Round. The highlight of the game was Giants nose tackle Jim Burt crushing Joe Montana on an attempted pass that was intercepted by Lawrence Taylor who returned it for a 34 yard touchdown. Then the Giants followed that up with a 17-0 shutout of the Washington Redskins in the NFC Championship Game.
  • The Dallas Cowboys' 52–17 win over the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVII was not as close as the score makes it appear. In fact, the score would've been even higher had Leon Lett not given up what should have been an easy touchdown by celebrating too early, resulting in him having the ball stripped from him.
• The Denver Broncos started off with an infamously terrible track record in Super Bowls, getting stomped by at least 17 points in their first four trips to the game, although shaking it off somewhat after finally winning two in a row in 1997 and 1998. They also have the dubious honor of having lost three of the five Super Bowls that were decided by 30 or more points, losing 42-10 to the Redskins in Super Bowl XXII, 43-8 to the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII, and 55-10 to the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIV, the most lopsided in the game's history.
  • Super Bowl XLVIII, between the Seahawks and Broncos, was a particularly shocking one. Going into the match, the narrative was the battle between the #1 defense in the league (the Seahawks) and the most lethal, highest-scoring offense in NFL history (the Broncos). The end result? A 43–8 massacre in favor of the Seahawks that you could say was practically decided on the very first play^note (On the very first play from scrimmage, Denver's center snapped the ball over Peyton Manning's head, sending it into the end zone where it was kicked out, awarding Seattle two free points, a blunder which the Broncos never came close to recovering from.). Future first-ballot Hall of Famer Peyton Manning was limited to throwing a single touchdown (right at the end of the third quarter, long after the game was decided).
• Played With at Super Bowl VII with the Miami Dolphins vs. the Washington Redskins. The Redskins were scoreless through the entire game until the final two minutes, when Dolphins kicker Garo Yepremian (attempting to pass following his field goal attempt being blocked) lost control of the football, which Washington Redskins cornerback Mike Bass returned for a touchdown. Although they didn't get their shut-out win, the Dolphins still won the Super Bowl and became, to date, the only team with an entirely perfect season.
• The Chicago Bears had three through the 1985 Playoffs. Their first game in the Divisional Round was against the New York Giants where they won 21-0. Then in the NFC Conference Championship, they beat the Los Angeles Rams 24-0. Finally in Super Bowl XX, they beat the New England Patriots 46-10.
• The Buffalo Bills demolished the Raiders 51–3 in the AFC Championship game in January 1991.
• The Detroit Lions' first postseason win in the Super Bowl era happened during the 1991-92 NFC divisional playoffs, where they beat the Dallas Cowboys 38-6. Sadly, shortly afterwards, they found themselves on the receiving end of one, losing 41-10 to the Washington Redskins during the NFC Championship Game.
• January 14, 2001: NFC Championship Game, New York Giants shut out the Minnesota Vikings 41–0. The Giants then ended up on the other end of this in Super Bowl XXXV, on January 28, 2001. The Baltimore Ravens won 34–7 and the farthest the Giants' offense got down the field was the Ravens' 29-yard line. Their only points came on a kickoff return for a touchdown, which the Ravens answered by returning the next kickoff for a touchdown themselves.
• In 2008, the Detroit Lions became the first team to go a whole 16-game season with zero wins and ties, finishing five of those games on the receiving end of blowouts. The worst of these was their Thanksgiving Day game with the Tennessee Titans on November 27, 2008, who trounced the Lions 47–10.
• That same year, Week 17. The famed NFC East rivals Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys were ready to face off at the Linc to determine who would get the second NFC Wild Card spot. The Eagles were 8-6-1 in the wake of a sloggish loss to the Redskins, and the Cowboys entered December at 8-4, but a win against their other division rival and the defending Super Bowl champion Giants was sandwiched in between losses to the Steelers and Ravens. To start, the Houston Texans and Oakland Raiders would have both had to win against the Chicago Bears and Tampa Bay Buccaneers respectively (the latter on the road), otherwise Philly would be done. But both of those things happened, so it was on. And yet, it was never a game. After a very slow first half, the Eagles spent the night torturing the Cowboys, as they ripped off a whopping 41 straight points which were aided by two fumble returns in the Eagles' red zone sent back all the way back for touchdowns (73 and 96 yards). The final score was a 44-6 embarrassment that epitomized Dallas' late season meltdown, and that granted the Eagles the second Wild Card spot.
• On December 6, 2010, the New York Jets faced the New England Patriots. In previous weeks it seemed like it was going to be a difficult game for the Patriots, with both teams coming in at 9–2. However... when it came down to it, the Patriots won 45–3. It is worth noting that the Jets got their revenge by knocking the Patriots out of the playoffs that same year.
  • The aftermath of the above was even weirder — the Patriots went into Chicago during the first big snowstorm of the season in the upper Midwest and delivered a full-service beat-down to the 9–3 Bears, blanking them at the half 33–0 for a final score of 36–7. Meanwhile, Jets coach Rex Ryan was openly mocked in the New York papers and they lost the next game to the mediocre Miami Dolphins in a 10–6 snoozer. (In soccer terms, that's sort of equivalent to grinding out a 2–2 tie and losing on a penalty kick.) Some Pats fans noted that there might be a touch of irony that a previous generation's Pats lost Super Bowl XX to the 1985 Bears in a curb-stomp almost as humiliating as the current team had delivered to the Jets the previous week.
  • It's even stranger when you remember that that's one of New England's smaller curb stomps. Ever since 2007, the Patriots have usually had at least one game like this per season. This includes the 2007 season's 52–7 win over the Washington Redskins, 56–10 win over the Buffalo Bills, the 2008 season's 41–7 win over the Denver Broncos, 47–7 win over the Arizona Cardinals, and the 2009 season's ridiculous 59–0 win over the Tennessee Titans (which took place in a snowstorm). The Patriots would repeatedly stomp Andrew Luck's Colts (59–24 in 2012, 43–22 in the 2013 AFC Divisional, and in 2014, 42–20 in Week 11 and 45–7 in the 2014 AFC Championship game, the latter game which started the Deflategate scandal).
  • Not to mention a repeat curb-stomp of the Jets in the 2012 Thanksgiving evening game, winning 49–19. They racked up 35 points in the 2nd quarter alone, including a mind-boggling 21 points in less than a minute (aided by a number of Jets bloopers, including Mark Sanchez's infamous "Butt Fumble").
  • The Patriots themselves were also on the receiving end of some blowouts; they lost 46–10 to the Bears during Super Bowl XX, 30–10 by the Dolphins in 2001 (which prompted Patriots head coach Bill Belichick to bury the game ball in front of the team the next day), 31–0 to the Bills in 2003, 41–17 to the Chargers in 2005, three of the five losses (Dolphins, Chargers, and Steelers) in the 2008 season (who were without Tom Brady) were blowouts, including in Week 3, when they were caught off-guard by the Wildcat Dolphins, 33–14 to the Ravens in the AFC Wild Card game in the 2009 season, 28-13 to the Ravens again in the AFC Championship in the 2012 season (mostly in the second half, where Bernard Pollard's hit on Stevan Ridley turned the tide), and in 2014, when they were blown out 41–14 by the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday Night Football (which caused sports commentators to question Brady's performance).
• The 2010 NFC Divisional Round playoff between the No. 1 seed Atlanta Falcons and the No. 6 seed Green Bay Packers. Ironically, it was actually seemingly shaping up to be a close and competitive game for the first half, with neither team trailing by more than 7 points at any point... that is, until the very last play of the half, when Green Bay cornerback Tramon Williams returned an interception for a touchdown to give the Packers a 28-14 lead going into halftime. After that, the Falcons were unable to regroup and put up much of a fight, and the Packers cruised to a 48-21 blowout.
• October 23, 2011: The Super Bowl XLIV rematch between New Orleans Saints vs. the Indianapolis Colts football game on October 23, 2011 didn't go as expected, with the Saints throttling the Colts 62-7. It should be noted that the Colts that year were without their QB, Peyton Manning, who missed the entire 2011 season due to him undergoing multiple neck surgeries in the off-season.
• On Christmas Eve 2011, the Jets would play the Giants in their quadrennial "Battle for New York". The Jets, coming off of two deep playoff runs the previous year and eyeing their third in a row, with both teams facing elimination upon losing the game. Rex Ryan talked up how the Jets were the real toast of New York and the Giants were a relative backwater in the football world, and proceeded to cover up the Giants' Super Bowl mural in MetLife Stadium (shared by both teams, but since the Giants were officially the "visiting" team, the Jets had control of the stadium features). The Giants proceeded to blow out the Jets 29–14 (with the second Jets touchdown coming when the game had already been decided), aided by a 99-yard touchdown reception by Victor Cruz and 6 sacks on Mark Sanchez (his most humiliating performance until the aforementioned Butt Fumble the following year). The Giants would defeat the Patriots in the Super Bowl that year, and consider that touchdown to be the point where they knew they had the potential to do so. The Jets, meanwhile, would never recover.
• The December 9, 2012 game between the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals ended with the Seahawks winning 58–0 (the highest score in franchise history) after forcing eight turnovers and limiting the Arizona offense to a grand total of 43 rushing yards. In the next two games the Seattle Seahawks defeated the Buffalo Bills 50–17 and the San Francisco 49ers 42–13 for a combined three-game stretch 150–30.
• September 18, 2014: The Thursday Night game between the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers ended with the Falcons winning 56–14. The Falcons scored eight touchdowns in the first three quarters; the Buccaneers only scored in the 4th quarter.
• November 30, 2014: A game between the St. Louis Rams and Oakland Raiders ended with the Rams winning 52–0. The only other time the Raiders lost worse was in 1961, when they lost to the Houston Oilers, 55–0.
• January 24, 2016: The NFC Championship between the Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals ended with the Panthers winning 49-15. The Cardinals suffered seven turnovers (4 interceptions and two lost fumbles by Carson Palmer, and a muffed punt return by Patrick Peterson).
• In 2017, just nine years after the Detroit Lions' infamous 0-16 season, the Cleveland Browns became the second and last team to replicate this dishonor and lose every game in the regular season. Miraculously, only one of those games had the Browns on the receiving end of a blowout: the October 1, 2017 game, where they were trounced by the division rival Cincinnati Bengals 31-7.^note It's generally agreed that the 2017 Browns weren't nearly as bad as their record indicated and were more the victim of bad luck than anything else (and not even close to being as terrible as the 2008 Lions), and probably would have won two or three games if God didn't hate Cleveland. A few football pundits even commented that if they were to make a "10 worst NFL teams ever" list the 2017 Browns wouldn't be on it.
• January 21, 2018: The NFC Championship Game. After winning against the New Orleans Saints with a miracle play, the Vikings thought they would be able to play in Super Bowl LII, in their home stadium. But in their game against the Philadelphia Eagles, they lost 38-7, despite scoring an early touchdown on an otherwise perfect opening drive.
• November 1, 2018: The final "Battle of the Bay" between the Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49ers. Going into the game, both teams had only one win for their seasons, so performance expectations were low^note statistically, the teams were a combined 2–13, which made it the "worst" match-up in the history of Thursday Night Football. In addition, the 49ers had to start Nick Mullens, a third-string quarterback from Southern Mississippi who never started an NFL game in his life before, since the other 49ers quarterbacks were both injured. All that said, Oakland left on the tail end of a 34–3 beatdown, all 34 of San Francisco's points going unanswered after the Raiders were limited to a field goal in the first quarter. Mullens finished with a passer rating of 151.9 (the highest ever for a 49er QB starter's debut), and got verified on Twitter and his own Wikipedia page mid-game, a sign that things wouldn't end well for Oakland.
• November 18, 2018: When the Philadelphia Eagles were scheduled to visit the New Orleans Saints in the Superdome, people believed in the spring that while the Saints would be favored, it would be a game that both teams would provide quality play during and make for one of the best games of the season. But the Eagles were struggling heavily thanks to multiple factors such as injuries, while the Saints were dominating their foes in commanding fashion. What was seen in April by many as a potential NFC Championship preview was instead a team in full cruise control facing a team in disarray looking to end in disaster. The final product turned out to be every bit as bad as they had feared, as it was 60 minutes of the Saints torturing the Eagles in a 48-7 thrashing where Carson Wentz threw three interceptions. It was the worst loss of any defending Super Bowl champion in NFL history, and the worst that Philly had went through since a 42-0 beatdown against the Seattle Seahawks in 2005, making for an insanely disappointing result even by expectations. Ironically, the two actually would end up having a rematch in the playoffs, which the Saints won by the much more subdued score of 20-14.
• Very few people had high expectations for the Miami Dolphins at the start of the 2019-20 season, since it was abundantly clear the team was trying hard to tank for draft picks, and had even traded away almost all of their best players. That said, most people were still surprised by just how bad the season started. In the season opener on September 8, they hosted the Baltimore Ravens and ended up on the receiving end of a 59-10 shellacking. Lamar Jackson threw more touchdown passes in this one game than he did in all of the previous season, on the way to the highest score in Ravens' history. After the game, several Dolphins players requested trades. They followed this up by getting crushed at 43-0 by the New England Patriots (the largest shutout the Dolphins had ever suffered at home), 31-6 by the Dallas Cowboys, and 30-10 by the Los Angeles Chargers. All told, the Dolphins entered their week 5 bye week having been outscored 163-26.
• The 2019-20 season ended with the Green Bay Packers being on the receiving end of two of these from that year's eventual NFC Champions, the San Francisco 49ers. When the two teams first met in week 12 of the season, the 49ers crushed the Packers, 37-8. The teams met again in the NFC Championship, only for San Francisco to win again, 37-20. At halftime in the first meeting, the 49ers led 23-0; at halftime in the second meeting, they led 27-0. And while the score ended slightly better in Green Bay's favor the second time, it came after being pummeled on the ground by the Niners. The ground game proved so effective on the Packers that 49ers QB Jimmy Garoppolo only threw the ball eight times in that game, including zero pass attempts in the third quarter.
• Double Subverted during the 2019-20 AFC divisional game between the Houston Texans and Kansas City Chiefs. The Texans leaped to a 21-0 by the end of the first quarter, capitalizing on sloppy play by the Chiefs. But after extending their lead to 24-0 early in the second quarter, the Chiefs soon rebounded, scoring 28 points in under 10 minutes before halftime and ultimately winning 51-31. So, the Texans were outscored 51-10 across 3 quarters, making them the first team in NFL postseason history to lose by 20 or more points after leading by 20 or more points.
• In Week 9 of the 2020 season, Sunday Night Football featured Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hosting Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints, which was looking to be a great division game between the league's two premier veterans and leaders in touchdown passes. But the Bucs did not get a single first down until early into the second quarter, which was immediately followed by a tipped interception by Brady. Later on, they faced a 1st and goal from the Saints' 1-yard line and failed to score a touchdown despite having four chances to do so. All of that served as a microcosm of the 38-3 loss. Tampa Bay only had five rushing attempts the entire night, which set an NFL record for fewest in a game. It was the worst loss of Brady's career, and the first time he had ever been swept in the regular season series by a division rival. However, the Buccaneers would eventually get the last laugh, as they beat the Saints 30-20 in the Superdome in the Divisional Round of the playoffs, which would be Drew Brees' final NFL game before retiring in the offseason, and went on to win the Super Bowl in their home stadium. This 35-point loss is, to date, the largest loss by an eventual Super Bowl champion in NFL history.
  • Also on Week 12, the Saints routed the Broncos 31-3 in Denver; all of the Broncos's quarterbacks tested positive for COVID-19 and had to be quarantined.
• And on that note, Week 16 of the 2020 season saw said Tom Brady-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers travel to Detroit looking to clinch a playoff spot for the first time since 2007. Brady, who is no stranger to delivering these during his time with the Patriots, led the Bucs to a 47-7 slaughter of the Lions to easily clinch a NFC Wild Card spot. To make matters worse, two of the Bucs' touchdowns came from backup quarterback Blaine Gabbert, who is known to be a less than stellar player during his time starting for several teams in his career.
• Bill Belichick is infamous for giving rookie quarterbacks a hard time, boasting a 20-5 record against them since joining the Patriots in 2000. When the team visited rookie QB Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 13 of the 2020 season in the freshly built SoFi Stadium, the Patriots proceeded to crush the Chargers 45-0, primarily due to the former's defense shutting down any attempts by Herbert to move the ball.^note  Herbert went 26/53 in passing completions/attempts, had 0 touchdowns, and 2 interceptions, both of which were returned for touchdowns. On Thursday Night, however, the Patriots themselves would be on the receiving end of a blowout in the same building, losing 3-24 to the Los Angeles Rams.
• Week 17 in the same season was a crucial week for the Miami Dolphins, where a win over the AFC East champions Buffalo Bills would send them to the playoffs. Despite being favored by 3 points, the Dolphins instead laid an egg in the last game of the season, as they would get destroyed by the Bills 56-26 in a game that was even worse than the score indicated, completely knocking the Dolphins out of playoff contention. And that includes the three touchdowns by the Bills in the fourth quarter after star quarterback Josh Allen sat out the entirety of the second half.
• Super Bowl LV was a highly anticipated match-up, with Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hosting Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. What was expected to be an epic quarterback battle between Brady and Mahomes turned out to be an ugly game for the Chiefs, as their normally explosive offense was shut down by the Bucs' defense ^note Buccaneers defensive coordinator Todd Bowles received plenty of praise for his defense's performance in the game and were held without a touchdown for the first time in Mahomes' career as a starter, as he threw two interceptions in a 31-9 loss - the first double digit loss of his NFL career, no less - while Brady would win his seventh Super Bowl. To make matters worse, the Chiefs' offensive line, which was left threadbare by injuries^*not to mention having had one of its normal starters totally opt out from the 2020 season, did Mahomes no favors as he was pressured a record 29 times, costing the Chiefs any chance of winning the game.
• Week 1 of the 2021 NFL Season featured the Green Bay Packers visiting the New Orleans Saints in Jacksonville because Caesars Superdome was unusable due to Hurricane Ida. The Packers were the subject of heavy scrutiny during the offseason due to their franchise QB Aaron Rodgers wanting out of the team, only being persuaded to stay just over a month before the start of the season. Furthermore, the Saints lost their franchise QB Drew Brees to retirement as well as much of their other talent due to the salary cap. The result? The Saints blow out the Packers 38-3, with Rodgers throwing 2 interceptions and no touchdowns and one of the most turnover-prone QBs in the league in Jameis Winston managing 5 touchdowns and no interceptions despite having not even 200 passing yards. It is the first time the Packers have lost their week 1 match-up since 2014, as well as the worst blowout in Aaron Rodgers' career. Ironically, it was a wake-up call for Rodgers and the Packers, with them eventually holding the best record in the NFL that season, while the Saints ended up missing out of the playoffs that season on the very last week (which was Week 18 in that season).
• And in Week 18 of that season, the Indianapolis Colts were one win away from clinching a playoff spot. Their final opponent were the league worst 2-14 Jacksonville Jaguars, who had fired their head coach Urban Meyer after less than a season because of his disastrous off-field antics, and had many fans in the stands dressed in clown costumes as a means to call for GM Trent Balke's job. As predicted, the game was a massacre... But it was the Jaguars doing it, not the Colts. After a sluggish half that saw them down 13-3, Carson Wentz was even worse in the second half. His only touchdown came in garbage time when the game was well out of reach, and the team was stopped on fourth down more than once, while Trevor Lawrence had his best game of the season. The 26-11 loss, which was even worse than the score made it look, knocked the Colts from borderline contender conversation to not even making the playoffs at all after they had over a 90% chance to make it following Week 16^note before this, they faced a Week 17 game against the Raiders - another team with an interim coach following Jon Gruden's departure thanks to off-field antics - which would've got them in and lost that one too. It was the first time since the turn of the century where a team favored by at least 15 points lost by that amount.
• The 2021-22 season's Wild Card round saw the Buffalo Bills put a whipping on their division rival, the New England Patriots, with a 47-17 win. It was the first "perfect" offensive game in NFL history — the Bills had seven drives in the game (not counting the final "victory" drive, since they weren't even trying to move the ball), and scored a touchdown on all seven of them. They had no punts, no field goals, no fumbles, and no interceptions through the entire game. Bills QB Josh Allen threw more touchdowns (5) than incompletions (4). It was also the largest playoff loss ever for Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. Some have described this blowout as the Bills taking two decades worth of frustration out on the Patriots, while others saw it as their revenge for a rather brutal loss to the Patriots earlier in the season where they beat Buffalo through pretty much the running game alone.
• On Christmas Day 2022, the defending champion Los Angeles Rams hosted the Denver Broncos, and both teams were already out of playoff contention, the former's season having gone awry thanks to a slew of injuries — including to QB Matthew Stafford, which had led to the Rams acquiring former Browns QB Baker Mayfield after he was released from Carolina, while the latter had floundered on offense after the blockbuster Russell Wilson trade. So understandably, hype for the game was low, but the game was still played. And the Rams trounced the Broncos 51-14. Every single Rams drive (save for Baker's kneel down at the end) resulted in a score. The 37-point loss was the largest of Russell Wilson's career, and saw head coach Nathaniel Hackett being fired the next day after less than a season. The game may be most memorable, however, for Wilson getting torched in commentary by Patrick Star.
• On New Year's Day 2023, the Green Bay Packers hosted the rival Minnesota Vikings in a game that held major playoff implications for both teams. Despite the Vikings having the better record, the Packers, who were experiencing a late-season surge and also had the advent of home field advantage, were favored to win in betting odds... but what no one expected was for Green Bay to completely and utterly trounce the Vikings in a 41-17 game that wasn't even as close as the score would indicate (both of the Vikings' touchdowns came in "garbage time" when the Packers had already pulled most of their defensive starters).
  • Similarly, in Week 11 of that same season, the Vikings had rattled off seven straight wins, but all of them were by one score. They hosted the Dallas Cowboys, who were coming off a loss in overtime to those aforementioned Packers after being up by 14 in the fourth quarter. Fans were expecting a great game, but instead they were treated to a full-on meltdown. Kirk Cousins was strip-sacked to begin the game, and they never recovered as the Cowboys outgained the Vikings 458-183 and were scoring at will in a 40-3 romp. It was Minnesota's largest home loss since the merger, and Dallas' largest road win in their history.
• September 10, 2023: The New York Giants hosted their bitter rivals, the Dallas Cowboys. What resulted was a 40–0 slaughter that not only marked the biggest shutout win in the Cowboys' history, but also broke the league-wide record set by the Baltimore Colts in 1978. They also broke the record for the most sacks in a Cowboys' season opener, sacking Giants quarterback Daniel Jones a whopping seven times.
• September 24, 2023: The Miami Dolphins handed the Denver Broncos a 70–20 shellacking, with 726 yards of total offense in the game, the most in any NFL game ever. The seventy-point rout by the Dolphins tied for the third-most points scored in any NFL game and the second-most in a regular season game. It was also the most points scored by any team in one game since 1966, while the Dolphins became the first team in NFL history to record five passing touchdowns and five rushing touchdowns in one game. It's also worth noting that the Dolphins had a chance to tack on a field goal late in the fourth quarter, which would have set a regular-season record and tied the record for most points in any NFL game (the 73–0 loss mentioned above in the 1940 NFL Championship), but chose not to do so, feeling that it would constitute Unsportsmanlike Gloating to rack up another score in a situation where they'd go to victory formation under any other circumstances.
• December 14, 2023: The Las Vegas Raiders hosted their bitter rivals, the Los Angeles Chargers. While the final score of 63–21 wasn't quite as one-sided as some of the games listed above, the game was nowhere near as close as the final score. The Raiders led 42–0 at halftime, and pushed it to 63–7 less than a minute into the fourth quarter before going on cruise control. The Chargers would fire both their head coach and general manager the next day. Making this result more remarkable:
  • Just four days earlier, the Raiders had lost at home to the Vikings... 3–0. It was the lowest-scoring NFL game since 2007 (and the lowest-scoring indoor game ever), and the only points came with 1:57 left in the game. (Without that field goal, it could have been the first NFL game since 1943 to be scoreless at the end of regulation.) Incidentally, the Raiders' first-half point total against the Chargers was the largest ever for a team coming off being shut out.
  • The Raiders were missing three offensive starters, including All-Pro RB Josh Jacobs and two O-linemen.

College Football

• This is sometimes planned in college football. Big schools with well funded football teams full of top recruits will often pay huge guarantees to smaller schools with less-competitive football teams to play them (thus boosting the bigger school's number of wins), which often results in ridiculously lopsided losses.
  • For example, the University of Miami (5 time AP National champions) played Savannah State University in 2013 and beat them 77–7. It got so bad that the two coaches agreed to shorten the 4th quarter to 12 minutes. And it wasn't even Savannah State's worst loss. The year before they lost to Oklahoma State 84–0. And in 2018, Savannah State went up against Miami again and lost 77-0, which was very similar to their previous meeting.
  • September 21, 2013 saw traditional Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State, ranked fourth nationally at the time, host Florida A&M for a body-bag game. It was already 21–0 in four OSU offensive plays (the combined times of which made less than a minute) within six minutes, and Florida A&M only got its first first down when it was already down 48–0. Even when Ohio State replaced its entire team with backups and made no effort to score, the Buckeyes continued to score until they won 76–0. From then on, Ohio State and the rest of the Big Ten made a point of phasing out FCS teams for future schedules.
  • Boston College took on Howard on September 12, 2015. The Eagles beat Howard so badly, that, up 62-0 by halftime, the coaches agreed to shorten the second half by 10 minutes to get the game over with. All told, BC won 76–0. To make this curbstomp even more painful, BC ended the year 3–9, with two wins, including this one, coming against FCS competition.
  • On the other hand, there was an October 10, 2015 game where FBS North Texas hosted FCS Portland State^note (who already defeated Pac-12 team Washington State earlier in the year), only to be on the butt-end of a 66-7 shellacking, with the seven points being scored in garbage time. The result, the most lopsided win by an FCS team over an FBS team, was so humiliating that North Texas fired its head coach on the spot.
  • In 2018, the UMass Minutemen found themselves on opposite sides of this trope in consecutive weeks. They kicked off the season with a 63-15 win over Duquesne on August 25, then suffered a 55-21 beat-down by instate foe Boston College on September 1. Two weeks after that, on September 15, they lost to Florida International 63-24.
• The 1916 college football match between Georgia Tech and Cumberland remains the most brutal curb-stomping in the history of organized American football. Tech won the game 222–0, scoring touchdowns on almost every single offensive play, racking up almost 1,700 rushing yards and 32 touchdowns, and not even attempting a single pass play, despite the fact their coach was the one who invented the forward pass. Cumberland finished the game with -82 offensive yards.
  • In fairness to Cumberland, they had cancelled their football program before the season, but remained contractually obligated to play this game, so they made a team of fourteen young men who would clearly not have made any team under normal circumstances. Also, Georgia Tech coach John Heisman (for whom the Heisman Trophy was named) wanted to challenge the notion that had sprung up in college football that margin of victory mattered more than the quality of your opponent. By utterly demolishing a clearly outclassed opponent, Heisman proved that who you play matters.
  • However, Cumberland may not have had totally clean hands. Earlier that year, Cumberland's baseball team laid a similar curb-stomping on Georgia Tech, winning 22–0. The Cumberland team allegedly featured several professional players posing as students, which apparently angered Tech's baseball coach... one John Heisman. In later years, Heisman himself wrote that his running up the score was partially in revenge for the baseball game.
  • As for the game itself, it was an utter disaster for Cumberland due to the inexperience of their team. One of the quarterbacks got knocked out three separate times, there was at least two occasions of the Cumberland players cowering and dropping down in fear rather than making any attempt to stop Georgia Tech from scoring, and four players went and hid behind a fence, including one who was known only as "Pee Wee", who was thrown back onto the field for fear that he'd give away their hiding spot. One Cumberland player had a good chance to score, only to trip and fall over a teammate who was on the field searching for his glasses. The only truly good thing the Cumberland team did was a "climb the ladder" play to block an extra point attempt, but, of course, this lead to a poor player getting massive damage to his face when the ball hit him right on it.
• The 1950 season saw two notorious cases involving Top 10 teams.
  • October 28: Ohio State 83, Iowa 21. The Buckeyes jumped out to a 55–0 first half lead, but what made it even crazier was that OSU's Vic Janowicz almost singlehandedly ran that tally up against the Hawkeyes, since he was the quarterback, the kicker, the punter and also played defense in the era when college players usually played both sides of the ball. Janowicz ran for two TDs, passed for four more, scored the extra points, and recovered two fumbles on the defensive side. Janowicz finished the year by winning the Heisman Trophy.
  • November 19: Kentucky 83, North Dakota 0. Played one week before a highly-anticipated tilt between Kentucky and Tennessee, Kentucky coach Bear Bryant scheduled North Dakota on the logic that it would be good preparation for the next game since UND ran the same offensive scheme as Tennessee. Unfortunately, Kentucky didn't see much of the North Dakota offense because North Dakota only crossed midfield twice in the entire game. Bryant only played his third-stringers in the second half and sent the rest of the team to the practice field to do some conditioning exercises. In what might be considered a case of Laser-Guided Karma, Tennessee beat Kentucky 7–0 the next week.
• The most lopsided game between two major college teams was the Houston Cougars' 100–6 victory over the Tulsa Golden Hurricane on November 23, 1968. This was the result of several converging factors: Tulsa had beaten Houston the year before so revenge was on UH's mind, the Tulsa team had been ravaged by flu, and Houston coach Bill Yeoman was notorious for running up the score. After Tulsa scored early in the 3rd quarter to cut Houston's lead to 24–6, the Cougars scored 27 more points in the 3rd quarter and 49 in the 4th.
  • Nearly 21 years later, on October 21, 1989, Houston, led by Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Andre Ware, took on the SMU Mustangs, who were in their first year back after having received the NCAA "death penalty" for repeated recruiting violations; most of their remaining scholarship players had transferred to other schools in the interim (Houston itself was on NCAA probation for similar recruiting violations). Oddsmakers sensed that this was a huge mismatch, installing Houston as a 59-point favorite. That was way too conservative, as the Cougars obliterated the Mustangs 95-21, amassing 1,021 yards of offense during the game (which equals about 3/5ths of a mile or a little over a kilometer of territory), still a single game team record on any level of college football. It could've been worse, too: Houston led 59-14 at the half. The defeat was so bad that Mustangs head coach Forrest Gregg refused to shake hands with Cougars head coach Jack Pardee after the game was over. SMU got a weird bit of karmic justice on November 5, 2022 when they were on the victorious side of a record-setting game against Houston, winning 77-63 in the highest-scoring regulation game in major college history, with Houston's 63 points tying the record for most points scored by a losing team in regulation.
  • It was Houston's turn to be on the butt end of this against Army in the Armed Forces Bowl on December 22, 2018. Most observers were expecting a reasonably close game. It was anything but. The Cougars had no answer to the Black Knights' option attack, which racked up more than 500 yards on the ground on the way to a 70–14 slaughter. The 70 points equaled the record for a single team in any bowl game^note West Virginia, 70–33 over Clemson in the 2012 Orange Bowl, and the victory margin equaled Tulsa's record from the 2008 GMAC Bowl mentioned below. As another note for the game, Army traditionally has the cheer squad do as many pushups as their score after a successful drive, so audiences get to see 385 pushups.
• A few weeks after the Houston blowout in 1989, Notre Dame smothered SMU by the score of 59-6. Irish head coach Lou Holtz actually went easy on them as he wasn’t a big fan of playing against SMU anyway because of the talent difference between the two teams.
  • Notre Dame was also on the receiving end of this as well against Miami in 1985 as the Hurricanes beat the Irish down 58-7. A lot of people felt that it was uncalled for by the Canes because it was the final game for Notre Dame head coach Gerry Faust, a coach who was well-liked personally but whose tenure in South Bend had been a disaster (by Notre Dame standards),^note Faust had a decent 30-25-1 record heading into the game, but the Irish had never won more than 7 games in a season under Faust. but Miami Head Coach Jimmy Johnson defended his reasoning for the team putting the points up by saying “My team played well. I can’t defend the other team for playing poorly.”
  • The blowout kickstarted a fierce rivalry between the two schools.
• October 6, 1990: Upon hearing that the lightly-regarded Northern Illinois Huskies played a game against a team ranked in the Top 25 that ended with a final score of 73–18, you would naturally assume they were on the losing end, but they were the ones doing the curb-stomping. The Fresno State Bulldogs, undefeated at 5-0 and ranked #20 in the coaches' poll, traveled to NIU, but they had no answer for the Huskies' fast-paced wishbone offense, falling behind 21–7 after one quarter and 50–18 at halftime. The game was basically the Stacey Robinson Show, as NIU's quarterback ran for 308 yards (a new record for a QB that stood for almost three decades) and 5 touchdowns. NIU ended up with 806 total yards (733 rushing, 73 passing).
  • October 5, 1991: almost a year to the day later, Fresno State got to be on the opposite end of this. Once again undefeated (3-0), the Bulldogs hosted the New Mexico Lobos, at 1-4, in the latest chapter of what had become a heated grudge match in the previous few years, despite Fresno State being a much better team than UNM. ^ExplanationIn 1988, Fresno State beat New Mexico 68–21, then after the game, Fresno State's outspoken coach Jim Sweeney derided New Mexico as a "baaaaad team" and suggested they could've scored 100 against them. The next year, New Mexico hosted an undefeated Fresno team in the final game of the regular season, and, Sweeney's comments still stinging, the Lobos shocked the Bulldogs 45–22. To compound the embarrassment for Fresno, fans started mocking Sweeney with a "Sweeney's a weenie" chant. The next year, New Mexico nearly upset Fresno again, falling 24–17. The game started out fairly calmly, with both teams punting on their first possessions, then Fresno kicking a field goal, but two UNM turnovers led directly to TDs, and Fresno took a 17–0 lead at the end of the 1st quarter. Then things went slightly nuts. New Mexico turned the ball over 5 times in the 2nd quarter, and simply couldn't stop Fresno's offense. After intercepting a Lobo pass with :18 left in the half, the Bulldogs, up 59–7, kept their offense revved up, and, on a 1st and goal at the Lobo 2-yard line with :07 left, called a timeout, giving them enough time to punch the ball in and take a 66–7 halftime lead.^note Interviewed on TV on his way to the locker room, Sweeney showed no remorse for running the score up and mentioned his ill treatment from UNM's fans in '89. While Fresno took their starters out in the second half, they didn't let up offense-wise, and by the latter stages of the 4th quarter, they got the ball back with a 94–17 lead, but clearly aimed to reach 100, only to have the drive sputter. Still, the 94–17 win trails only Houston-Tulsa '68 as the most points scored against a major college team in the modern era.
• A lot of football experts thought Florida in 1995 would beat Nebraska. However, Nebraska had the last laugh, as the Cornhuskers beat the Gators 62–24 to win its second straight national title.
• Remember Tulsa from 1968? Well, almost 40 years later, the Golden Hurricane would be on the winning side of a historic blowout. In the 2008 GMAC Bowl (part of the 2007 season), they annihilated Bowling Green 63–7, setting a new record for victory margin in a bowl game. (This record would be tied in 2018 by Army in the aforementioned Armed Forces Bowl, then tied again and later broken in the 2022–23 bowl season, and broken again the next season.)
• In 2009, Jim Harbaugh's Stanford Cardinal stomped Pete Carroll's USC Trojans, 55–21; post-game, Carroll infamously asked Harbaugh, "What's your deal?" The rivalry between Harbaugh and Carroll carried over to the NFL; in December 2012, Carroll's Seahawks stomped Harbaugh's 49ers 42–13, and again on September 2013, to the tune of 29–3.
• The 2012 Orange Bowl pitted ACC champions Clemson against Big East champions West Virginia^note the 2011-12 season marked the final year in the conference before moving to the Big 12, and at first it seemed like a competitive game with a 17-14 lead by Clemson in the first half. Then the second quarter happened, with a 35-3 run from West Virginia, which included a 99-yard fumble return by safety Darwin Cook. The game ended in West Virginia's resounding 70-33, which set the record at the time for a single team's score.
• In 2014, Ohio State needed to prove they were worthy of the first College Football Playoff, and despite being 4-point underdogs against Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship, OSU won 59–0, making it the biggest spread upset in college football history.^note As measured by difference between the spread and final score. A separate definition of "biggest spread upset" is the largest point-spread deficit for a winning team.
• The 2015 season opener between Notre Dame and the Texas Longhorns ended with Texas losing 38–3.
• In two successive years, Oregon was at the butt-end of one, both at home:
  • On September 26, 2015, the 13th-ranked Ducks hosted the 18th-ranked Utah Utes in Eugene, Oregon, the Ducks being favored by at least ten points. What resulted was a lopsided 62–20 victory for the Utes, a remarkable feat given Autzen Stadium's difficulty for visiting teams, and the most points ever allowed by Oregon at home at the time. This included a 28–0 3rd quarter, as well as touchdowns from defense and special teams.
  • October 8, 2016 was even more humiliating, given that the Ducks were having a very down year at the time and their hated Washington Huskies came in ranked 5th and fresh off a decisive rout over Pac-12 powerhouse Stanford. Leading up to this game, Oregon beat Washington twelve straight years, often by wide margins. Only this time, the Huskies prevailed to the tune of 70–21, which only contributed to Oregon's deteriorating season that saw head coach Mark Helfrich fired by the end of the year.
• October 8, 2016 brought us the Michigan Wolverines vs. Rutgers Scarlet Knights, which ended in an ugly 78–0 thrashing. Not only that, but Rutgers was limited to a total of 39 yards, with only six in the first half and only managing a first down late in the fourth quarter. One would be forgiven for assuming this is a body bag game instead of an in-conference match, since both are in the Big Ten.
• October 27, 2018 was humiliating for Florida State fans, as the Seminoles got smashed by conference rival Clemson 59–10 at home. Not only was this tied for the worst loss in program history with a loss to in-state rival Florida in 1973, but this was their worst home loss.
  • This wasn't even Clemson's biggest blowout win in 2018. On October 6, the Tigers thrashed the Wake Forest Demon Deacons 63–3 in Winston-Salem.
  • On November 3, 2018 Clemson destroyed the Louisville Cardinals 77–16. Granted, the Tigers were already huge favorites at home coming into the game and Louisville was having a very down year, but this was still a lopsided score.
  • Even the College Football Playoff Championship on January 7, 2019 was a blowout in Clemson's favor. The Tigers, who were 6-point underdogs against Alabama, proceeded to overwhelm the Crimson Tide 44–16, including a second-half shutout. What is even more impressive is that Alabama had never lost by more than 14 points under Nick Saban, and the Tide's last loss by more than 17 points had been against LSU. In 2003. Ironically enough, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was a former player at Alabama.
• On October 27, 2018 the Princeton Tigers crushed the Cornell Big Red 66–0 in an Ivy League conference matchup.
• The 2017 Uteck Bowl, the national semi-final of university football in Canada, featured the Western Mustangs^note representing the school legally known as the University of Western Ontario, but branded as "Western University" since 2012 destroying the Acadia Axemen 81–3. Acadia, however, had been dealing with a Thursday Night Football-grade four-day turnover between the Uteck Bowl and the Atlantic conference's championship game, since it was delayed to the Tuesday prior to the bowl due to a legal dispute involving an ineligible player on the opposing team.
• Actually fairly common in the NCAA's lower divisions and the NAIA, since there's often a huge talent gap between good teams and bad teams. The two most recent three digit margins were the Central State Marauders' 101-0 drubbing of the Lane Dragons in 1989 (Lane's coach motioned to end the game with 11:00 left in the 4th quarter and the referees agreed) and the Rockford Regents defeating the Trinity Bible College Lions 105–0 in 2003 (Rockford scored touchdowns on their first six possessions en route to a 63-0 halftime lead, while Trinity Bible only crossed midfield once the entire game).
  • Triple digits almost happened in the opening game for two Minnesota-based NCAA Division III schools in 2017, when the Saint John's Johnnies pulverized the St. Scholastica Saints 98–0. As in the Rockford/Trinity Bible game, the halftime score was 63–0 and the losing team only made it past the 50-yard line once. What made this remarkable is that while Saint John's is considered an elite team in D-III, St. Scholastica is generally a decent second-tier team. In fact, St. Scholastica went on a seven-game winning streak after the loss, before dropping their final two games to finish with a 7–3 record. Then fast-forward to 2021: St. Scholastica has now become a member of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, the home of Saint John's. Would they be more evenly matched with the Johnnies now that they're conference peers? Nope. Saint John's jumped out to a 54–0 halftime lead, then went on cruise control in the second half, winning 81–0.
  • Northeastern State University of Oklahoma, a Division II team, went a dismal 0-11 in 2019, but along the way they also set an all-time record on any level of college football by giving up an average of 65.2 points per game. All told, the RiverHawks lost their eleven games by an average score of 65-10, with the final four games being a particularly brutal stretch: 86–7, 79–0, 82–14 and 91–7.
  • The Division I FCS Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks came extremely close to notching a triple-digit game on September 24, 2022 against the Warner Royals of the NAIA.^note Warner has such a tiny football budget that they traveled the 1,000 miles from their home in central Florida to Stephen F. Austin's east Texas campus via a 17-hour bus ride. SFA led 35–0 after one quarter, 59–0 at halftime and 71–0 after three quarters. Heading into the 4th quarter, the Lumberjacks had scored on every single offensive possession, and had returned two fumbles for a TD and notched a safety as well (for their part, Warner had two decent drives that ended in missed field goals). After taking a 78–0 lead with 8:55 left in the 4th, SFA likely wanted to ease up a bit, but then Warner collapsed in extraordinary fashion: they gave up a punt return TD with 6:58 remaining to make it 85–0, then threw an interception on their first play from scrimmage on the next series, then let SFA score an 18-yard TD run to make it 92–0, then the Royals fumbled the ensuing kickoff return, then gave up another short TD run, to make it 98–0 with 6:17 left. The Lumberjacks then lined up for a two-point conversion, making it seem like they were aiming for 100, but instead they showed mercy to the hapless Royals by taking a knee. That's 20 points scored in 41 seconds of game time. Thankfully that wrapped up the scoring, and the final score was only 98–0. Since the kneel down was listed in the box score as a failed two-point conversion, there was some initial misunderstanding among people who hadn't seen the game, and the Lumberjacks were misblamed for poor sportsmanship by appearing to have tried and failed to reach the century mark.
  • On November 5, 2022, another FCS game in Texas saw the Incarnate Word Cardinals rack up a 70–6 tally against the Houston Christian Huskies...at halftime! UIW took their foot off the pedal in the second half, and the final score was a relatively more competitive 73–20. What made this more remarkable was that this was a late-season conference game, not an early season non-conference mismatch.
  • The most lopsided championship game on any level of college football was the 1980 Stagg Bowl, the NCAA Division III title game. The Ithaca Bombers, the undefeated defending champion, had every reason to be confident in facing the also-undefeated Dayton Flyers (a Division I school that played D-III football when that was still allowed). Instead, Dayton took a 28–0 lead at halftime. Neither team scored in the third quarter, leading to hopes that Ithaca could mount a Miracle Rally in the fourth. Nope. The Bombers threw three interceptions that led directly to Dayton touchdowns, and the Flyers ended up winning 63–0.
  • Things went absolutely bonkers among lower division teams in the first few weeks of the 2023 college season. It was especially rough if you were a college with a woman's name or were playing a team called the Falcons.
    • UT Permian Basin Falcons 96, Texas College Steers 0. UTPB took a 54–0 halftime lead and outgained the Steers on total offense by the count of 572 yards to 2 (on 58 offensive plays, Texas College had 38 yards passing, and negative 36 yards rushing).
    • Quincy Hawks 89, Madonna University Crusaders 0. Quincy led 75–0 at halftime. Madonna punted 10 times.
    • Notre Dame (Ohio) Falcons 87, West Virginia Wesleyan Bobcats 9. Crazier since this was a conference game. The Bobcats' 9 points came on a fumble recovery runback and a safety.
    • US Coast Guard Academy Bears 93, Anna Maria AMCATS^note The nickname is an acronym for Anna Maria College Athletic Team Sports, but they use a fictional wildcat as a mascot. 24. Anna Maria cut the lead down to 63–24 in the 3rd quarter, but utterly collapsed after that.
    • Howard Payne Yellow Jackets 85, Lyon Scots 0. HPU led 47–0 at the end of the first quarter!! Lyon's offensive possessions all ended in either punts (12 total) or turnovers (3 interceptions, 2 fumbles).
  • Back on the FCS level, the Portland State Vikings got to experience both sides of this in September 2023. For their season opener they traveled to their much better-funded in-state counterpart Oregon and fell behind 50–7 at halftime. The Ducks ended up prevailing 81–7, racking up 729 total yards against the Vikings. Two weeks later PSU hosted^note They play their home games in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro. the North American University Stallions, a Texas NAIA school in just its second year of football, and managed to demolish them even worse than they'd been thrashed by Oregon. The Vikings scored 42 points in the second quarter to take a 63–0 halftime lead, then cruised in the second half to a 91–0 win. North American's offense never made it past their own 37-yard line, and ended up with the rare accomplishment of negative total yardage—on 31 rushes they gained 35 yards but lost 84, yielding a net total of -49 rushing yards, which, coupled with 26 yards passing on 21 attempts, gave NAU -23 yards of total offense, to PSU's 426 (much less than you'd expect for 91 points, but Portland State had ridiculously short fields for their offensive drives). It's worth noting that the losers in both games didn't leave empty-handed: Portland State got paid $600,000 (about 1/20th of their annual athletics budget) by Oregon, then they turned around and gave North American $75,000 for their trouble.
• Clemson's beatdown of Alabama wasn't even close to being the biggest blowout of the 2018 bowl season.
  • Then, six days later in the Music City Bowl, Auburn entered as a 3½-point favorite over Purdue. By the end of the first quarter, Auburn was up 28–7. And by halftime, 49–7... with the Tigers setting a new record for most points in any half of any bowl game. The final was 63–14, and it could have been worse—neither team scored in the fourth quarter. It became even more of a downer for Boilermaker fans on New Year's Day, when the team's biggest inspiration during that season, Tyler Trent, lost his battle with a rare form of bone cancer. Trent, a Purdue student who had been forced to drop out due to his illness, had made national headlines for his perseverance in the face of death, and had been flown to the game on the Indianapolis Colts' team plane, thanks to the team owner.
• Ohio State was on both sides of this in the final two weeks of the 2021 regular season, both of which were against their rivals from the state of Michigan:
  • In a highly pivotal game against #7 Michigan State, the Buckeyes proceeded to blow out the Spartans 56-7, which had some people believe they were a lock for the Big Ten Championship and a Playoff team.
  • The #2 Buckeyes were on the receiving end when they played their Arch-Enemy Michigan, well known for not beating the Buckeyes in a decade with much of the mockery and criticism being aimed at Jim Harbaugh since his first season in 2015. While the #5 Wolverines defeated the Buckeyes 42-27, the game was not as close as the score indicated, as Michigan dominated with the running game that accounted for all six of their touchdowns, knocking their sworn enemies out of not only the conference championship berth, but also playoff contention as well.
• The Georgia Bulldogs opened the 2022 season by clobbering the Oregon Ducks 49–3, a result that was surprising even granting that Georgia were the defending national champions, since despite not being considered title contenders, Oregon was still ranked 11th in the country going in.
• Heading into Week 12 of the 2022 season, the Tennessee Volunteers seemed to be all but assured to secure a playoff spot, with their upcoming opponent, the South Carolina Gamecocks, being seen by many as an easy win due to being soundly beaten the week prior against Florida 38-6 in their own Curb-Stomp Battle. But when the players took the field, Tennessee was completely dominated by South Carolina 63-38, with the Gamecocks once-floundering offense managing to easily tear through the Volunteers' defense. To make matters even worse for Tennessee, their starting quarterback, Hendon Hooker, tore his ACL during the blowout, ending his Heisman chances at the same time that South Carolina killed Tennessee's chances of appearing in the College Football Playoff.
• Even after hiring legendary NFL cornerback Deion Sanders as head coach after a successful two-year stint at Jackson State, the Colorado Buffaloes weren't considered to be contenders in the 2023 season in spite of offseason coverage, especially after a paltry 1-11 season. Things were looking up for the Buffaloes after a 3-0 start that included a 36-14 blowout over rival Nebraska, and gained renewed interest in the program in the process. However, their game at Oregon was a different story, as the Ducks greatly overwhelmed the Buffs throughout the game, leading 35-0 at halftime. Colorado only managed 23 total yards in the first half and didn't make it past midfield until the fourth quarter. Oregon finished off Colorado 42-6, an embarrassment that Sanders and the Buffs never really recovered from, finishing the season with a 4-8 record.
• One of the criticisms of the College Football Playoff is that the semifinal games usually fall under this trope.
  • The very first College Football Playoff semifinal game, taking place on New Year's Day 2015 in the Rose Bowl, was between the second-seeded Oregon Ducks and the third-seeded defending national champions Florida State Seminoles. The Ducks, who were eight-point favorites to begin with, proceeded to throttle the Seminoles 59-20, with nearly half of the points coming in the third quarter.
  • The December 2015 Cotton Bowl, which was between the Michigan State Spartans and Alabama Crimson Tide, started slow (the first points were scored in the 2nd quarter), but then Alabama thrashed right through Michigan State in the second half, winning 38-0. ESPN's attempts to deliberately drive people away nearing halftime by advertising Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve in the middle of the game was perhaps a subtle prediction that it wasn't going to end well for the Spartans.
  • The December 2016 Fiesta Bowl between the Clemson Tigers and the Ohio State Buckeyes did not go very well for the Buckeyes. Clemson would dominate Ohio State in humiliating fashion, shutting out the Buckeyes 31-0. It certainly didn't help that the Playoff committee was criticized for selecting the Buckeyes despite the fact that they did not win their conference championship and some fans wished that Big Ten champions Penn State should have been selected instead.
  • The 2018 Sugar Bowl, which was the third consecutive playoff meeting between Alabama and Clemson, resulted in the Tide's defense dominating the Tigers, which led to a 24-6 Alabama victory.
  • The following season had the 2018 Cotton Bowl, featuring the Clemson Tigers and Notre Dame Fighting Irish, both of which were undefeated heading into the game. In what was seen by fans as a Foregone Conclusion, the Tigers controlled most of the game in a 30-3 blowout victory after a first quarter tie.
  • The 2019 Peach Bowl was perhaps the largest stomp in a semifinal game in the Playoff era, as the LSU Tigers, who were already dominant on offense with Heisman winner Joe Burrow to begin with, obliterated the Oklahoma Sooners 63-28 in a record-breaking performance by Burrow.
  • The January 2021 Sugar Bowl, taking place in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic, saw Ohio State finally get their first win over Clemson in a game that was unexpectedly a rout in the Buckeyes' favor, winning 49-28. This is especially notable because many were expecting yet another Alabama vs. Clemson championship rematch and the Buckeyes had only played six games as opposed to the other playoff teams having played at least eleven games. And just to rub salt in the wound for Clemson, Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney put the Buckeyes at No. 11 in the Coaches Poll prior to the game, which might've been motivation for the Buckeyes.
  • The December 2021 Orange Bowl between the Michigan Wolverines and the Georgia Bulldogs ended with in a clear-cut victory for the Dawgs, overwhelming their opponent 34-11. Michigan did not score a touchdown until less than five minutes left in the game. Georgia would go on to win the National Championship over a week later.
• Within one week in January 2023 (part of the 2022 season), the record for most lopsided bowl game was first tied and then broken:
  • In the Citrus Bowl on January 2, Purdue was again on the butt end of a blowout, this time a 63–7 annihilation by LSU.
  • Exactly one week later in the College Football Playoff National Championship, Georgia jumped to a 10–0 lead over TCU midway through the first quarter. The Horned Frogs responded with a touchdown on their next possession... and that was it for the Frogs. Final score: Georgia 65, TCU 7, the biggest blowout in bowl history at the time. Georgia outgained TCU by 401 total yards (589 to 188), and even Georgia's backup offense tore the TCU defense to shreds.
• Georgia's blowout of TCU was a bowl record for only one season. The next season saw Georgia miss out on an unbeaten season and CFP berth with a loss to Alabama in the SEC championship game. The Dawgs got the consolation prize of a New Year's Six game, specifically the Orange Bowl, where they faced an unbeaten Florida State team that had been snubbed by the CPF after failing to impress in two games after their starting QB was injured. Due to opt-outs, transfers, and injuries, the Seminoles were without 97% of their passing yards, 88% of their rushing yards, and 84% of their receptions on the season, as well as five starters in their defensive front seven and three starting defensive backs—and it showed. Georgia jumped out to a 42–3 halftime lead, the largest in Orange Bowl history, on its way to a 63–3 annihilation. The Dawgs outgained the Noles by even more than they did against the Frogs a year earlier (672 yards to 206). Not only did this set a new record for most lopsided bowl win, but it was also the biggest point margin ever against a top-5 team in the AP Poll era and the most lopsided loss in FSU history.

Other

• During the 2013 IFAF Women's World Championship, the United States women's national football team did this to all of their opponents, defeating Sweden 84-0 in their first game of the tournament, then Germany 107-7 in the other group stage game, that touchdown being the only points scored on the US team in any world championship, they closed this out with a 64-0 victory against Canada in the gold medal match. In the same tournament, Spain lost all of their matches in this fashion, but not quite as badly, 47-0 against Finland and 50-0 against Canada in group play, and in the fifth place match, losing to Sweden 64-0. They did not score once in the entire tournament.
• France beat Australia in their second match of the 2015 IFAF Senior Men's World Championship in Canton 53-3, before preceding to fall to the United States 82-0 in the semifinal. The United States men's team has heavy restrictions as to who can even play for the national team, including being no more than one year removed from college graduation and not being a pro, and requirements to have players from all NCAA divisions and NAIA giving them a weaker player pool, while France can choose to use their professional players if they wanted.
• IMG Academy, a preparatory school just south of the Tampa Bay area, is one of the premier high school programs in the country with among some of the best college football Division 1 prospects. It is expected that teams would be at the receiving end of a curbstomp against them, but two programs really stuck out in the new twenties:
  • On August 29, 2021 they were scheduled to play in a nationally-televised game in Canton, Ohio against Bishop Sycamore, who claimed to ESPN's promoters that they had hot D-I prospects in their roster. Even while the latter was determined to be a scam with no physical campus and lack of equipment, having already played a game two days prior and largely consisting of junior college dropouts in their twenties, they had been thoroughly beaten 58-0. In a nationally televised game where the commentators couldn't even tell who the players were since they didn't appear in any recruiting databases.
  • West Toronto Prep competed against them on the road on November 4, 2022, and this time lost 96-0 at a game mercifully called as soon as the first half ended. It had raised some speculation that this could be yet another Bishop Sycamore situation, not helped in that a public park building turned up when looking up the academy's address.
• In most states, high school football is subject to a "running clock" rule, where if a team gets ahead by certain margin (30, 35 and 36 points are used in various states), the clock stays running, so the losing team doesn't have their agony prolonged more than necessary (usually only stopping for injuries, time outs and penalties or other official-initiated stoppages; some states also cancel the running clock if the trailing team reduces the margin back down to 21 points). For many years the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference had a rule where a coach would be suspended for a game if their team beat another opponent by 50 points or more. However there were many instances where losing coaches would vouch for the winning coach by stating that they followed all the “big lead protocols” by playing their deepest reserves and only doing handoffs for runs up the middle, etc. Plays where the intent is to run out the clock as opposed to score more points. They stated that the only alternative the leading team would’ve had would be to take a knee on every play, punt on first down, etc. That would be more humiliating than a higher final score. The CIAC eventually dropped the rule and adopted the running clock.
• In a 2019 Hawaii high school game, Hilo defeated Waiakea 104–0. In response, the local federation immediately amended their running clock rule to be effective whenever a team leads by 35 points. Previously it had only been when they took a 35-point lead in the second half. Since that hadn't been the case for Hilo/Waiakea, Hilo managed to take an 83–0 halftime lead into the locker room.
• A 2021 California high school game saw an unbelievable blowout as Inglewood jumped out to a 59-0 first quarter lead against crosstown rival Morningside, extended it to 86-0 at halftime, and ultimately won by a score of 106-0. While the game was an obvious mismatch from the start,^explanationInglewood entered the game with a record of 7-0, with three straight shutouts, having won their previous 5 games by a combined score of 239-7, while Morningside was 2-7 and had lost games earlier in the season by scores of 50-0 and 67-0 Inglewood and their head coach, Mil'Von James, still got a ton of scathing criticism in the aftermath of the game. James was accused of engaging in aggressive and intense Unsportsmanlike Gloating, far beyond what is normally expected in American football, in order to demoralize Morningside into losing the will to compete. This includes keeping Inglewood's star quarterback Justyn Martin in play at all times no matter how big their lead got; showing off Martin's touchdowns (he threw 13 TD passes in the game) on social media where Morningside's people could see it; denying all of Morningside's requests for the mercy rule, which in this case would have sped up the clock to get the game done sooner; and executing an unnecessary 2-point conversion at the end of the game to boost their margin of victory that little bit higher. A few weeks later, Inglewood was on the receiving end as they were eliminated from the sectional playoffs by Bishop Alemany to the tune of 56-30. The 2022 game was also a blowout, but Inglewood beat Morningside by a comparatively tame 45-0 score.
• A 2023 Nebraska high school game saw Lincoln North Star defeat Omaha Benson by an extremely lopsided score of 93-0 in the season opener, which set the record for the largest blowout in the state's highest division. Within the first five minutes of game time, North Star jumped to a 21-0 lead after blunders from the Benson offense and special teams, and it only snowballed from there, with North Star finishing the first quarter 49-0 and ballooned to 86-0 at half. To make matters worse, Benson's head coach from the previous year had left for a crosstown rival and several standout players followed him, resulting in a very inexperienced and shorthanded roster.

Association Football/Soccer

English Premier League

• The record margin for a curbstomp at this level is 9-0, which had been achieved four times:
  • Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson hosted Ipswich Town on 4 March 1995, with the latter eventually being relegated at the conclusion of the 1994-95 season. Five of the goals were scored by forward Andy Cole, which remains the league record for number of goals in a single match.
  • Southampton had been on the butt end of this margin twice, both in consecutive seasons and under the management of Ralph Hasenhüttl. On 25 October 2019 they hosted Leicester City, but managed to bounce back in the 2019-20 season and turned in a respectable 11th place finish. On 2 February 2021 they visited Manchester United, and although they struggled for the remainder of the season, they avoided relegation at 15th place.
  • On 27 August 2022, after a slow start and fresh off their road defeat to their rival Manchester United, Liverpool hosted Bournemouth. In the aftermath of the beatdown, which included an own goal, Bournemouth manager Scott Parker got sacked not only for that but for the rocky relationship between him and the team's ownership, which culminated in an interview criticizing the state of his own players.
• 1998-99: Nottingham Forest 1-8 Man Utd
• 2009-10: Tottenham 9-1 Wigan
• 2009-10: Chelsea 8-0 Wigan
• 2009-10: Chelsea 7-0 Stoke
• Sunday 28 August 2011, Tottenham Hotspur 1-5 Man City and Manchester United 8-2 Arsenal.
• From the 2011-12 season: Man City 6-1 Man United (tying the three previous biggest blowouts of Manchester derby; another 6-1 for City and two 5-0 scorelines, one for City and one for United)
• 2012-13: Chelsea 8-0 Aston Villa (setting a new record loss for Aston Villa in the process)
• March 22, 2014. Arsène Wenger's 1000th game in charge of Arsenal is at the home of title rivals Chelsea. After three minutes, Arsenal's Olivier Giroud is denied by Chelsea's Petr Čech and a minute later Chelsea are ahead. After 22 minutes Arsenal are 3-0 down and with a player sent off in a case of mistaken identity. Final score: Chelsea 6 Arsenal 0.
• 2014-15: Southampton 8-0 Sunderland
• 2019-20: Man City 8-0 Watford
• 2022-23:
  • Liverpool 7-0 Man Utd
  • Newcastle United 6–1 Spurs. A late-season clash between teams gunning for Champions League football turned into a horror show for the visitors. Thanks mostly to a pathetic Spurs defence, Newcastle went up 1–0 a hair over a minute in, 3–0 in the ninth minute (making it the first time in the Premier League era that Spurs had been down 3–0 within 10 minutes), and 5–0 in the 21st minute.
• 2023-24: Newly-promoted side Sheffield United hosted a reinvigorated Newcastle United that qualified for the Champions League after the results of the prior season. Sheffield were behind 0-3 at the half before ultimately losing 0-8, with every single goal made by a different player.

Other English Domestic Competitions

• 1887-88: Preston North End 26-0 Hyde (FA Cup, First Round)
• 1933-34: Stockport County 13-0 Halifax Town (Third Division North) – joint record win in Football League.
• 1946-47: Newcastle United 13-0 Newport County (Second Division) – joint record win in Football League.
• 1891-92: West Bromwich Albion 12-0 Darwen (First Division) – joint record win in top tier.
• 1908-09: Nottingham Forest 12-0 Leicester Fosse (First Division) – joint record win in top tier.
• Happened to Aston Villa versus Arsenal in the 2015 FA Cup Final, to the surprise of many. Arsenal's league form had stuttered slightly, and had developed a reputation for fizzling out in big games. Villa had seen a upturn in fortunes thanks to Tim Sherwood and an in-form Christian Benteke. After 40 minutes it looked like it would be tight, then Arsenal scored via Theo Walcott, and then added three more in the second half. Villa had no response to this domination, with Benteke being tightly marked by the Arsenal defense. To rub salt into the wound: Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, a well known Aston Villa fan and head of the FA was presenting the trophy, and it was clear to all how disappointed he was.

La Liga (Spain)

• In 2010 FC Barcelona recorded a 5-0 win against Real Madrid, the most expensive team in the world.
• In 2015-16, Real Madrid won 10-2 against Rayo Vallecano, a team from the same city that for less than a quarter hour was winning the match.

Copa del Rey (Spain)

• "El Alcorconazo" — October 27, 2009, Copa del Rey^note (Spanish Cup, literally "King's Cup"): In the round of 32, Alcorcón, a team from the Madrid area that then played in Segunda División B (Spain's third level at the time), was drawn against La Liga superpower Real Madrid. Just how different were they? (1) Alcorcón's total payroll that season was less than €1 million, while Real's was €110 million. (2) Real had spent over €250 million on new players the previous summer. (3) The day before the first leg of the cup tie, one of Real's sponsors gave the entire senior squad new cars worth a combined €2 million. (4) The average salary of an Alcorcón player that season was less than what new Real signing Cristiano Ronaldo was making per day. (5) Finally, at the time of the match, Real's youth side was in Segunda B alongside Alcorcón — and had lost only once in the teams' seven meetings. And what happens? Alcorcón wins the first leg at home 4–0. Oh yeah... Real's best player in that match was their goalkeeper. The second leg was 1–0 to Real, not enough to overcome the disaster in Alcorcón.
• The Copa del Rey saw another curb-stomping in the final of its 2017/18 edition pitting Sevilla FC against FC Barcelona. Less than a month earlier, Sevilla had come very close to handing Barça its first league loss of the season (they had manage to equalize the game with two late goals and arrived at the cup final still undefeated in the league). This time around, however, Sevilla fizzled out early and Barcelona destroyed them 0-5 to win the Cup for the 30th time, in captain Andrés Iniesta's last final with the team. Sevilla head coach Vincenzo Montella was fired shortly thereafter.
• Copa del Rey 2022 (first round): Santa Amalia 0-9 Villarreal.

Other Domestic Leagues/Competitions

• 1885-86: Arbroath 36-0 Bon Accord (Scottish FA Cup, round 1)
• 1885-86: Dundee Harp 35-0 Aberdeen Rovers (Scottish FA Cup, round 1)^note on the same day as the above. The referee recorded 37 goals for Dundee but the match official only 35 so they agreed to submit the lower number to the Scottish FA).
• On February 12, 1997, Federico Pisani, a popular young player with Italian team Atalanta, died in a road accident. On the following Sunday, 15, Atalanta were scheduled to play Vicenza at home (the town of Bergamo). The stadium was full to the brim, the players keyed up to the most tremendous pitch. They won the game 3-1, but that does not give the dimension of their dominance; in that kind of mood, they'd have beaten Brazil. Hapless Vicenza were overwhelmed and did extraordinarily well to limit the loss to three goals. The players had placed Pisani's no.14 shirt on the net of their goal, and at each goal they scored, the scorer ran all the way back and kissed it. After the game the team retired the no.14 shirt permanently.
• Any given year, you can expect Bayern Munich to score 5-0 or more at least once in the Bundesliga. Hamburg in particular has been one of their biggest victims (including two 8-0 and a 9-2)◊.
• On June 19, 2020, PFC Sochi hosted FC Rostov in a Russian Premier League match. Rostov was driving for a UEFA Champions League place, while Sochi was in a relegation dogfight. Result? Sochi blows out Rostov 10–1. However, this ESPN story pointed out that there were major extenuating circumstances. This was the first match for both sides after a three-month hiatus due to COVID-19, and just two days before, six of Rostov's first team tested positive for the virus. Under the league's COVID-19 protocol, the entire first-team squad and staff were forced into quarantine for 2 weeks. Sochi was insistent on playing the fixture, placing Rostov in a bind—league regulations also mandate that a team forfeiting two matches during the season is automatically expelled from the top flight. Rostov's solution was to have their 17-and-under team play the match. (This was possible because while Russia's pro leagues restarted, the age-group leagues had yet to do so.) Rostov's kids actually opened the scoring, but it was downhill from there. Nonetheless, the league named Rostov's goalkeeper the man of the match... while he did let in 10 goals, he also set a new league record with 15 saves, including one penalty. And may we add, this was a 17-year-old who hadn't trained in three months trying to hold his own against older professionals who had been back in training. One of Sochi's players went on Instagram to praise the Rostov youngsters' effort.
• On October 24, 2020, Dutch giants Ajax faced VVV-Venlo in a Dutch Eredivisie match. Ajax were winning 4-0 at half time, but the curb-stomping truly began when VVV-Venlo had a player sent off early in the second half. The final score? 13-0 to Ajax. Teenager Lassina Traore did most of the curb-stomping himself, scoring five goals and assisting three others. This was the biggest-ever win in the Eredivisie, and VVV-Venlo's heaviest-ever defeat, but remarkably, it wasn't Ajax's biggest-ever win; in 1984, they faced Luxembourg side Differdange in the UEFA Cup and beat them 14-0!
• On November 27, 2021, Benfica were playing Belenenses in a Portuguese Primeira Liga match. Belenenses were 7-0 down by half time, could only start the match with 9 players due to the fact a COVID-19 outbreak had taken out 17 of their team, and had to start with two goalkeepers on the pitch, with one playing in defence. Only seven Belenenses players came out after half time, and when another of their players went down injured, it meant that Belenenses couldn’t then field the minimum amount of players for the game (in soccer, the minimum amount of players on the pitch for a team can be 7) forcing the match to be abandoned by the referee before the score could get any higher. Benfica, for their part, were extremely embarrassed by the result, even claiming that the match shouldn’t have gone ahead, but the authorities wouldn’t postpone it.
• Two of these happened in the Bundesliga on October 28, 2023:
  • First, the country's most hated side, RB Leipzig,^note hated due to its effective ownership by Red Bull, skirting German federation rules that nominally prevent this wiped the pitch with FC Köln 6–0.
  • Bayern Munich, which had won the last 11 Bundesliga titles, hosted Darmstadt 98. The scoreless first half was more notable for three players receiving straight red cards (one from Bayern, two from Darmstadt)—the first time this had ever happened in Bundesliga history. The second half? Bayern, with the man advantage, ended up winning 8–0. Harry Kane collected a hat trick, with his second goal coming off an insane shot from within his own half.

FIFA World Cup

• For the group stage, it's usually big/traditional team vs. Naïve Newcomer/hopeless small country. The biggest one is Hungary's 10-1 win over El Salvador in 1982.^note (A draw against Belgium and a loss to Argentina meant Hungary failed to qualify for the next round despite their massive win.) Hungary had also set the previous record during the "Magical Magyars" era in 1954, with a 9-0 win against South Korea (they also beat West Germany 8-3... but only because the coach deliberately spared some of their best players, to ensure they could only see the Magical Magyars again in the final; they did, but this time Germany won 3-2)^note Yugoslavia beat Zaire by the same scoreline in 1974, but that also doesn't count because the Zaire players were deliberately playing badly as a protest after learning that they weren't going to get paid for their performances; the only reason they were on the pitch at all is because Zaire's dictator Mobutu had threatened their families if they forfeited the game. However, the 2014 World Cup warranted a case of "two powerhouses, yet the perceived favorite is the slaughtered one" (Netherlands 5-1 Spain, where the Spaniards scored first and the first half ended 1-1) and big/traditional team vs. traditional-yet-mediocre (Germany 4-0 Portugal, who had The Ace Cristiano Ronaldo but basically no one else).
• Knockout-stage blowouts are rare (one of those was by Spain, who in 1986 managed to oust a Danish team that had rolled through the group stage by 5–1), but in the first semifinal match of the 2014 World Cup, Germany beat Brazil 7–1, with Brazil as hosts, and the undermanned (they did not have their captain and their striker)^note One of whom being Neymar Jr., the team's star player, who literally had his spine cracked in a previous match when a player kneed him in the back and unprepared players, especially their defense, being so lost and startled the Germans scored five goals in the first half alone, four of those within six minutes of each other. It was so bad that several Brazilian players and a good part of the Brazilian spectators were collectively sobbing by the end (including several fans walking out after the first half - the rest just started booing Brazil and cheering Germany's good plays), and the completely unexpected humiliation immediately reached Internet meme status (including the alleged flooding of the "public humiliation" category of a porn site), as well as quite the shocker for Brazilians (to the point that "7-1" became local vernacular for a curbstomp battle).
• In the final, the most comprehensive wins have been 1958 (Brazil 5-2 Sweden), 1970 (Brazil 4-1 Italy) and 1998 (France 3-0 Brazil) on the men's side, and 2015 (USA 5–2 Japan) on the women's.
  • Speaking of the 2015 women's final, it was a rematch between defending champion Japan and runner-up USA. Four years prior, the two teams had met in the 2011 Women's World Cup Final, a close game that was decided by penalty kicks. Not this time. Team USA managed to score 4 goals in the first 16 minutes of the match. The last of these was on a ridiculous shot from the midfield stripe by team captain Carli Lloyd, giving her a hat trick. Needless to say, Japan never recovered.
• June 11, 2019, Women's World Cup, group stage: USA 13-0 Thailand. It was simultaneously the most goals scored in World Cup history, and the largest-ever World Cup margin of victory. Alex Morgan scored five goals, one of seven different players to score a goal in that game. Ten of those goals came in the second half.
• While one-sided score lines might be rare in the actual tournament itself, during qualification, it’s a whole different matter, as teams are drawn into groups depending on their geographical location, meaning that you end up with power houses of the sport playing some countries that can barely put a team together. Curbstomp battles are common - see below for some further details…
• 2022 FIFA World Cup, group stage: Spain 7-0 Costa Rica. Despite having a massive 82% possession, Spain only had seven shots on target, meaning that Keylor Navas (Costa Rica's usually highly-rated goalkeeper) failed to make a single save in the entire match. Spain ultimately qualified from the group on goal difference.
• 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, group stage: England 6-1 China, Netherlands 7-0 Vietnam.

UEFA Champions League

• The biggest wins in the UEFA Champions League final:
  • 1959-60: Real Madrid 7–3 Eintracht Frankfurt
  • 1968–69: AC Milan 4-1 Ajax
  • 1988-89: AC Milan 4-0 Steaua Bucharest
  • 1993-94: AC Milan 4-0 Barcelona
  • 1999-2000: Real Madrid 3-0 Valencia
  • 2003-04: Porto 3-0 AS Monaco
  • 2016-17: Real Madrid 4-1 Juventus
• During the latter half of The New '10s, FC Barcelona started being ousted in the Champions League with such games: 3-0 to Juventus in 2017^note though the worse beatdown was 4-0 to PSG the previous round, but then Barça won with 6-1 to qualify and Roma in 2018, 4-0 to Liverpool in 2019 after Barça had won their home leg 3–0, and finally 8-2 to Bayern Munich in 2020 (combining that with Barça letting his fellow striker Luis Suárez go, and Lionel Messi decided to leave the club).
• Manchester City and RB Leipzig entered the second leg of their 2022–23 round of 16 match on 14 March 2023 on a knife edge, with the sides level at 1–1. In the 22nd minute, City's superstar Erling Haaland converted a penalty to give them the lead, and followed two minutes later with a second goal, opening the floodgates. Haaland had a hat trick by halftime, and ended with five, tying the record for a Champions League knockout match. End result: City won 7–0.
  • In that same round, Benfica had an almost equally dominant win over Club Brugge, winning the second leg 5–1 to finish 7–1 on aggregate.
  • Two rounds later in the semifinals, City were in the same situation against defending champions Real Madrid that they were against RB Leipzig. Cue a 4–0 City win that by all reports wasn't even that close.

Other International Competition

• During qualification for UEFA Euro 1984, Spain were second in their group going into the final match, and in order to win the group and qualify, they would need to score 11 goals in that match. December 21, 1983: Spain 12 - Malta 1.
• The Copa Libertadores isn't as prone to blowouts as the Champions League, but the South Americans at times get uneven. São Paulo of Brazil has the biggest finals victories (5-1 over Universidad Católica of Chile in 1993, 4-0 over fellow Brazilians Atlético-PR in 2005) and Peñarol of Uruguay, the group stage ones (11-2 on Valencia of Venezuela in 1970, 9–1 on Ecuador's Everest).
• During their World Cup bid in 1998, Maldives ended up with a scoring record of 59-0 over the course of six games, including a 17-0 loss to Iran.
• Guam didn’t fare much better in 2000 when they tried to qualify for the 2002 World Cup, losing 16-0 to Tajikistan and then 19-0 to Iran.
• On 9 April 2001, Australia beat Tonga 22-0 in a World Cup qualifier, breaking the record for the largest-ever international victory. Just two days later, they faced American Samoa and beat them 31-0, with striker Archie Thompson scoring 13 goals. The sheer gulf in quality between Australia and every other team in Oceania (barring New Zealand, and even they are some way behind) led to Australia moving to the Asian confederation a few years later.
• While we're on the subject of Oceania, Tahiti qualified for the 2013 Confederations Cup after a Dark Horse Victory in the 2012 OFC Cup... and were drawn against a regional powerhouse (Nigeria) and two former world champions (Spain and Uruguay). Tahiti was easily trounced, scoring only one goal in the whole tournament while their opponents had a field day (1-6, 0-10, 0-8).
• Speaking of Oceania: During the 2015 Pacific Games, the Fiji U-23's demolished the Micronesia U-23's with a final score of 38-0, a full 7 goals above Australia's 31 goal thrashing of American Samoa. Thankfully for the Micronesians, they managed to avoid replacing the world record due to the fact that Micronesia was not a FIFA member, and that the match involved U-23 teams rather than the main National Teams. Such a formality wouldn't comfort Micronesia though; they were humiliated 0-30 by the above-mentioned Tahiti in an earlier match at the tournament. A few days later, Micronesia was curb-stomped again in the Pacific Games. This time, they were creamed 0-46 by Vanuatu, a full 8 goals more than their humiliation by Fiji a few days earlier (thanks to the above formalities though, they're spared of the ignominy of breaking the previous record). All of Micronesia's losses gave them a -114 goal differential to end the group stage of the tournament.
  • Like Tahiti, Fiji became Oceania's representative in a big tournament in Brazil, the 2016 Olympics, and were promptly trounced by two local powerhouses (South Korea, Mexico) and the reigning World Cup champions (Germany). The result was an almost identical series of curb-stompings: 0-8, 1-5, 0-10.
• Copa América Centenario, a collaboration of CONCACAF and CONEMBOL that celebrated its 100th anniversary of Copa América since its first in 1916, had Chile vs Mexico in the Quarterfinals which the Chileans won 7-0 (with four goals made by Chile's star player Eduardo Vargas).
• A friendly match played in 2018 between Spain and Argentina (with no Lionel Messi): Spain 6-1 Argentina.
  • An earlier friendly against Bolivia in 2009 ended in a shock 6-1 win for Bolivia. Admittedly, that match was played in La Paz, at the extreme altitude of 3,637 m (nearly 12,000 ft), but a shocker nonetheless.
• 2018: When Liverpool's Everton decided to take on a fifth-division Austrian team, ATV Irdning, Everton defeated Irdning 22-0.
• 2019: Norway's U-20 team beat Honduras 12–0 in the U-20 World Cup, with Erling Haaland (who has since emerged as one of the sport's biggest stars) scoring 9 of these.
• Qualification matches in 2021 for the 2022 World Cup threw up some of these including Japan beating Mongolia 14-0, England (who were playing with what was effectively the B team) beating San Marino (who were the worst ranked side in the world according to FIFA) 10-0, and Germany beating Liechtenstein 9-0. It should be noted that San Marino and Liechtenstein tend to be the whipping boys of European football, along with Andorra (who actually managed to win two matches this time around - against the aforementioned San Marino) and Gibraltar.
• The European qualifying round for the 2023 Women’s World Cup was full of these, the most notable being France beating Greece 10-0, Northern Ireland beating North Macedonia 11-0, the Republic of Ireland beating Georgia 11-0, Spain beating the Faroe Islands 12-0 (they had already beaten them 10-0 in a previous qualifying match), Belgium beating Armenia 19-0 and England beating Latvia 20-0 (having already putting 10 past them in another qualifying match), which was the second biggest score in women’s international football (the biggest was Canada beating Puerto Rico 21-0 in 1998), and the biggest ever score by any full England international team, men or women.
  • Really, England's entire qualifying campaign counts as one: they won all ten of their games, scoring 80 goals in the process, and didn't concede once. As well as the two thrashings of Latvia, they also put 10 goals past Luxembourg (twice) and North Macedonia (who they beat 8-0 in the other match). Runners-up Austria were the only team who managed to avert this, only losing 1-0 and 2-0.
• In the Euro 2024 qualifying round, Portugal beat Luxembourg 9-0, with Gonçalo Inacio, Gonçalo Ramos, and Diogo Jota scoring 2 goals each, with Ricardo Horta, Bruno Fernandes, and João Felix scoring one themselves.
  • Not to be outdone, an already qualified France hammered a record 14 goals past a hapless Gibraltar, with Kylian Mbappé bagging a hat trick, Kingsley Coman and Olivier Giroud both scoring braces, and six other players getting on the scoresheet (the opening goal in the rout was an own goal).

Australian Rules Football

• The Australian Football League uses "score percentage" (basically the amount of points a team scores in a season divided into the amount they give up) as a tiebreaker in its league ladder, which gives teams an incentive to score as many points as possible in a match. Add that to the fact that it's easy for teams to go on long scoring runs when they outplay their opponent, there can be some massive blowouts in the sport.^note For fans of American football, a handy reference guide is that there's about a 3:1 ratio in scoring between the two codes, so 100 points in Aussie rules is equal to about 30 points in gridiron.
  • The Geelong Cats have a long history of this, dating back to 1899, when they inflicted a 161-point massacre (23.24.162 to 0.1.1) on St Kilda.
  • Geelong's defeat of Port Adelaide in the 2007 AFL Grand Final. Geelong: 24.19 (163), Port: 6.8 (44). That's the highest grand final margin EVER. In the 14 years since, Geelong has basically become That One Boss to Port Adelaide, with the latter having only won five matches out of twenty, regardless of either team's seasonal display.
  • The 2019 Grand Final ended with Richmond crushing Greater Western Sydney by a 17.12 (114) to 3.7 (25) margin. Not only was this the biggest upset since 2007, despite the tighter margin of 89,^note still a record: the greatest Grand Final victory margin in the Tigers' history but GWS became notorious for having one of the lowest scores in Grand Final history.^note It was the second lowest Grand Final score since the end of World War II, only surpassed by Collingwood's 2.2 (14) in 1960. It was also the lowest score in club history for GWS
  • Fitzroy doesn't exist anymore (it was consolidated into the Brisbane Lions) but it still holds the AFL record for biggest margin with their 190 point win (36.22.238 to 6.12.48) over Melbourne in 1979. Melbourne was also on the losing end in 2011, when Geelong led by 114 points at halftime and seemed poised to break the record, but only won by 186 (37.11.233 to 7.5.47).
  • Geelong struck again in their Round 22, 2018 win over Fremantle, 24.14 (158) to 3.7 (25). Fremantle actually led by 9 points after one quarter, but the rest of the way, Geelong pummeled them by an otherworldly 142 points (23.9 to 0.5—yes, Fremantle did not score a single goal in the final three quarters).
  • If you turned off the 2021 Grand Final in the third quarter and then learned that the game ended up as a massive blowout, you'd assume that the Western Bulldogs demolished the Melbourne Demons, since the Bulldogs seemed to start pulling away by the middle of the quarter, taking a 9.5 (59) to 5.10 (40) lead. But instead the Demons went on a truly breathtaking run the rest of the way, outscoring the Bulldogs 16.4 (100) to 1.1 (7) en route to a 21.14 (140) to 10.6 (66) win, with Bayley Fritsch scoring six goals (the most for a single player in a Grand Final since 1997) as the Demons won their first premiership since 1964.
  • The 2022 Grand Final was even more lopsided than the year before, with Geelong (yet again) beating Sydney by 81 points (20.13.133 to 8.4.52). Not only that, the Cats never trailed in the game (something they didn't even accomplish in that record breaking 2007 game, which saw Port Adelaide hold a very brief 2-1 lead in the first quarter), marking the first time that had been done by a Grand Final victor in almost a decade.
  • The 2023 AFL campaign saw a series of astonishing blowouts.
    • Geelong got off on the wrong foot in defending their premiership, losing their first three matches and trailing Hawthorn at halftime in the fourth. Then they exploded in the third quarter, outscoring Hawthorn 10.5 (65) to 0.0, the second biggest all-time margin for a team holding an opponent scoreless in a quarter.^note Ironically the record holder is Hawthorn, ironically also in the third quarter, when they bested Fitzroy 11.4 (70) to 0.0 en route to a 21.17 (143) to 8.7 (55) win in 1980 Geelong ultimately won by 82 points, 19.13 (127) to 6.9 (45).
    • Hawthorn would get their turn a few weeks later in Round 10 of 2023, against West Coast, a team struggling with injuries and an inexperienced roster. Hawthorn led 7.1 (43) to 2.0 (12) after one quarter, 11.4 (70) to 4.0 (24) at halftime, 14.8 (92) to 4.1 (25) after three, then things turned downright ugly in the final quarter, as the Hawks outscored the Eagles 8.2 (50) to 0.1 (1), holding West Coast without a goal in the second half, completing a 116-point rout—22.10 (142) to 4.2 (26). What makes it really crazy is that they entered the game as the bottom two teams on the league ladder, having combined for 2 wins and 16 losses at that point, so in theory it should've been a close, evenly matched game.
    • Then two weeks later in Round 12, Hawthorn was back on the receiving end, dominated by Port Adelaide to the tune of 16.9 (105) to 3.5 (23)...at halftime! This extended to a 96-point margin (20.11.131 to 5.5.35) by the middle of the third quarter, but Hawthorn outscored Port the rest of the way to make the final tally a somewhat respectable 23.13 (151) to 14.12 (96).
    • Meanwhile, West Coast struggled all year and endured a bunch of losses that were even worse than what Hawthorn had done to them. In Round 13 they suffered the fourth-biggest loss in club history, as Adelaide smothered them by 122 points (27.12.174 to 8.4.52). After thankfully getting a bye in Round 14, their return to the field in Round 15 against Sydney was a complete disaster—Sydney won by 171 points, 31.19 (205) to West Coast's 5.4 (34). Just a sampling of the huge list of records broken in this game: first team to score over 200 in a game since the aforementioned Geelong-Melbourne bout in 2011, 171 points being the fourth-biggest single game margin in AFL history, and tying Sydney's club record, which was set in 1919, with 205 and 171 blowing way past West Coast's previous team records for points and margin given up. They had one more 100+-point loss in the third-to-last Round 22 (to Fremantle, 20.14.134 to 4.9.33), but then incredibly turned around the next week and pulled off the biggest shocker in recent AFL history, a close come-from-behind win over the Western Bulldogs, a loss that ultimately cost the Bulldogs a berth in the finals.
    • Round 23: Greater Western Sydney's 126-point thrashing of Essendon, 25.12.162 to 5.6.36. Again, on paper this should've been a really tight game, with both teams within a game of each other on the ladder as they were both vying for a top 8 finish in the second-to-last round of the year.
• Country leagues: With greater talent disparities between sides, there have been some truly savage beatdowns on the lower levels, like Campbells Creek: 100.34 (634) vs Primrose: 3.0 (18) (MCDFNL 1990) and Gordon: 69.22 (436) vs Smythesdale 1.1 (7) (CHFL 2015).

Baseball

MLB

• May 18, 1912: Philadelphia Athletics 24, Detroit Tigers 2. In protest over a suspension handed down by American League President Ban Johnson against star player Ty Cobb, the rest of Cobb's Tigers teammates went on strike. The League threatened Detroit's owner with a $5000-per-game fine if he didn't field a team, so he ordered manager Hughie Jennings to find some replacement players. Jennings cobbled together a lineup of sandlot amateurs from the local neighborhoods and threw them out on the field against the Athletics, with predictable results. Cobb persuaded his teammates to end their strike the next day.
• October 2, 1936: In Game 2 of the World Series, the New York Yankees bounced back from a 6–1 loss to the New York Giants in Game 1 by shellacking the Giants 18–4 in Game 2, which is still the most lopsided game in World Series history. There wasn't much doubt who was going to win the Series after that.
• Subverted in the 1960 World Series. The Yankees won Games 2, 3, and 6 16–3, 10–0, and 12–0 respectively^note The Pirates won Games 1, 4, 5, and 7 6–4, 5–2, 3–2, and 10–9, if you're wondering. they outscored the Pirates 55–27, outhit them 91–60, posted a .338 batting average to Pittsburgh's .256, and hit 10 home runs to Pittsburgh's four (they hit three in Game 7). However, when the dust cleared, the Pirates won the Series 4–3.
• September 16, 1975: Pittsburgh Pirates 22, Chicago Cubs 0. Modern baseball's most lopsided shutout.^note (The all-time record for the greatest shutout score in major league history is 28–0. The Providence Grays blanked the Philadelphia Quakers 28–0 on August 21, 1883.) Pirates second baseman Rennie Stennett had 7 of the Bucs' 24 hits^note (also going 7-for-7, becoming the only player in baseball's modern era to do so in a 9-inning game) (the Cubs only mustered 3 hits). In the post-game interview, announcer Jack Brickhouse told Cubs outfielder José Cardenal that he seemed distracted in the outfield during the late innings. Cardenal replied, "I was watching a spider crawl through the ivy. What else can you do in a game like that?"
• In 1990, the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Boston Red Sox 18–0. Making this curb-stomp more embarrassing for Boston, the Brewers did not have star Jim Gantner or Hall of Famer Paul Molitor in the lineup, and pulled another Hall of Famer, Robin Yount, in the 7th inning.
• September 30, 2000: Oakland Athletics 23, Texas Rangers 2. Needing a win to stay ahead of Seattle in the standings and stay on track for their first playoff berth since 1992, the Athletics pounded out 24 hits including 4 home runs, scoring 9 runs in the first inning, 5 in the fifth, and 8 in the seventh. Texas manager Johnny Oates said after the game, "Custer must have felt like this."
• The ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. The Arizona Diamondbacks had their way with Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer ever who only managed to get one out. Game 6 as well; facing elimination, the D-backs scored 15 runs off the Yankees pitching staff.
• August 31, 2004: Cleveland Indians^note now Cleveland Guardians 22, New York Yankees 0. The Indians would end the season two games under .500; the Yankees won 101 games.
• August 22, 2007: Texas Rangers 30, Baltimore Orioles 3. Texas scored all of their runs after the Orioles had already jumped out to a 3–0 lead. They did it to the tune of 6 home runs (two were grand slams), a pair of doubles, and going 18 for 25 with runners in scoring position. And the game was in Baltimore. Texas became the first major league baseball team to score 30 runs in a game in 110 years. Perhaps the most bizarre stat from the game was pitcher Wes Littleton recording a save in the win.
• On April 22, 2010, the Pirates suffered their worst defeat in the 124 years of the club, losing to the Milwaukee Brewers 20–0. The defeat was so bad that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette printed the image of the scoreboard on the front page, devoting an article to discussing where the franchise went wrong. Relief pitcher Brendan Donnelly was quoted as saying, "We should all be embarrassed to have Major League Baseball uniforms on our back today. It was an atrocity. We set a record. We should all be embarrassed about it. That's how I feel."
• April 21, 2016: Chicago Cubs 16, Cincinnati Reds 0. And to add insult to injury, Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta no-hit the Reds in that game.
• July 2, 2016: Los Angeles Angels 21, Boston Red Sox 2. The Angels' high point was an 11-run 7th inning.
• April 30, 2017: Washington Nationals 23, New York Mets 5. Nats third baseman Anthony Rendon went 6-for-6 with 3 homers, and batted in 10 runs.
• April 7, 2018: Philadelphia Phillies 20, Miami Marlins 1. 12 of those runs came off a home run: Maikel Franco and Aaron Altherr each hit a grand slam, with Carlos Santana hitting a 3-run homer.
• June 27, 2003: The Marlins suffer a 25–8 beating at the hands of the Boston Red Sox. The first two pitchers gave up 11 runs without recording an out, and Red Sox centerfielder Johnny Damon had three hit in the first inning alone, making him one of just a handful of players to ever have three hits in an inning.
• July 11, 2018: Noticeable for two cases happening on the same day with the winning teams scoring at least 17 runs in the first four innings: Colorado Rockies 19, Arizona Diamondbacks 2, and Cleveland Indians 19, Cincinnati Reds 4.
• July 31, 2018: Washington Nationals 25, New York Mets 4. It was simultaneously the highest score in Nationals history, the most runs scored by any MLB team in over a decade, and the biggest margin of loss in Mets history. It was 19–0 after five innings, with the Nats scoring at least three runs in each of those innings; such a thing hadn't happened in Major League Baseball since 1876. After the game, Mets manager Mickey Callaway simply said "we've got to do better than that."
• October 8, 2018: Boston Red Sox 16, New York Yankees 1. It was the biggest margin of loss in Yankees postseason history; in all of the Yankees' (at the time) 54 trips to the playoffs, the team had never previously lost by 15 runs. Not only that, but Brock Holt would hit for the cycle in the game, making him the first and so far only player to do that in a postseason game.
• October 9, 2019: The St. Louis Cardinals put up ten runs on the Atlanta Braves... in the first inning. Final score: Cards 13-3. Less than the others, but would you keep playing after that?
  • A little over a year later on October 14, 2020, the Los Angeles Dodgers put up 11 runs on the Braves in the first inning as well, with a final score of 15-3. And did we mention both of these losses came in the playoffs?
• September 9, 2020: Atlanta Braves 29, Miami Marlins 9. Adam Duvall drove in 9 runs, including a grand slam, and Freddie Freeman drove in 6 more.
• July 10, 2021: Los Angeles Dodgers 22, Arizona Diamondbacks 1. Justin Turner and Mookie Betts both hit grand slams, Turner’s first in his 11-year career.
• July 16, 2021: San Diego Padres 24, Washington Nationals 8. Highlights include Wil Myers hitting a grand slam, Tommy Pham stealing home, and Jake Cronenworth completing a cycle.
• April 23, 2022: Chicago Cubs 21, Pittsburgh Pirates 0. It became the largest shutout victory in Cubs history since 1886, when they defeated the Washington Nationals (Unrelated to the present-day Washington Nationals) 20-0 as the Chicago White Stockings.
• July 22, 2022: Toronto Blue Jays 28, Boston Red Sox 5. The Blue Jays completely overwhelm the Red Sox at Fenway Park by scoring 27 of their runs in the first six innings, including a whopping eleven in the fifth inning alone, all of those eleven runs coming in after Red Sox catcher Kevin Plawecki fails to catch a routine pop-up flyball between the plate and the mound in what would otherwise be the final out of the inning. One highlight includes the Blue Jays' Raimel Tapia hitting an inside-the-park grand slam in the third. The Blue Jays also set a franchise mark for runs in a single game in franchise history, which also coincided with the Red Sox suffering the most runs allowed in a single game in their storied history.
• June 24, 2023: Los Angeles Angels 25, Colorado Rockies 1. The Angels hit home runs on three consecutive pitches in the third inning, which then followed ten more runs in the same. Every Angels player had a hit and RBI before that inning had ended. They then tacked on eight more runs in the fourth. The 24-run win was the largest in Angels franchise history, and to date the third largest by any club since 1900. And as if a complete slaughtering wasn't bad enough, less than an hour after the game, infielder Mike Moustakas was traded to the Angels, aka the team that just beat them by 24.
• August 24, 2023: Boston Red Sox 17, Houston Astros 1. The Red Sox landed 11 runs in the first three innings, including the first home run for rookie Wyler Abreu, followed by six in the last two. It ended a four-game series on a sour note for the Astros, especially since they'd beaten the Red Sox in the first two games; this embarrassing loss tied the series.

Collegiate

• April 2, 1996: St. Francis of Illinois 71, Robert Morris of Illinois 1. Even more incredible, the game only lasted 4 innings; the St. Francis manager voluntarily ended it.
• March 16, 1999: Nebraska hosted a doubleheader against Chicago State. Nebraska won the first game 15–3, but that's not why the match is listed here; in game 2, Nebraska led 23–0 after three innings, then 32–2 after four. Fortunately for Chicago State, an NCAA mercy rule kicked in, and the game ended in the sixth inning with the Cornhuskers winning 50–3. This still holds the record for the most lopsided college baseball game between two Division I teams.
• The Men's College World Series, the eight-team final phase of the NCAA Division I baseball tournament, generally doesn't see these. A huge exception was on June 25, 2023 in Game 2 of the best-of-3 championship series between Florida and LSU. With Florida facing elimination after losing an 11-inning 4–3 classic in Game 1, the Gators started slow, entering the third inning down 3–1. They then put up 6 runs in the third and didn't let up, winning 24–4. (Of note: While NCAA baseball has a "mercy rule", it isn't used in NCAA tournaments.) Florida set new records for the largest victory margin and homers (6) in an MCWS finals game^note defined here as the championship series in 1947, 1948, and 2003–present, and the championship game from 1949–2002 and most runs in any MCWS game, and also tied the record for most hits in any MCWS game (23). The deciding Game 3 the following day was nearly as much of a blowout, but in the other direction—LSU won 18–4, with the Tigers' 24 hits setting a new single-game MCWS record.

International

• June 29-30, 2018: European Championship, Pool B Playoff Series. Austria wins the series over Lithuania 2-0. This series went through two mercy rules, with neither game making it to the full nine innings. Game one was the tamer of the two, with a final score of 10-0 (7 innings). Game two is where it becomes a true curb-stomp. With six runs scored by Austria and a pitching change in the first, Lithuania already starts on the back foot, and proceed to score only four runs for the entire game. Austria on the other hand, keeps their foot on the gas and score nineteen more runs, for a final score of 25-4(5 innings).
• March 13, 2023: Korea 22, China 2. Both teams were eliminated from the 2023 World Baseball Classic by this point. Coming into the game, China already suffered losses to Australia 2-12 on the 10th, 5-8 to the Czech Republic, and 1-8 to Japan, without a single win. Korea themselves won 7-3 against the Czech Republic, but lost 7-8 in an upset by Australia, and 4-13 to Japan (the pool favourites). Despite the score being 2-2 by the end of the 1st, Korea pulled ahead, to the point that the game was called in the 5th inning at a whopping 22-2, due to the mercy rule.

High School

• April 14, 2018: Old Rochester 82, Notre Dame Cristo Rey 0. Old Rochester scored 12 runs just in the first inning, 20 in the second, and it snowballed from there. It got to the point that the coach of the winning team tried to just have the game called, but the umpires refused. The coach even instructed his team to just bunt and jog as opposed to swinging at pitches when he saw how badly the other team was losing.

Basketball

NBA

• For the longest time in the NBA, the biggest blowout in an NBA Playoff match occurred on March 19, 1956 in a Western Division Semifinals match between the Minneapolis Lakers and the St. Louis Hawks (remember, the NBA landscape back then was a whole lot different back then over what it is right now). Entering Game 2 in Minneapolis during this best-of-3 series, the Hawks felt very confident about themselves against the Lakers... probably too confident for their own good. On that night, the Lakers straight up embarrassed the Hawks after losing by one point to them two days prior, getting a 133-75 beatdown to make that series look like it was going back in favor to the Lakers again. However, the funny thing with Game 3 that series is the Hawks somehow managed to win Game 3 in the same manner that they won against the Lakers in St. Louis for Game 1 (winning a close 116-115 match-up, only Game 3 was played in Minneapolis still instead of in St. Louis), which at least gave the Hawks some newfound respect when going up against their next opponent, the Fort Wayne Pistons. However, the Hawks ended up winning their first two games over Fort Wayne in the Divisional Finals before the Pistons took over the rest of that series, which in turn ended in a 4-1 NBA Finals series loss over the Philadelphia Warriors that season.
• For the highest scoring effort in an NBA game from before the invention of the three-point line, look no further than a match between the Boston Celtics and the Minneapolis Lakers on February 27, 1959. That game was lead by Bob Cousy recording an impressive double-double of 31 points and a then-record high 28 assists^*[that record has since been broken by Scott Skiles in 1990 with 35] (including a record-high 19 assists in the second half), with Tom Heinsohn also scoring 43 points in a 173-139 blowout victory that had Boston in complete control from the beginning to the end of that game. 173 points is still the record for most points scored in a regulation game to this day, though they aren't the only team to hold that distinction...
  • On November 10, 1990, the Phoenix Suns set the tone in their game against the Denver Nuggets early by scoring an NBA record 107 points by halftime for a 107-67 lead. No Suns players made a three-pointer that game, with their leading scorer that game being a young Cedric Ceballos with 35 points while coming off the bench, yet they tied a record with the Boston Celtics above for most points scored without a made three-point attempt (this one being unintentional), finishing the game with a 173-143 final score. One would think if three-point shots were more prevalent like in the modern-era of the NBA, the Suns could have broken the all-time scoring record that game, to the point of maybe even reaching 200 points. This came just a few weeks after the Suns had defeated the Nuggets in a preseason game by a score of 186-123, which would have absolutely topped their scoring record had that game occured in the regular season instead (other Nuggets preseason games included losses to other teams by scores of 173-155 and 194-166). The Nuggets had hired one-time Lakers coach Paul Westhead, who'd won a championship in Magic Johnson's rookie season, then brought Loyola Marymount to college basketball prominence with a high-scoring run-and-gun style, which he tried to import to the Nuggets.^note Westhead's first regular season game as Nuggets coach, a 162-158 loss to Golden State, still holds the record for the highest-scoring regulation game in league history and is the 5th highest overall. Under the coach Westhead replaced, Doug Moe, the Nuggets also lost the highest-scoring game overall, a 186-184 triple OT affair against Detroit in 1983. Instead, that collegiate style of play led to truly disastrous results on the NBA level; he was fired after losing 120 games in two seasons.
• March 2, 1962: The Philadelphia Warriors (playing at the Hershey Sports Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania that day) beat the New York Knicks with a high-scoring 169-147 affair. While that might not be seen as much of a blowout by comparison to some of the blowouts seen here for the NBA, what makes this one particularly special is the fact that it marked the only time in NBA history that a player ever scored 100 points in a single game there. Wilt Chamberlain felt like he was going to be unstoppable that night in all 48 minutes of action that he played, and judging by the statistics he had against the Knicks that game (making 36/63 field goals and an unusually high 28/32 free-throws when Chamberlain was primarily known to be a poor free-throw shooter in the NBA alongside grabbing 25 rebounds for good measure), it's fair to say his assumption was correct in this case. The possibility of Chamberlain reaching the century mark only materialized in the 4th quarter, after the Warriors had things well in hand. He had 41 at halftime, and was focused on surpassing his career high of 78, which he did with 7:51 remaining. At that point, the fans started chanting "100" and his teammates decided to go for broke to get him there, passing him the ball constantly, to the point of passing up shots so they could give him the ball. The Knicks started fouling any non-Wilt player with the ball just to prevent him from having scoring opportunities. Fans stormed the court when he made points 99 and 100 on an easy basket with :46 left. To make further note on how impressive this is in the NBA, only Kobe Bryant has managed to come close with 81 points scored in one game (a 122-104 Lakers win over Toronto on January 2006), with only seven other players outside of Wilt and Kobe managing to get to even 70 points in a single game altogether.
• February 4, 1987: The game between the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson-led Los Angeles Lakers and the visiting Sacramento Kings figured to be a mismatch, with the Lakers (who would end up winning the league championship) sporting the league's best record at that point, while the Kings, in their second season in Sacramento after moving from Kansas City, were in last place in their division. But no one expected the Kings would go scoreless in the first nine minutes of the game. However, that's what happened: the Lakers jumped out to a 29–0 lead, still an NBA record. The Kings finally scored their first points on two free throws with 2:54 left in the first quarter. The Lakers home crowd gave guard Derek Smith a standing ovation after he sank those foul shots for the Kings. But that didn't kick off any sort of run for Sacramento, who could only manage two more points in the quarter. Lakers led by 36 after one quarter, 40–4. LA cruised the rest of the way, taking a 71–35 halftime lead and winning by a 128–92 tally (both teams scored 88 points in the final three quarters).
• On December 17, 1991, the Cleveland Cavaliers hosted the Miami Heat. Cleveland ended up setting a then-NBA record for margin of victory by winning 148–80, which would be surpassed by the Memphis Grizzlies' victory over Oklahoma City Thunder nearly 30 years later (detailed below).
• February 27, 1998: The Indiana Pacers become the only team in NBA history to double their opponent's score in a game by beating the Portland Trail Blazers 124–59.
• Game 3 of the 1998 NBA Finals saw the Chicago Bulls embarrass the Utah Jazz 96–54 in a game that saw the Jazz not only set a record for the fewest points ever scored in an NBA Finals game, but was at the time the fewest points scored in an NBA game since the shot clock was introduced in 1954.^note (Interestingly, the following season saw the {by this time, broken up} Bulls break that record by only scoring 49 points in an 82–49 loss to the Miami Heat on April 10, 1999.)
• At Game 6 of the 2008 NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics managed to wrap up the series and win their 17th NBA title by defeating the Los Angeles Lakers 131–92. The 39-point margin is the largest margin of victory of a series-winning game in the history of the NBA Finals.
• April 27, 2009 saw a modern-day record for the biggest blowout in NBA Playoff history, especially for a home game. What started out as a competitive 2-1 first round series between the Denver Nuggets and the New Orleans Hornets devolved into a beatdown for the ages on that day. The first quarter gave immediate signs of what was to come from minute 1 alone, with it continuing to get worse and worse for the Hornets with Denver scoring 36 points off of 14/20 shooting and New Orleans only getting 15 points from 6/19 shooting in the first quarter alone. New Orleans' struggles continued to get worse by the second quarter, with them eventually giving up altogether sometime in the third quarter. By the end of the fourth quarter, the Nuggets crushed the Hornets' hopes and dreams with a 121-63 beatdown that pretty much eliminated New Orleans from the Playoffs that year, giving the city their worst playoff game ever, without question. Not only did the announcers that called this game see this as the worst Playoff game they ever covered, but SB Nation saw it the same way with statistics backing up said claim.
• The entire 2017 Playoffs was one of these for the Golden State Warriors on a series basis. The only team to give them any semblance of trouble were the Cavaliers in the Finals, who won all of one game; every other opponent got swept. It was even worse in the following year's NBA Finals as the Warriors played the Cavaliers again, and this time, the Warriors swept the Cavaliers.
• For the Phoenix Suns' 50th anniversary season, they opened up with the worst opening game loss in NBA history on October 18, 2017. What started out as a respectable game in the first quarter (with a promising start for the Suns) quickly went out of control and turned to Portland's favor, which led to a final score of 124–76 favoring the Portland Trail Blazers. Considering the Suns repeated that kind of deficit later on in the season (that one to their [former] rivals, the San Antonio Spurs) even with a different head coach going forward into that season, it's reasonable to say the Suns would like to have a do-over on that season especially, never mind their Audience-Alienating Era that was The New '10s.
• December 27, 2020: the winless Dallas Mavericks jumped out to a 36–13 lead over the Los Angeles Clippers at the end of the first quarter, which got extended to an incredible 50-point halftime lead, 77–27, setting a new NBA record for a halftime margin. The Clippers managed to keep things more respectable in the second half, but still lost by 51 points, 124–73.
• April 2, 2021: Stephen Curry and Draymond Green were ruled out for a matchup against the Toronto Raptors. Despite a respectable first quarter, what followed afterwards was the Raptors routing the crippled Golden State Warriors, with a final score of 130-77.
• The 2020-21 Oklahoma City Thunder started off somewhat competitive for the first 2/3 of the season, but that was before they started to actively tank their games. After March was done with, they saw 14 straight losses with a -299 point differential before a win in Boston against a Celtics team with neither Jayson Tatum nor Kemba Walker playing. That was followed by 9 more consecutive losses with a -191 point differential - the biggest of them all being on May 1 at home against a short-handed Indiana Pacers team with a final score of 152-95, the worst regular season loss by any home team in NBA history - before concluding their season with a win against the Clippers, who were resting Kawhi Leonard and Paul George for the playoffs. So, they lost 23 of their last 25 games by an average of 21.3 points. Interestingly, while the entire league started off with no fans in attendance due to the COVID-19 Pandemic before eventually being able to allow a select some into their buildings (and then a lot more of them, especially come playoff time), the Thunder were the only team in the league to not have any fans in attendance all season long. Fans likely saw that as merciful because they probably would've felt jobbed paying to watch that kind of effort this late into their season. And on that note…
• December 2, 2021: The Thunder, with their struggles from the previous season still carrying over to the 2021-22 season, ended up suffering an extremely lopsided loss to the Memphis Grizzlies by a score of 152-79. This 73-point differential was not only the highest scoring game ever by the Grizzlies, but it's also currently the largest margin of victory in NBA history. And the Grizzlies did this without star player Ja Morant. Arguably the one positive for the Thunder was at least that the game wasn't played in OKC. Another arguable positive was that it gave the Thunder motivation to beat Memphis in their next game against them later that month.
• January 25, 2022: The Boston Celtics, who faced some serious struggles in the 2021-22 season due to long-standing general manager Danny Ainge resigning, head coach Brad Stevens taking Ainge's position, and Ime Udoka trying to fill Stevens' coaching shoes after one too many disappointing seasons, took down the continuously struggling Sacramento Kings in a 128-75 beatdown in Boston. To give an idea of how serious this beatdown was, the Kings' highest scorer that match was Buddy Hield…with a measly 11 total points scored! Meanwhile, both of the Celtics' star players, forwards Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, easily scored 36 and 30 points respectively that game (with Brown also getting a double-double alongside center Robert Williams III), with three other Celtics players also scoring 10 or more points that night.
  • In fact, that game was part of the beginning of a massive turnaround for the Celtics' season. They started off 23-24, but then rattled off wins in 28 of their remaining 35 games. To drive in just how scorched earth they went, 15 of those wins were by at least 20 points, 10 by at least 28 points, and three by at least 40 - in addition to the aforementioned Sacramento massacre, they also went nuclear on their long-established rival Philadelphia 76ers, who were awaiting the team debut of their newly acquired James Harden, on February 15 for a 135-87 bludgeoning in their building, which was the worst loss of 76ers head coach Doc Rivers' longtime career. And they throttled the Washington Wizards on April 6 144-102 in the final week of the regular season. And for good measure, they returned to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2010, though they unfortunately lost that series to the Golden State Warriors.
• May 14, 2023: On the note of the Celtics, 76ers and blowouts, Philly had taken a 3-2 lead over the defending Eastern conference champs and seemed well poised to finally get over the second round hump, and were even the favorites to win the NBA title after Game 5. But they fell well short in Game 6, as Boston forced a Game 7 at home. While the Sixers were within arms' length at halftime, only down 55-52, the second half was all Celtics, as a 33-10 third quarter allowed them to pull away for a final score of 112-88 that wasn't as close as it'd appear. Jayson Tatum had 51 points, the most points ever scored in a Game 7 in NBA history, surpassing a record just set by Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors in the first round. To put things in perspective, the final score of the game was never posted on the Sixers' social media accounts, and if you look at any given post from them to this day you are sure to see at least one comment demanding them post the score of the game or commenting on how "the previous season is still going" because they never did...until the two teams faced off in a preseason game later that year which the Celtics would win.
• It's very rare for a losing team to score 108 points in a game, and yet it's still considered a Curb-Stomp Battle. However, on March 15, 2022, the Orlando Magic were victims of exactly that, losing a 150-108 match to the Brooklyn Nets under a special, record-setting night by Kyrie Irving, who scored a Nets franchise-record 60 points, with a season-high 41 points (out of 86 total Nets points) coming from Irving in the first half alone. For reference, no other player from either team scored more than 19 points that game.
• The Phoenix Suns' historic 2021-22 season ended on a very anticlimactic note on May 15, 2022 when they were utterly humiliated by the Dallas Mavericks at home 123-90 in Game 7 of the Western Conference Semifinals, despite being the top-overall seed. The game itself was not even as close as the final score would indicate, as the Suns had a truly abysmal shooting performance in the first half, and the Mavs led by as many as 46 at one point. And to make matters worse, the Mavs' megastar Luka Dončić scored 27 points in the first half, the exact same amount of points the Suns had as a team in the same half. What especially hurts was that the series looked to at first completely be in favor of the Suns and then looked to favor the home team since every game that round up until that point favored the home team in very convincing fashion, and Game 7 was played in Phoenix, meaning one would have expected the opposite to occur once again like it did throughout the rest of the series before this point.
• After 16 years of missing out on the NBA Playoffs and not having winning records on board, the Sacramento Kings finally broke through for the first time since 2006 by a March 29, 2023 win favoring the Kings with a 120-80 blowout over the Portland Trail Blazers (who were on the hunt for the playoffs themselves, but were unlikely to make it anyway^note They didn't). While the Kings were bound to make it anyway with the Phoenix Suns & Minnesota Timberwolves (two teams behind the Kings that season) competing against each other that same night, the Kings looked to not take any chances anyway, making sure Portland had no chance to make a comeback against them that night.
• A little over two years after that humiliating 73-point loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, the Oklahoma City Thunder had bounced back to become one of the top Western Conference teams, and they finally shook off the legacy of that record loss on January 11, 2024, against the struggling Portland Trail Blazers, a team they'd already beaten by 41 earlier in the season. This time, the Blazers grabbed an early 5-2 lead, only to see the Thunder go on a 22-4 run, take a 12-point lead at the end of the first quarter, then a 36-point halftime lead, then outscore Portland 43-17 in the 3rd quarter, extending the lead to 62 (118-56). Thankfully, both teams scored 21 points in the fourth, keeping the final margin at 62, 139-77, the third-biggest margin in league history. The Thunder had six players score in double figures, to the Blazers' two. OKC now holds the odd distinction of being the only NBA team to both and win lose games by more than 60 points in their history.
• March 3, 2024: Two seasons after the Boston Celtics and Golden State Warriors faced off in the NBA Finals, the former were far and away the best team in the NBA, while the latter weren't exactly the perennial contenders of old. Even with that, a regular season rematch between the two teams in TD Garden didn't exactly live up to the hype. Boston was up 82-38 at halftime, which was their largest halftime lead in franchise history, en route to winning by a final score of 140-88. The 52-point loss was the Warriors' largest with Steph Curry (even though he and the other starters were pulled in the second half), and the Celtics' third largest win in their franchise's history. If nothing else, it was a happy birthday for Jayson Tatum, who turned 26 that day, and was even able to relax in the second half while the Celtics' second stringers were sent out (and still offered little mercy to the Warriors).
  • However, three days later, the Warriors proceeded to go and beat the Milwaukee Bucks, another top tier Eastern Conference team, 125-90. The Bucks, with head coach Doc Rivers being hired after they fired Adrian Griffin after a little over half a season, only scored nine points in the entire fourth quarter. It was the first instance in NBA history where a team followed a 50+ point loss with a 30+ point win.

College Basketball

• In 1953 & 1954, Rio Grande College^note now the University of Rio Grande... in OHIO. And pronounced "RYE-oh grand". hosted a player that later was selected in an NBA Draft (though never played in the NBA properly) named Clarence "Bevo" Francis. While he never played professionally, he was a very capable scorer, providing some of the highest scoring averages in college basketball history (officially averaging over 48 points per game during his best seasons) during his time at Rio Grande. However, two of his best games were from games where he scored over 110 points on his own accord.
  • First, on January 9, 1953, Francis scored what was at the time considered both an NCAA and NAIA record for most points scored by one player in a single game, Francis scored 116 points from 47 made field goals and 22 made free-throws in what became a blowout 150-85 win over what was known at the time to be the Ashland Junior College of Kentucky.^note Now Ashland Community and Technical College, with no athletic program. While the record was still recognized by the NAIA, the NCAA withdrew his initial record from public uproar due to claims of it happening against a college that did not require a four-year institution. However, Francis did receive a second chance to hold claim to the record a year later...
  • On February 2, 1954, Francis scored 113 points, this time off of a record-setting 38 field goals made out of 70 total and 37 made free throws out of 45 total, in a 134-91 win over the now D-II Hillsdale College. This time, it was a record recognized by the NCAA officially and stood as the all-division record for many decades to come.
• On February 13, 1954, eleven days after "Bevo" Francis hit the overall NCAA scoring record in a game, Frank Selvy from Furman University became to this day the only NCAA Division I player to ever officially score 100 points in one game, and even then it barely happened thanks to Selvy hitting a 40-foot buzzer-beater to end that game. On that night, when Furman honored Selvy for being an all-time great college player there, he made 41/66 baskets from overall shooting and 18/22 free-throws to score 100 points for Furman's 149-95 win over Newberry College.
• En route to winning the NCAA championship in 1963, Loyola Chicago faced Tennessee Tech in the first round of the tournament and jumped out to a 41-point halftime lead (61–20), then things got even uglier as Loyola annihilated Tennessee Tech by a final of 111–42. The 69-point margin is still an NCAA Tournament record (and recall that this game happened more than two decades before college basketball adopted the three-point line). Tech shot a miserable 22% (18 of 82) from the field.
• The powerful Georgetown teams in latter part of The '80s, featuring Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo, were infamous for scheduling a lot of early season non-conference games against Division II, Division III and NAIA schools, and the games often ended up as laughable blowouts, like against Shenandoah College^note now Shenandoah University (114–40) and the University of the District of Columbia (112–39).
• In a 1990 college game, UConn jumped out to a 32–0 lead over New Hampshire. UNH scored their first point (a free throw) with 8:12 left in the first half and finally made their first basket about two minutes later. UConn also managed a 21-0 run in the second half on their way to a 85–32 win.
  • 34 years later, UConn did something very similar, but, rather than an early season game against an overmatched opponent, it happened in the 2024 NCAA tournament Elite Eight round. The Huskies jumped out to a 9–0 lead over Illinois, but the Fighting Illini snapped back, and leveled the score at 23–23 with 1:51 left in the first half. Illinois would not score again until there was 12:51 left in the second half. UConn went on an incredible 30–0 run over that period, taking a 53–23 lead before Illinois finally broke their drought with a layup. The Huskies took their foot off the pedal the rest of the way, allowing Illinois to cut into the lead a bit, before finally prevailing 77–52.
• February 4, 1999: Nicholls and Sam Houston^note  (both of which then had "State", part of their institutional names, as part of their athletic brand names) ended regulation tied at 63. Usually overtimes are still very closely matched between the two teams. Not this time. Nicholls outscored Sam Houston 23–2 in overtime; to put that into perspective, extended out to a 40-minute regulation game that rate and proportion of scoring would yield a final score of 184–16. Nicholls won 86–65, setting the Division I men's record for biggest overtime victory margin.
• On three occasions, NCAA men's teams have scored at least 200 points in a game. In the first two cases, the victors won by more than 100 points. Both games were against non-NCAA opponents—Troy (then Troy State, and still a Division II school at the time) racked up a 258-141 win over the DeVry Institute of Atlanta in 1992, and Lincoln (Pennsylvania, a Division II school now but Division III at the time) thrashed Ohio State-Marion 201-78 in 2006. Both winners took huge halftime leads (123-53 for Troy, 97-44 for Lincoln), then ran roughshod over their outmatched opponents in the second half (DeVry only had seven players in uniform, while OSU-Marion had six). The third time, it was Division III Greenville (running an offense inspired by Grinnell, as mention in the next entry), who led 97-70 at halftime en route to a 200-146 win in a St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game against Fontbonne in 2019.
• Grinnell College, an NCAA Division III college in Iowa, is notorious for its offensive scheme (the Grinnell System) developed by head coach David Arseneault during his long tenure with the Pioneers (1989-2017). Inspired by Paul Westhead's run-and-gun offense back when he coached for Loyola Marymount, the offense is built around shooting the ball early and often, averaging well over 100 points per game. The team's specific goal is 100 shot attempts in a game, with at least half of them being three-pointers, and one player in particular is designated as the team's main shooter. In 2012 and 2013, Jack Taylor, a 5'10" point guard, filled that slot, and he had a record-setting run of high-scoring production.
  • First on November 20, 2012, Taylor officially broke the NCAA's all-time scoring record held both officially and unofficially by Bevo Francis by scoring 136 points against the Faith Baptist Bible College. What makes Taylor's scoring night very interesting, however, was the shooting production he had that day. In that match, Jack shot an unusually high 52/108 overall shots to the basket (recall, 100 shots in a game is Grinnell's goal as a team; Taylor exceeded that on his own), with 27/71 of them being three-point shots and 7/10 baskets being free-throws. To put that into perspective, a college basketball game runs 40 minutes. Taylor took a shot every 22 seconds, amounting to around three shots a minute. To this day, Taylor's scoring and shooting production are still seen as an all-division NCAA record. As a result, Grinnell easily won 179-104 over Faith Baptist.
  • Then nearly a year later, in only Grinnell's second game of the season on November 17, 2013, Taylor had his second game of scoring over 100 points in a game, this time scoring 109 points off of much better overall production (scoring on 35/70 overall field goals, 24/48 three-pointers, and 15/17 free-throws made) after first starting out the new season with 71 points a game earlier. This led to Grinnell winning 173-123 over the Crossroads College in Minnesota.
• The NCAA Final Four, the semifinals of the NCAA's men's college basketball tournament, generally produces close match-ups. Not so in 2016, when the Villanova Wildcats defeated the Oklahoma Sooners 95–51, the largest margin of victory in Final Four history. An even more insane stat to consider: Even if they hadn't scored at all in the first half, Villanova would still have won the game.
• The record for victory margin in D-I women's basketball was set in 2016, when highly-ranked Baylor annihilated Winthrop 140–32. Making this more impressive is that Winthrop is also a D-I school, though worlds behind Baylor when it comes to women's basketball tradition. The previous record margin for any D-I team had been 102 points; in games that involved two D-I teams, the previous record had been 101. And Baylor's coach Kim Mulkey wasn't trying to run it up—she started rotating players in the first quarter, no player saw more than 21 minutes of action (out of 40), and all 12 players available to play were on the floor for at least 10 minutes. Winthrop's coach went out of his way to tell Mulkey after the game, in all seriousness, that he appreciated her effort to keep the score down. Later in the same season, Baylor wiped the floor with Texas Southern, winning 119–30 in the first round of the 2017 NCAA tournament. The 89-point margin was the greatest ever in the D-I women's tournament, surpassing the previous record of 74 points.
  • The next season, UConn fell one point short of tying the record with their 88-point defeat of Saint Francis (Pennsylvania) in the first round, 140-52, though the 140 set the single-game scoring record for the tournament (the previous mark of 121 had been set in a four-overtime game). The Huskies led 55-19 at the end of the first quarter and 94-31 at halftime. That 94 points was the most in a half by any women's team in any level of college basketball!
  • The first round of the 2022 women's tournament saw eventual national champs South Carolina, ranked #1 coming into the tournament, take on Howard. South Carolina jumped out to 20–0 lead, which extended to 22–2 at the end of the first quarter, 44–4 at halftime, and 60–8 at the end of the third. Howard managed to show a slight bit of life in the fourth, only losing by a count of 79–21. Still, Howard's 21 points set a new women's tournament mark for fewest points in a game.
• The 2018 UMBC–Virginia game in the first round of the NCAA D-I men's tournament was a huge shock not only because it was the first-ever win for a men's 16-seed over a 1-seed after 135 losses, but because the game wound up becoming this. The back-and-forth first half saw the teams go to the locker room tied 21. But in the second half the UMBC Retrievers humiliated the Cavaliers, shooting an incredible 68% from the field on the way to an improbable 74–54 blowout win. Another statistic is telling here: UMBC's second-half point total was only a fraction of a point less than UVA had averaged giving up per game going into the NCAA tournament.
• Virginia Tech defeated North Carolina State 47–24 in an Atlantic Coast Conference game in 2019. The 23-point margin and low overall score may not compare with some of the other games mentioned here, but it absolutely belongs in this trope because of NC State's truly abysmal performance. The Wolfpack shot a jaw-droppingly awful 9 of 54 from the field (a 16% rate), including a dumbfounding 2 of 28 from 3-point range. Special note goes to guard Braxton Beverly, who was held scoreless in the game on 0 for 12 shooting in 33 minutes of play. Tech didn't exactly shoot the lights out either, but still made 7 more baskets with 9 fewer shot attempts than NC State, despite two of their top players being out with injuries and playing on the road (though the NC State fans, rather being a hostile crowd, sat in Stunned Silence for most of the game). Even crazier, both teams were ranked in the Top 25 at the time, and were two of the top three scoring teams in the league! SB Nation ultimately labeled this the worst NCAA basketball game ever in a video they covered a few years ago.
• When they met in 2019, Utah and Mississippi Valley State were men's programs heading in very different directions. Utah, from the traditionally strong Pac-12 Conference, had six consecutive winning seasons. MVSU, a member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, generally rated as the weakest Division I conference, had seven consecutive seasons of single-digit victory totals, so it was no surprise that Vegas oddsmakers made Utah a 30-point favorite in the game. That turned out to be way too conservative, as the Utes defeated the Delta Devils 143–49. The 94 points set the NCAA men's record for victory margin in a game between two Division I schools. The Utes led 70–20 at halftime, then opened the second half on a 33–9 run to grab a 103–29 lead with 12:00 still left to go. They wound up rotating 13 different players on the floor over the course of the game. If anything, the stat lines show that it could've been much, much worse: Utah outrebounded MVSU 68–28, and made 63% of their shots to MVSU's 26%.
• On December 10, 2019, J.J. Culver from Wayland Baptist University joined Bevo Francis, Frank Selvy, and Jack Taylor^*(with Paul Arizin from Villanova University unofficially joining them due to having 100+ points scored in a game against a junior college) as the only college players to ever score 100 or more points in a single game. In Culver's case, it was the second time in NAIA history that a player scored 100 points in a single game, with him reaching it through 34/62 field goal shooting, 12/33 three-point field goal shooting, and 20/27 free-throw shooting in a 124-60 win over Southwestern Adventist University.
• The start of the 2022-23 NCAA Division I season on November 7 began with not one, but two games that were considered exactly that. The very first game of the season between Baylor University and Mississippi Valley State (just three years removed from the record-setting 94-point loss mentioned above) ended with Baylor routing MVSU 117-53, effectively more than doubling the amount scored that game. The second Curb-Stomp Battle of the day had a recently-promoted Division I university in James Madison University (who went from the weaker Colonial Athletic Association^note the first word of the conference name was changed to "Coastal" in 2023 to the slightly stronger Sun Belt Conference) easily cruising past the Division III University of Valley Forge with a 123-38 blowout win.
• On December 10, 2023, the North Dakota State Bison hosted a breather game against Oak Hills Christian, a tiny Minnesota college with fewer than 200 enrolled students. By the end of the first half, the Bison were up 60-5, and the game would end out 108-14. Oak Hills Christian only managed to make 12% of their shots and had a staggering 23 turnovers.
• The Thanksgiving Day Women's game between Mississippi Valley State (again) and 1st ranked South Carolina played on November 24, 2023. The two opened by trading a few shots, with the Devilettes down just 5-4 a few minutes in, but after that the wheels came off, with South Carolina coasting to a 101-19 win. MVSU shot just 8/67 from the field and made less than 12% of their shots, with 16 of their 19 points, over 80% of their total scoring, scored by just three players.
• The January 2, 2024 women's matchup between Grambling State University and the NCCAA's^note National Christian College Athletic Association College of Biblical Studies ended up being a history-making rout. Grambling jumped out to a 34-0 lead, with CoBS not scoring at all until almost 8 minutes into the game, and then was held scoreless again for nearly 9 minutes between the 2nd and 3rd quarters, trailing 82-10 at halftime and finally scoring a free-throw late in the 3rd that cut Grambling's lead to 115-11. Grambling ended up winning 159-18, the 151-point win being the largest margin of victory in NCAA Women's Basketball history.
• March 7, 2024: the men's West Coast Conference tournament opened with a game between the bottom two teams in the league standings, the Pacific Tigers (who went winless in conference play, 0-16) and the Pepperdine Waves (who weren't all that much better at 5-11). So, close game, right? Nope. Pepperdine held Pacific scoreless for the first seven minutes of the contest, jumping out to a 26–0 lead before the Tigers managed their first basket (a layup), then immediately went on a 13–0 run, leading 39–2 with 6:50 left in the first half. That extended to a 56–9 halftime lead. Things incredibly got worse for Pacific in the second half, with Pepperdine pushing the lead to 63–13 early on, and Pacific never getting any closer than 48 points after that, as Pepperdine won 102–43, outshooting Pacific by a 60–25% tally.

International Competition

• Team USA has a tradition of curb-stomping most of the planet during the Olympic Games.
  • It started when NBA players were allowed for Barcelona 1992, leading to "The Dream Team", containing 11 hall-of-famers such as Michael Jordan and is pretty much the greatest team of all time. In any sport. Period. It utterly humiliated any and all of the outclassed teams it came into contact with, from the opener against Angola (won by 68) to the Gold Medal game against Croatia (won by 32), with coach Chuck Daly never feeling he had to call a timeout. Likewise, the 1996 was only slightly less dominant, winning each of its games by an average of 31.8 points. It wasn't until the 2000 team (which won gold, but only after several close calls) and the 2004 team (known as the "nightmare team", losing to Puerto Rico, Lithuania, and Argentina before beating Lithuania in the rematch for the bronze) that it ever seemed like the rest of the world wasn't going to be forever curb-stomped on the court.
  • In the 2000s, following a decade with the rest of the world catching up with US basketball, Beijing 2008 featured the "Redeem Team", which was as dominant as the 1992 squad. They beat China by 31 points, Angola by 21 points, Greece by 23 points, reigning World Champion Spain by 37, then beat Germany by 49 points and easily made it to the knockout round. Once there, they beat Australia by 31 points in the first round, Argentina (who was the favorite coming into the Olympics) by 20 in the second round, then faced a rematch with Spain in the finals. Even though it was the only game the USA played that was remotely close, they still won the Gold Medal by a score of 118 to 107.
  • Come 2012, the United States did it again. They won their group undefeated with a point differential of +191 and won the gold medal with only two close wins throughout the entire tournament: an unusual five-point victory over Lithuania^note (A traditional force who did manage to beat the US in 2004 and lose by two points in 2000... but had lost to the Americans by 15 in the 2010 Worlds and would fall by 26 in the 2014 one.) and a seven-point win over perennial contender Spain in the finals. And let's not even get started on the US women's team, who won their fifth consecutive (seventh overall) gold medal at the 2012 Olympics.
  • The 2014 US team fielded for the FIBA World Cup (the new rebranding of the FIBA World Championship) cruised to the championship. None of their opponents got closer than 21 points.
  • In the 2016 Olympics, the USA men won the gold unbeaten again, though they had a bit more difficulty than in 2012, winning group games against Serbia and France by only 3 points each, and winning a 6-point semifinal battle against Spain. The final, a return match with Serbia, was this trope—Team USA won by 30, its biggest win in the men's final since the Dream Team. The women, on the other hand, were utterly dominant again, winning their group with a +204 point differential and coasting to the gold. The only team to get within 20 of Team USA was France... which lost by 19.
• The 2013 FIBA Asia Basketball 2013 had Malaysia suffering two of these in a row, 115–25 to Iran and 113–22 to China. (the third was a "meager" 22 to South Korea)
• In the 2015 Southeast Asian Games Basketball tournament, newcomers Timor Leste had the misfortune of going up against regional powerhouses the Philippines, and defeat was all but certain for the Timorese. Once the dust cleared, the Filipinos outright DESTROYED the Timorese by 105 points to finish with a final score of 126-21. To make matters worse for Timor Leste, the Filipinos fielded their Under-21 team, which was composed only of College Players: in essence, the Timorese had the unfortunate distinction of being destroyed by the Philippine National Team's B-Team! The beating was so bad that by the 4th Quarter, even the FILIPINOS started cheering for Timor Leste out of pity and also out of admiration, as the Timorese played hard despite the COLOSSAL odds against them. (It helps that the 2 countries have a lot in common: both have a high poverty rate, both are the only countries in Asia to be predominantly Catholic, and both were under the influence of Iberian powers (Spain for The Philippines, Portugal for Timor Leste). It also helps that Timor Leste fits the role of The Woobie in Southeast Asia: They went through a long and violent struggle with Indonesia for independence from 1975 to 2002.).
• Perlas Pilipinas (the Philippine ladies' team) won a very dominating match against Laos in Southeast Asian Games Women's Basketball 2016. The score? 179-32.
• During both of their 2017 meetings the Philippines CRUSHED Myanmar. The first was during Myanmar's SEABA debut during the 2017 SEABA Championship where they suffered a 147-40 defeat at the hands of the Philippine national team, they also met the same fate at the hands of the Philippine B-Team during the Southeast Asian Games where they lost 129-34. At both games the Filipino crowd cheered for both Myanmar and Aung Wana for their determination.

Other

• This high school girls' basketball game had a final score of 108-3.
• Any shutout win in basketball. Ever. Most of them like this seem to be amongst high school girls though. Likewise, most shutouts have occurred in the sport's heyday in the early 20th century, as seen here, with the most recent examples involving school matches out in Germany in the 2010's. However, this one (a regional boys' tournament in Stockholm, Sweden on February 5, 1974) takes the cake; Mats Wermelin scored all 272 points in a 272-0 win that might as well be considered Mats against everyone else there.
• On the note of that page listed from Wikipedia on players that scored 100 or more points in a single game, a vast majority of the time that kind of thing happens, the game usually ends up becoming that. Case in point...
  • The very first player to ever score over 100 points in a game, Herman Saygar, scored 113 points (from 56 made field goals and one made free-throw) for Culver High School in a blowout win over the Winamac Community High School. The thing is, though, Saygar's 113 points would have still become a blowout win favoring Culver. However, a 154-10 final score is a lot more memorable than a 41-10 basketball score.
  • During the May 1923 Far Eastern Games in Osaka, Japan, the Philippines national team defeated the China national team to take the gold medal there easily, being led by Lou Salvador and his 116 points on his own accord. Salvador became the third known player in the history of the sport to score over 100 points in a single game (behind the previously mentioned Herman Saygar in 1913 and Ed Vondra in 1922, both in local, U.S. high school matches) and the first to do so in international play of any kind, never mind a professional tournament. His play (which he credits to his personal conditioning) made him a local superstar in the region, later becoming a film and stage producer that also fathered 102 different children from 47 women.
  • On February 3, 1941, the LaGrange School held a future NBA All-Star and champion named Bob Harrison. Harrison was a 5'9" 8th grader from Toledo, Ohio that had middle school games like his between LaGrange and the Arch Street School hold 8-minute quarters for regulation games in a regulation-sized court. Little did anyone know that day, Harrison became LaGrange's only scorer that day, hitting all 139 of their points from 69 made field goals and one made free throw in a 139-8 beatdown from Harrison against Arch Street.
  • The next time a high schooler would score over 100 points in one game came on February 6, 1953 when Dick Bogenrife from Sedalia-Midway High School (now London High School out in Ohio) scored 120 points (a scoring record at the time) from 52 made field goals and 16 made free-throws in a 137-47 beatdown against Canaan High School.
  • A year later, on December 21, 1954, Wayne Oakley from Hanson High School in Kentucky (long since consolidated into Madisonville North Hopkins High) scored 114 points from 47/55 field goal shooting and 20/24 free-throw shooting. This resulted in a 128-56 victory over the now-defunct St. Agnes High School to end the year there before entering Christmas break.
  • On Valentine's Day in 1956, Dickie Pitts from Wimauma High School in Florida made the athletes from the Adrimal Farragut Academy look very undisciplined by comparison to him. Dickie scored 103 points from 48 made field goals (including 11/14 made free-throws) in a 123-77 beatdown over Admiral Farragut.
  • Before playing for a few years in Major League Baseball, Pete Cimino was best known for scoring 114 in a game for Bristol High School in Pennsylvania. Cimino made his mark with 44/79 made field goals and 26/29 made free-throws, with 69 of his 114 points scored being the team's only points scored throughout the entirety of that second half played on January 22, 1960. Cimino and Bristol High School ultimately beat Palisades High School with a 134-86 final score.
  • The official record for the highest scoring player in a high school basketball game from anywhere in the world, never mind for just the U.S.A. came from a senior guard named Danny Heater from Burnsville High School in West Virginia (since consolidated into Braxton County High). While he officially scored 135 points in one match against Widen High School (since consolidated into Clay County High) on January 26, 1960 (four days after Pete Cimino's performance), 85 of those points came during the second half of that game, with 55 of those points in particular coming from the final 10 minutes of the game. This was considered a very controversial scoring exploit for high school basketball at the time, with Heater making 53/70 field goals and 29/41 free-throws that night through said exploit at hand. However, Heater still managed to not only score 135 points, but also grab 32 rebounds for a double-double (and 7 assists for a near triple-double) in a blowout 173-43 win favoring Burnsville.
  • Nearly a year later, on January 6, 1961, Danny Boyd from Camden High School in Tennessee scored 104 points to help defeat Clarksburg High School. In Boyd's performance, he made 44 field goals with 16 free-throws to let him get 24 points in the first quarter, 31 in the second, 27 in the third, and 22 in the fourth to help Camden win a 130-43 match that day.
  • Four days after that, on January 10, Ken Robinson from Cassatt Midway High School in South Carolina scored 108 points to help them defeat the Ruby South High School by exactly 100 points. With Robinson's performance, he made 48 field goals alongside 12/13 free-throws (with him starting out rather normally early on before just going off in the second half by scoring 62 of his 108 points in the second half) to help Cassatt Midway win a 130-30 victory that day.
  • Then two weeks after Robinson's performance, on January 24, a guy named Wayne Coward from J.C. Lynch High School in South Carolina had an unusual 100-point performance to help J.C. Lynch defeat Brittons Neck High School that day. While Coward started out rather softly with only 20 points scored in the first half, he ended up snapping in the second half, scoring 80 of his 100 points in the second half to give J.C. Lynch a 139-31 victory, thus metaphorically stomping down on Brittons Neck by that half.
  • Nearly a month after Coward's performance, on February 22, John Morris from Norcom High School in Portsmouth, Virginia nearly broke Danny Heater's record set a yet prior by scoring 127 points in a 173-47 win over Mary Smith High School. While Norcom only needed two points from Morris to win against Mary Smith, Morris definitely gave them a lot more points by comparison.
  • Greg Procell from the Nobel-Ebarb High School in Louisiana became the next male player to score 100 points in a single game, hitting that mark on January 29, 1970 in a blowout 139-79 win over Elizabeth High School.
  • Even deaf people can potentially be stars in the sport, as Bennie Fuller from the Arkansas School for the Deaf proved firsthand in 1971.^note (Conflicting reports have been stated on when in 1971 Fuller broke through the 100-point barrier. For example, the National Federation of State High School Associations claimed the match occurred on December 4, 1971, while MaxPreps.com stated the special performance occurred on January 20, 1971. However, it's likely it occurred in January due to it being reported as such by The Northwest Arkansas Times and other publications afterward, but to play it safe, it will be left ambiguous on when in 1971 it occurred.) During that year, Fuller put up 102 points for ASD by making 41 field goals and 20 of 23 free throws in a 133-58 thrashing over Leola High School. Not only that, but Fuller instantly became someone that colleges were willing to give scholarships out toward once they heard of his unlikely performance that night, which he likely felt greatly appreciative for.
  • Even though girls' high school basketball was played for decades in a six-on-six setting (three guards and three forwards playing on each team, with forwards playing only on offense and guards only on defense) instead of the usual five-on-five (or even three-on-three) matches one could expect nowadays, there have been a few known occasions where 100 points were still scored in those kinds of matches instead.
    • The first female to ever score over 100 points in a single game came from a high school basketball legend named Denise Long from Union-Whitten High School in Iowa. Long previously had the all-time record for girls' high school basketball for overall points scored with 6,250 and still holds the national record of 68.2 points per game in her senior year of high school to this day. However, 111 of those points came from one game that Union-Whitten played against Dows High School, where she made 38 field goals and 35 of 44 free throws to secure a 136-41 win on January 22, 1968.^note Iowa was one of the last two states to switch girls' basketball to 5-on-5, not doing so until 1993. Oklahoma was the last to switch in 1995.
    • On January 28, 1972, Dianne Campbell from Claude High School in Texas became the second-known female to ever score 100 points in a single game by scoring all but six of Claude's points that day before sitting out the final three minutes of a 106-19 beatdown on Clarendon High School.
    • The third and final known time it happened during a six-on-six match occurred over a decade later on February 15, 1986. On that day, Lynne Lorenzen from the Ventura Jr.-Sr. High School in Iowa not only scored 100 points off of 43/48 field goal shooting (including 12 free-throws made) in a six-on-six match where Ventura blew out the Woden-Crystal Lake-Titonka High School with a 126-74 final score, but she also later ended up breaking Denise Long's record of most points scored in a high school career (for either boys or girls) with 6,736 career points to her name.
  • The highest scoring effort by one player in a professional Greek Basket League match was 145 points scored by Aristeidis Moumoglu for the G.S. Iraklis B.C. in a July 13, 1972 match against the Vizantinos Athlitikos Omilos (VAO). His 145 points scored resulted in a 172-94 blowout win for Iraklis that day.
  • The next time a male American high school student scored over 100 points after Bennie Fuller's achievement came on January 10, 1979. On that day, Kenneth Johnson from Grandfield High School in Oklahoma immediately set the tone for them in their match against Terral High School by scoring 71 points in the first half alone. Johnson ultimately finished his night with 105 points from 45/85 known field goal attempts (it's unknown if this occurred before the three-point line started becoming more used, but if it wasn't, there likely was also 15 free-throws made) in Grandfield's 120-65 win over Terral. One thing that should be noted is that as of 2023, Oklahoma is one of the rare few states to have high school basketball to be without shot clock violations at hand, as noted in an infamous score in a modern-era game, which makes it even more impressive by comparison.
  • Americans usually have greater motivation to score high when playing in foreign professional leagues if it means they have a greater chance of playing in the NBA in the future (or at least gain greater recognition for their careers). Case in point, a match in 1980 between TV Clausen and Trier out in a Cold War-torn Germany (likely in West Germany) had an American named Archie Talley score 116 points in a 132-91 win for TV Clausen.
  • Meanwhile, on the female spectrum, you had to wait until February 15, 1981 to find the first female to ever score 100 points in a regular five-on-five matchup. In this case, it was Linda Page from Dobbins Technical Education High School in Philadelphia who became the second woman behind Denise Long to score 100 in a single match. For Linda, she scored 100 points from 41/57 field goal shooting and 18/21 free-throw shooting during a 131-38 blowout win over another Philly school, Mastbaum Technical Vocational School.
  • Nearly a year later, on January 26, 1982, future Hall of Famer Cheryl Miller^note Contrary to popular belief, she never played in the WNBA; bad knees forced her to retire from play several years before the WNBA was formed. from Riverside Polytechnic High School in California put her name on the basketball map by scoring 105 points in a match against Norte Vista High School. On that day, Miller scored 105 points from 46/50 field goal shooting and 13/15 free-throw shooting in a blowout 179-15 beatdown favoring Riverside Poly.
  • Even the British can be capable of producing high scoring matches for high schools like what can be found in the U.S.A. However, even a certain match they hosted on March 9, 1982 can be seen as a historic outlier for them, as Paul Ogden scored 124 points for St. Alban's School in a match that had them win with a final score of 226-82 over the South Chadderton School.
  • Yugoslavia had not one, but two different players score over 100 points in professional matches that held great prominence for the nation on October 1985.
    • First, on October 5 that year, future Basketball Hall of Famer Dražen Petrović scored 112 points from 40/60 shooting, 10/20 three-point shooting, and a perfect 22/22 from the free-throw line for Cibona Zagreb in a blowout 158-77 win over SMELT Olimpija. It remained a Yugoslav First League record until it dissolved due to the Yugoslavian Civil War.
    • Then five days later, Zdenko Babić scored 144 points in the 1985-86 FIBA Korać Cup, one of the top tier FIBA tournaments of that era, in a match for KK Zadar in Yugoslavia. In the first round of that tournament, Babić scored 113 points in 26 minutes (out of 40 total minutes) in a blowout 192-116 win over Cypriot club APOEL, which solidified Zadar as a serious contender in that tournament.
  • One month after Yugoslavia witnessed two amazing performances of players scoring over 100 points in one game, the Philippines saw a player from their own professional basketball league do something similar themselves. On November 21, 1985, an American player named Michael Hackett scored a then-PBA record-high 103 points for Ginebra San Miguel. That resulted in them winning a 197-168 match against the Great Taste Coffee Makers, with Hackett's record standing in the Philippine Basketball Association until it was broken by Tony Harris in 1992, who scored 105 points just to help the Swift Mighty Meaties beat Ginebra San Miguel in a surprisingly close 152-147 match. However, that match wasn't really something that can be considered a curbstomp battle, so Michael Hackett's performance it is!
  • Hortência Marcari is publicly known in Brazil as one of the best female basketball players of all-time alongside "Magic Paula", to the point where Hortência has been inducted into both the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and FIBA Hall of Fame for her incredible performances in games. However, Hortência's best match ever came about during a 1987 São Paulo State College Tournament that her team at the time, Minercal, was competing in. During that event, Hortência had a match where she put up a career-high 124 points that resulted in Minercal getting a 252-31 crushing win during a match there.
  • The first known high school game where players who scored 100 or more points also utilized the three-point line to their advantage occurred on February 16, 1988. On that day, Brian Payne from New Port Richey Christian Academy in Florida made 40 overall field goals, 12 three-point shots, and all 11 of his free-throw attempts to score 103 points in a 111-60 win over Clearwater St. Paul High School. That game also had him start out with 29 points in the first quarter and 26 in the second before having an off 13 points in the third quarter before finishing off with 35 points in the fourth to seal the deal for the New Port Richey Christian Academy.
  • In Turkey, the Turkish Basketball League's all-time record was set on March 12, 1988 by Fenerbahçe player Erman Kunter. What made Kunter's game so impressive was that he scored 81 points in the first half alone, with 72 points being scored in the second half; his scoring was so high that he can honestly say he beat his opponent, Hilalspor, all by himself. While Fenerbahçe won 175-101, 153 of those points all belonged to Kunter, with it likely being a record that will be impossible to surpass in Turkey.
  • On February 7, 1990, future WNBA legend and Hall of Famer Lisa Leslie put herself on the basketball map by literally scoring every single point in a match against South Torrance High School in California. The beatdown was so bad that South Torrance literally had to forfeit the second half of their game against Morningside High School just because of how badly Lisa was beating them on her own accord. In what was considered tradition for Morningside High School, they allowed Leslie to score as much as she possibly could before their last regular season game concluded and the team entered the playoffs that season, with the rest of her teammates being willing to let her score as much as she wanted to that day. In only one half of action, Leslie managed to score 101 points from 37/56 made field goals and 27/35 made free-throws in a match that might as well be considered Lisa Leslie winning 101-24 over South Torrance. Though in what could be considered a What Could Have Been moment, she admits she could have very well scored 200 points had the match not already been over with by the first half of the game.
  • In Israel, multiple players have held special scoring records in different professional levels of play.
    • For their Liga Leumit 2nd Division sector, Kevin Bradshaw (best known for scoring an NCAA Division I record of 72 points in one recognized game^note (Hall of Famer Paul Arizin had technically scored at least 100 points in a game for Villanova University once, but that record is not recognized by the NCAA due to it being set against a junior college.)) of the M. M. Giv'at Shmuel scored 101 points in a match during the 1993-94 season (specifically some time in 1993), where they won 165-109 over the Maccabi Tverya.
    • For their 1st Division sector at the Israeli Basketball Super League, J.J. Eubanks also scored 101 points himself (with him doing it on 40/57 shooting, 9/22 three-point shooting, and 12/14 free-throw shooting), which led to the Maccabi Ramat Gan overtaking the Beitar Ramat Gan with a 161-66 beatdown on October 9, 1994. However, with Beitar, they had the excuse of having financial issues, which resulted in them playing their youth league players throughout that entire season, which led to scoring records like Eubanks' happening during that season. That being said, Eubanks' record still stands today as the highest scoring production by one player in their Super League.
    • Finally, in the Division III women's sector, Anat Draigor scored a record-high 136 points (the most scored by any woman in one professional game) for the Hapoel Mate Yehuda against the Elitzer Givat Shmuel in a playoff game on April 5, 2006. In that playoff game, she scored an already impressive 61 points in the first half before somehow topping that with 75 points in the second half to help Hapoel crush Elitzel with a 158-41 shellacking. Oh, and did we mention that when she did that record-breaking performance, she did it as a 46 year old mother?
  • For the first ever game of someone scoring 100 points in the 21st century, the honor belongs to former NBA player Dajuan Wagner, son of former NBA player Milt Wagner. While Dajuan is seen as an NBA bust due to serious health issues beyond his control (having ulcerative colitis during his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers), he wasn't always seen as someone that would disappoint early on. In fact, with his game on January 16, 2001 at Camden High School in New Jersey, one could have honestly seen him to be someone like LeBron James for Cleveland before LeBron was even drafted by them. On that day, Wagner scored 100 points from 42/60 field goal shooting, 10/15 three-point shooting, and 6 made free-throws before sitting out with four minutes left in that game to give Camden a 157-67 blowout win over the Gloucester Township Technical Schools.
  • On that same day Dajuan Wagner scored 100 in New Jersey, Cedrick Hensley from the Heritage Christian Academy in Texas scored an even more impressive 101 points from 46/59 field goal shooting, 2/5 three-point shooting, and 6 made free-throws in a 178-28 beatdown over the Banff Christian Academy. However, unlike Wagner, Cedrick Hensley did not receive the same amount of recognition that would have been received from him on that night, not even with him making it on a professional level in the NBA later on.
  • In what probably should have been seen as a sign of Canada's increased quality of basketball production in the 21st century, Denham Brown of the West Hill Collegiate Institute put up a record-high 111 points in a high school match against the R.H. King Academy. Brown had scored 51 points in the first half of that game on February 7, 2002 before scoring 41 points in the third quarter and 19 in the fourth (while also making 13 three-pointers along the way) to help West Hill beat down the R.H. King Academy with a 150-58 curb stomp.
  • Currently, the last male American high schooler to even score 100 points in a single game occurred on February 11, 2003, when Tigran Grigorian from Pico Rivera Mesrobian High School in California scored 100 points (with the only currently known statistic that survived right now being he made 11 three-pointers) in a 114-47 blowout win over the Los Angeles Pacific Christian Charter School. Ever since then, some players like brothers LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball have come close to reaching the 100-point barrier in high school games, but none of them have reached the same heights that Grigorian had in 2003.
  • Some of the most prominent scorers in international play have come out of Croatia, even beyond the two matches back when they were in Yugoslavia. Case in point...
    • During a Pokal Spar (Slovenian Basketball Cup) match, a 43-year old Croatian named Veljko Petranović played in only three quarters to score 100 points for the Postojna. However, even if Veljko did not play at all, Postojna would still have likely beaten Vipava on October 8, 2003. That being said, the score would have been a nail-biting 50-49 performance instead of a 150-49 beatdown that Veljko gave to Vipava.
    • In a February 2006 Croatian A2 League match, 21-year old Matej Kuna of the KK Belišće scored 111 points in a 159–77 beatdown over the KK Požega. However, unlike most curb stompers, this one has more of a Downer Ending when Kuna substituted out of the game with 90 seconds left in the match, thinking he had already broken Drazen's scoring record when the refs revealed he was actually two points shy from the record. Considering he shot 20/26 from the three-point line, it's considered likely that Kuna could have broken the record if he stayed in the game just a little bit longer. However, he does hold the A2 League's record, which should count for something.
    • Most recently for Croatia, the KK Virovitica gave 13-year old Marin Ferenčević not one, but two games of over 100 points scored in a two month period of time. Sometime in April 2006, Ferenčević scored 101 points in a match against the KK Bjelovar, though the final result of that match is currently lost to us at this time. However, a month later in May, during a U-14 Croatian league match against the ABN Graminea, Ferenčević crushed his previous record with a triple-double performance that saw him get 178 points, 22 rebounds, and 16 steals for Virovitica. Ferenčević did most of his damage in the second and third quarters in that game, scoring 61 in the second quarter and 55 in the third after hitting 34 in the first and 28 in the fourth quarters. He also had a crazy 67/86 shooting night, with 9/14 three-pointers made and 17/18 free-throws made, which led to Virovitica winning a 187-70 thrashing, though we can say it's more Ferenčević's thrashing on the ABN Graminea in this case.
  • As for the last American female player to score over 100 points in a single game, we can say that on February 2, 2006, a young woman named Epiphanny Prince from Murry Bergtraum High School in New York scored 113 points to break a previously long-standing record set by Denise Long for the most points scored by a female in a high school game. For Prince, she reached that mark with 54/60 made field goals alongside 4 made three-pointers and 1 made free-throw to not only break Long's long-standing record, but also give Murry Bergtraum a 137-32 blowout win over the Brandeis High School.
  • Even the Philippines can provide high-scoring efforts in high school play. Though in that country's case, it happened twice by completely different people during the 2010s.
    • First, in a January 5, 2011 match between two Christian focused high schools (the Catholic-based Xavier School and the Protestant-based Grace Christian College), Xavier School's Jeron Tang scored what was at the time a record-high 104 points scored in a high school match. That match had him score 37/70 in overall baskets (with one of those baskets made being a three-pointer) and 29/34 free-throws in order for Xavier to beat down Grace with a 164-74 thumping.
    • Then two years later, during the Freego Tiong Lian Basketball Association Tournament set on October 2013, Clark Quijano from the AMA University High School set a new record for high school performances in the Philippines with 120 points scored in another massive beatdown that the Grace Christian College had to take. While no scoring specifics were officially recorded online, the AMA University High School still gave a 166-85 beatdown to Grace under Clark Quijano's leadership in that game.
  • Even a place as small as Kosovo can contain someone who's capable of scoring 100 points on someone if they really wanted to do so. In this case, it happened with Sigal Prishtina's Granit Rugova, who scored a record-high 110 points on March 30, 2011 against the KB Mitrovica. In that 150-54 beating, Rugova's 110 points became the highest-scoring total to ever appear in Kosovar basketball history (at least in terms of players that were born and raised to play there for a match).
  • This next player proves that just about anyone could reach that 100-point mark in a game if they're given the chance to do so. Mohammad Akkari of the Al Mouttahed Tripoli had previously only averaged 7.6 points in 23 games played for the team before his special night against the Bejje SC on April 3, 2012 at the FIBA Asia National Federations in Lebanon. In that game against Bejje, Akkari scored a career-high 113 points from 40/69 field goal shooting and 32/59 three-point shots made (with only one free-throw being made for good measure) in a 173-141 win for Al Mouttahed Tripoli.
  • In a local U-20 match in Poland, Borys Klimek scored 100 points in only 32 minutes of action for the Stal Ostrów Wielkopolski. This led to them winning 165-86 over the KT Kosz Kalisz on November 28, 2014.
  • In a random match from the Russian NBL Second Division on January 20, 2018, Danila Kukuruzov of the BaltBasket scored 102 points off of 44/59 field goal shooting (including two missed three-pointers) and 14/21 from free-throws in 37 minutes and 10 seconds of action. This resulted in BaltB getting a 147-78 win over the Горный университет (Mining University).
  • The most recent example in mind for scoring 100 points in a match occurred in a circumstance that would leave people thinking an asterisk or two is in order for how it happened. See, on March 12, 2022, both the Baskets Vilsbiburg and the s.Oliver Würzburg Akademie (better known as the academy for the club that's the spiritual successor to the one that helped mold and shape Dirk Nowitzki into who he was in the NBA) had several different players get sick due to something that was going down with them at the time (most likely COVID-19). However, the 1. Regionalliga (which is the fourth-best professional basketball league in Germany) decided that both teams had enough players active to let them play on that fateful day. One of the players in question was an American named Jonathan Braeger, who played for Baskets Vilsbiburg and just so happened to benefit the most from the circumstances at hand that day. While Braeger did record a quadruple-double with 100 points scored through 15/17 made two-point field goals, 22/34 made three-pointers, and 4/5 made free-throws (meaning he technically could have won that game on his own accord anyway), as well as 16 rebounds, 12 assists, and 12 steals in a game that ended with a 209-39 beatdown favoring Vilsbiburg, the s.Oliver Würzburg Akademie players actually played the game with a lesser quality of defense then what they usually would have done by that time. It got so bad, in fact, that by the fourth quarter of the game, the s.Oliver Würzburg Akademie were down to only three eligible players in the rest of the game (with the last time a team was forced to play only 3 players involved an American NCAA Division I game between the University of Alabama and the University of Minnesota in November 2017). You can see why this one felt less impressive by comparison to the rest of the games in question.
  • However, the biggest blowout in basketball history likely goes out to a December 2005 U-14 match in Poland, where MKS-MOS Pruszków (notably led by Konrad Migdalski, who scored a game-high 227 points on his own (being the only other player to ever score over 200 points in one game in basketball history) and reached 100 points before halftime with 3 minutes to spare there) utterly brutalized UKS Czarodzieje z Bielan with arguably the only basketball match where over 300 points were scored by one team in a 326–15 massacre.

Boxing

• In 1919, excitement was rising for a boxing match in Toledo, Ohio for the World Heavyweight Title. It was Jess Willard — who had a serious weight and height advantage over his opponent — versus Jack Dempsey. In the first round, Dempsey knocked Willard over seven times, reputedly causing a broken jaw, broken ribs, fractured cheek bones, and a number of broken teeth. Willard looked like he'd been through a car accident.
• Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling II, 1936 and 1938. Schmeling had handed Louis his first defeat, which was considered by Nazi Germany to be a triumph for the "Aryan race". Two years later, the two fighters faced down in a rematch. This time, Schmeling went down in two minutes and four seconds, after being knocked down three times and throwing only two punches in the entire fight.
• One of the most famous curb-stompings in boxing is Muhammad Ali's first-round trouncing of Sonny Liston in their 1965 re-match fight. Subverted in that historians today are in agreement that Liston took a dive; he was declared beaten without even a ten-count and wasn't even hit by the punch that supposedly knocked him out (something Ali himself noted: "Did I hit him?").
• In the 1970s, Joe Frazier and Ken Norton were both world-class heavyweights who held heavyweight titles in their lives and famously each had three-fight rivalries with peer competitor Muhammad Ali. Coincidentally, each won one fight and lost two, with one of each of their losses being clean and the other being heavily disputed on points. As such, everyone was suitably impressed when up-and-comer George Foreman knocked out both Norton and Frazier within two rounds, practically back-to-back.
• Mike Tyson vs. Michael Spinks in 1988. Going into the fight, Spinks was an undefeated champion of both the light heavyweight and heavyweight classes with a record of 31-0 (21 knockouts). He was coming off of two wins against the legendary Larry Holmes, and had never so much as been knocked down a single time in his professional career. Yet against Tyson, a blind guy in a wheelchair could've put up a better fight than Spinks did. Tyson knocked him out in 91 seconds; Spinks announced his retirement a month later.
  • Mike Tyson's famous comeback bout in 1995 against Peter McNeeley. The much-hyped fight broke the record for Pay-Per-View earnings. McNeeley took such a pounding his trainer entered the ring and called off the fight after just 89 seconds in the ring. There were accusations that the fight was set up to guarantee a victory within the first 90 seconds, while Tyson was angry that he wasn't able to properly finish the fight.
  • A 1986 bout saw Mike Tyson defeat Marvis Frazier (son of boxing legend Joe Frazier, and a respectable fighter in his own right with a 19-2 record including victories over Joe Bugner and Bonecrusher Smith) by knockout in just 30 seconds. Actually, nearly every boxer who faced Mike Tyson ended up unconscious.
  • The 2000 comeback bout with Lou Savarese. Nobody thought that Savarese would win, but Savarese was still good enough to have knocked out Buster Douglas in one round and gone the distance against WBU/lineal heavyweight champion George Foreman in a very close fight (that some critics contend he won), so a few rounds were at least expected. Instead, literally the first punch Tyson landed sent Savarese to the canvas. He got back up only to get utterly mauled by Tyson, who continued wailing on the defenseless Savarese even after the ref told him to stop; Tyson was so caught up in the curb-stomp that he shoved the ref to the ground so he could continue the stomping! When he was finally pulled off, the ref declared the fight over by technical knockout. It had lasted 38 seconds, the second shortest match of Tyson's career.
  • Tyson's 2000 fight with Andrew Golota was probably his best post-prison performance. Golota was a dangerous high-ranked heavyweight who had famously given former unified champion Riddick Bowe absolute hell in their two fights, dominating him both times, repeatedly knocking him down, and only losing because Golota was disqualified for low blows near the end- TWICE!. He also had six inches and twenty pounds on Tyson, who was widely considered washed up despite still technically being high-ranked. But when they fought, Tyson quickly beat Golota to a pulp, dropping him in the first round with hooks and battering him mercilessly. By the end of the first round Golota wanted to quit, but was convinced to go out for the second round by his corner. The second round was just as one-sided as the first and Golota flatly refused to answer the bell for the third round, awarding Tyson the victory by technical knockout. Quitting turned out to be the right choice, as Golota's hospital visit after showed that Tyson had opened a large cut above his left eye, fractured his left cheekbone, caused a herniated disc, and gave him a severe concussion.
• Lennox Lewis vs Mike Tyson. Tyson talked up a big game and even started fights at promotion events with Lewis, confident that he'd win against his former sparring partner in one of the most anticipated boxing events of all time. This... did not happen; the much taller, stronger, and more technical Lewis pretty easily kept Tyson outside of range and jabbed him, with any attempt to get inside Lewis's reach by Tyson being handily repelled via clinching. While he got in a few good hits at first, by the fourth round Tyson had effectively been rendered unable to defend himself, and Lewis was pounding him at will. In that round Lewis opened up a cut above Tyson's eye and knocked him down, and Tyson's face started to swell. By round six Tyson was barely landing anything and had lacerations above both eyes. In rounds six and seven Lewis landed literally ten times as many punches as Tyson. Shortly into round 8, Tyson was knocked down again and made no attempt to get back up, leaving Lewis the winner by KO. Tyson's face looked like mulch at this point, while Lewis wasn't even particularly winded. In the post-fight interview, Tyson groveled before Lewis and requested a rematch. Lewis never bothered to set one up, as he (and everyone else in attendance) knew that the bout was one-sided enough that Lewis had nothing left to prove, despite Lewis being the older of the two.
• While the first fight between WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder and lineal heavyweight champion Tyson Fury ended in a controversial draw, with Wilder sending Fury to the canvas twice, Wilder was absolutely destroyed by Fury in their rematch. Despite Fury being known more for his elusiveness than his power (even though he's actually bigger than Wilder).^note For the second fight, the 6'7" Wilder weighed in at 231 lb (2.01 m, 105 kg). Fury? 6'9", 273 lb (2.06 m, 124 kg). Fury repeatedly walked him down and gave him the beating of his life for nearly 20 minutes straight, knocking Wilder down three times,^note One was ruled a slip, but replaying the footage makes it obvious that Wilder was sent down by a punch. consistently bullying him in the clinch, and taking every single round. The craziest part? Fury most likely would’ve finished him much sooner if referee Kenny Bayless hadn’t repeatedly given Wilder extra time to recover. By the end of the fight, Fury was spotless while Wilder was bleeding from mouth, nose, and ear, had noticeable swelling, was obviously concussed, and could barely raise his arms.
• The vast majority of fights involving world heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitsckho, whose Hall of Fame career saw him set records for the most days as heavyweight champion, most heavyweight championship fights, and most boxers defeated in such fights. Unlike previous champs such as Ali and Tyson, who earned their victories in slugfests that could see them in trouble at several points, Wladimir hardly lost a single round during his reign. It didn't matter how good his opponent was or how impressive their records were; it didn't matter if they were bigger than him or smaller than him; it didn't matter what style they used; Wlad used a Simple, yet Awesome style emphasizing his jab, cross, and minimalist footwork that was so ridiculously effective (in combination with his size and strength; 6'6" and 245 pounds of pure muscle) that he made them all look like helpless children. Casual fans often deride the Klitsckho era as boring, because Wlad really was just that much better than everyone else. Highlights:
  • An early example, back when he only held the WBO belt, would be Wladimir's 2002 domination of the then top ten ranked Jameel McCline. McCline never held a title, but was ranked in the top ten for several years and had a lot of great performances, including wins over Shannon Briggs and Michael Grant and a close decision loss to Chris Byrd. He was also much bigger than Klitschko: they were about the same height, but McCline was 263 pounds to Klitschko's 240. It didn't help. McCline got crushed from beginning to end, losing every single round, getting out-landed three to one in punches throughout the fight, and being knocked down near the end of it. His corner mercifully stopped the bout in the tenth.
  • Slick 6'2", 213-pound southpaw and two-time, two-title world heavyweight champion Chris Byrd (at the time 39-2 with 20 knockouts) challenged Klitsckho for his title in 2006, after losing a decision to him in 2000 (a one-sided match itself, but one that went the distance). Klitsckho had improved since then; Byrd, while a great fighter, was still more or less the same. Result: Byrd loses every round, is knocked down early, and is out-landed 2.4 to 1 in punches.^note 117 vs 51 Klitsckho's left hook finishes off Byrd in the seventh round for a technical knockout victory. The announcer said it best:
  If Byrd was hoping to wear Klitschko out with his face and his head by taking all those blows, then that is not a good strategy.
  • Single-title world heavyweight champion Lamon Brewster, at 6'3" and 229 pounds, with a record of 33-3 and 29 knockouts, faced Klitsckho in a rematch title defense in 2007 after scoring an upset knockout win over him several years prior. Klitsckho proved that his first loss was a fluke by utterly thrashing Brewster for five rounds, in which Klitsckho won every round, landed nearly three times as many punches as his opponent,^note 199 vs 70 and hurt him so badly that Brewster's trainer flatly refused to send him out for the sixth, handing Klitsckho the victory by technical knockout.
  • One of Klitsckho's most one-sided bouts was his fight with Hasim Rahman in 2008. Rahman was a 6'2", 255-pound, two-time, five-title world heavyweight champion, with a record of 45-7 and 41 knockouts. A terrifying force in any era. But when he went up against Klitsckho, he, like many before him, lost every single round and was utterly toyed with. CompuBox had Klitsckho landing six times as many punches as Rahman^note 178 vs 30. with on average three and a half times the accuracy.^note 14% vs 48% Rahman got knocked down and nearly KO'd in the sixth round, but managed to drag himself into the seventh round, where he continued to take unprotected crosses and hooks to the face until the referee called off the fight and ruled it a technical knockout to save Rahman from further damage.
  • Two-time, six-title cruiserweight^note The cruiserweight division of today is basically the heavyweight division of 50+ years ago; most boxers in it are over 200 pounds on fight night due to water cutting before weigh-ins. world champion Jean-Marc Mormeck was never expected to put up much of a fight in 2012; with a 36-4 record (23 knockouts), and coming into the bout at 216 pounds and highly fit, he looked appropriately tough, but Klitsckho had long been established as essentially unbeatable. When he stepped into the ring, the audience was reminded that Klitsckho was half a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than Mormeck, but even that didn't prepare them for the level of mismatch. Klitsckho landed thirteen times as many punches as Mormeck^note 39 vs 3 and knocked him unconscious at the start of the fourth round. And this was the day after Wlad got out of the hospital for an operation, too! Mormeck ultimately became Wlad's 50th knockout.
  • Klitschko's 2014 fight with Kubrat Pulev was the cherry on top of his utterly dominant career. Coming into the fight, the 6'5"', 248-pound Pulev was ranked #1 heavyweight in the world by both the December 2013 issue of The Ring magazine and the October 2014 press release of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board. As late as 2020, when he was 39 years old, Pulev was still ranked among the world's top ten heavyweights by both sources. You would never know this just from watching his fight with Wladimir Klitschko. Pulev was brutally battered, losing every single round and getting knocked down four times en route to a fifth round stoppage, leaving Klitschko the winner by technical knockout. It was his 53rd and final knockout.
• All but one of the fights involving Wladimir Klitschko's brother, Vitali Klitschko. While he didn't reign as long as his brother, he is the only heavyweight champion to never lose more than two rounds in any fight, has the highest heavyweight KO to fight ratio in history,^note 87%, or 41 of his 47 fights. Rocky Marciano, at 88%, technically has a higher one, BUT most of Rocky Marciano's opponents were under 200 pounds, the modern heavyweight limit. If you count his KO ratio solely against 200+ pound opponents, like all the guys Vitali faced, it's lower. and is one of only two heavyweight champions (along with Oliver McCall) to have never been knocked down. The one exception to his otherwise hilariously one-sided career was his fight with Lennox Lewis, which was a slugfest.^note Even then, Vitali had won 4 of the 6 rounds on all three judges' cards before a cut Lewis inflicted (more a factor of luck than anything else) forced him to stop. At that point Klitschko had landed 156 punches to Lewis's 102 — so not crushingly one-sided, but solidly in Vitali's favor without the cut. Note that Lewis got cut in that fight too; he was just fortunate enough that the cut was inflicted on his nose rather than above his eye, as Vitali's was.
• In 1998, the World Wrestling Federation hosted the Brawl for All, a legitimate Toughman Contest-style tournament amongst wrestlers who were Real Life tough-men. Surprising everyone, perennial curtain-jerker Bart Gunn ended up winning. As a true test, he was pitted in a match at WrestleMania XV against Toughman legend Eric "Butterbean" Esch, a massive man known for his knockout power. Butterbean knocked Gunn unconscious in 27 seconds, effectively killing his career in North America.^Postscript(Because Gunn knocked out "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, a legitimate tough guy with a very high profile in Japan, during the Brawl for All, he was able to establish himself as a significant star in that country.)
• 7 April 2007's Joe Calzaghe vs Peter Manfredo Jr. Despite remaining totally unbeaten throughout his career, Calzaghe still somehow managed to gain a mild reputation as being an overrated fighter with a habit of dodging his way out of "proper" fights. Manfredo, winner of Sylvester Stallone's television reality series The Contender, judging from pre-fight interviews, evidently agreed with this summation. Thought the ensuing match didn't exactly put paid to the nastier rumours surrounding Calzaghe's prowess, it certainly brought Manfredo down a few pegs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvUmp5mQedY
• The lead up to 2009's Manny Pacquiao vs. Ricky Hatton fight was built as perhaps the toughest challenge of the rising Pacquiao's career, who himself had curb-stomped his last two opponents, including the great (albeit way past his prime) Oscar de la Hoya. Hatton was close to his peak, bigger, and was unbeaten at 140 lbs, "his" weight. Come fight night, Pacquiao proceeded to absolutely destroy Hatton, using his blazing speed to beat Hatton consistently to the punch. He knocked Hatton down twice in the first round (the first one a right thrown before a Hatton left hook which Pacquiao smoothly ducked under in the same motion), then proceeded to put the solid-chinned Hatton out cold with a massive left hand at the end of the second round.
• August 26, 2010: In a MMA vs. Boxing fight at UFC 118, Randy "The Natural" Couture fought James "Lights Out" Toney. James threw exactly one weak, wild punch before being taken to the mat and forced to submit to an arm triangle at 3:19 of the first round.
• During the making of Enter the Dragon, a Too Dumb to Live challenger to Bruce Lee broke into his home and scared his children, Brandon and Shannon. An enraged Lee sent him to the hospital with one kick.
  • Heck, Bruce developed Jeet Kune Do because he felt his curb-stomp battles were taking a tad too long.
  • Bruce took down a Black-Belt Karateka in 15 seconds.
  • One of Bruce's film extras once taunted him, calling him "more actor than fighter." This kid was fast, strong, and bigger than Bruce Lee, and a "damned good martial artist." Bruce went on to drop the kid to the ground, and nail him repeatedly in the face until he was out.
• Out of many examples of him making world class fighters look like beginners, superstar boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s biggest example of dominance was against the late great Diego Corrales. Diego was known as a dangerous counter puncher with knockout power in both hands and was seen by both critics and fans as Mayweather's most dangerous opponent to date. However, during the fight, Mayweather knocked down Corrales 5 times before his corner threw in the towel.
• After Buster Douglas managed to pull of a massive upset of Mike Tyson, his next match was against Evander Holyfield, who was furious about having to fight him rather than Tyson. Douglas really let himself go and came in underprepared, and what followed was him getting creamed by Holyfield in three rounds, not even bothering to get up after Holyfield floored him.

Chess

• In the 1963–64 US Championship, Fischer won every game, finishing 11–0. Hans Kmoch jokingly congratulated Larry Evans, second with 7.5 points, on winning the tournament, while congratulating Fischer on winning the exhibition.
• Bobby Fischer's wins in the candidates' matches: 6–0 against Mark Taimanov (the Communist Party was not amused) followed by the same score against Bent Larsen, widely thought to be the best player outside the Soviet Union. Both of them were rated in the top ten in the world before the matches. After that, he somewhat relaxed and clobbered Tigran Petrosian (a former world champion and renowned defender) 6.5–2.5.
• In the 2nd Sinquefield Cup in September 2014, Fabiano Caruana, then the world #3, scored 8.5–1.5 (starting 7–0, then finishing with three draws) against a field consisting entirely of top-10 players: Magnus Carlsen (world #1 and current world champion), Levon Aronian (#2), Hikaru Nakamura (#5), Veselin Topalov (#8, twice a challenger for the world championship), and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (#9). Carlsen was a distant second with 5.5 points.

Cricket

• In cricket, a follow-on is when the second team to bat achieves a total much less than the first team to bat and are made to bat again^note a gap of 200 runs, and the opposition can choose not to enforce it. This has happened nearly 300 times in Test cricket, and usually results in the following-on side losing (the team following on has only won four times). Those exceptions are 1894 (England follow-on vs Australia at Sydney), 1981 (England follow-on vs Australia at Headingley), 2001 (India follow-on vs Australia at Eden Gardens) and 2023 (New Zealand follow-in vs England at Wellington). On the third occasion, India got as many runs in their second innings as Australia did in both of theirs—and also declared their second innings, meaning that they didn't even have all 11 of their players bat.^note (In cricket, a team can end its innings by declaration before losing all 10 of its wickets. In the case of the specific India–Australia match, India declared its second innings before lunch on the final day of the Test. This gave Australia insufficient time to chase down India's 383-run lead, ensuring at least a draw for India. As it turned out, the Aussies couldn't bat out the last day.)
• June 1899: In a house match at Clifton College, Bristol, schoolboy batsman A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs out of 836 all out, and then took 11 wickets for 63 as the opposing North Town House were bowled out twice to lose by an innings and 688.
• 20-24 August 1938: England (903 for 7 declared) beat Australia (201 and 123) by an innings and 579 runs. The great Australian batsman Donald Bradman and his teammate Jack Fingleton were both injured in the field during England's innings and were unable to bat, which may offer some explanation, but even so...
• A first-class match in Lahore, Pakistan in 1964 ended with Railways (910 for 6 declared) beating Dera Ismail Khan (32 and 27) by an innings and 851 runs.
• An ODI match played on 29 October 2000 between India and Sri Lanka, featured Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya scoring 189 runs in the team's total score of 299. India's whole team was out for a grand total of 54 runs. Thus, just one player scored over 3 times more than the entire opposition.
• And in the Indian Premier League, people saw Royal Challengers Bangalore (263 for 5) rip Pune Warriors India (133 for 9) a new one on April 23, 2013. Special credit goes to Bangalore batsman Chris Gayle for blasting the records of Fastest Century not just in the IPL, but in the history of professional cricket as a whole by scoring a century in just 30 balls. He also broke the record of Highest Individual Score in IPL History scoring unbeaten 175 runs and also broke the record of most number of Sixes in a IPL Innings, hitting 17 sixes in the match. That's right: the entire Pune team were beaten singlehandedly by the Jamaican. As if that wasn't impressive enough, Gayle got the rare opportunity to bowl during the final over. The results? Two wickets for only 5 runs.
• In the 1926/27 Sheffield Shield - a competition in Australia - Victoria scored a one innings world record of 1107 runs against New South Wales, with two players scoring a century, another player scoring a double century and yet another one getting a triple century. New South Wales could only score 221 runs in their first innings and 230 in their second, meaning they lost by an innings and 656 runs. (Curiously, when the two teams met later that season, New South Wales avenged that defeat; they dismissed Victoria for just 35 runs and beat them by an innings and 253 runs, having scored 469 runs in their sole innings.)

Handball

• Generally, handball matches between the top nations in Europe (hard top is currently Denmark, France, Spain and Croatia; while a handful of other nations can be expected to curbstomp most non-Europeans as well) and any non European nation, except Brazil, Argentina, probably Tunisia and South Korea (the latter only during the Olympics) will generally be expected to be one of these.
• In handball, Australia is usually a well liked underdog, who often gets curb stomped by the biggest nations in the sport, especially Scandinavians. Iceland 55-15 Australia (2003) is the biggest win since 1958, and Australia got curb-stomped by runners-up Denmark at the last world championships (2011, 47-12). Australia has only ever won one match (while they've participated in 6 tournaments), which was against Greenland (in 2003). Got a 51-11 against them when they played against Spain at the 2013 world championships.
• In the round of 16 of the handball Champions League 2012, Barcelona played against Montpellier. Barcelona in handball are comparable to, well, Barcelona in football, while Montpellier is the best teams in the French league (one of the best leagues in the world). Montpellier recorded a two goal victory at home, but when they came to Barcelona to play, the home team won 36-20.
• The 2013 handball world championship final. Spain 35-19 Denmark. Biggest victory ever in a world championship final.

Hockey

National Hockey League:

• On January 23, 1944, the Detroit Red Wings delivered one to the New York Rangers, a 15–0 blowout, which remains the largest margin of victory by one NHL team to this day.
• While the 1980s were full of high-scoring games, a particularly notable one is a 1983 match where the Edmonton Oilers trounced the New Jersey Devils 13-4, leading Wayne Gretzky (who scored thrice and had five assists) to note "Well, it’s time they got their act together. They’re ruining the whole league. They had better stop running a Mickey Mouse organization and put somebody on the ice." (By the next time the Oilers came, with Devils fans wearing Mickey garb◊, it was a much closer 5-4 match.)
• The 1991 Stanley Cup Finals were scrappy underdog Minnesota North Stars against the star-studded Pittsburgh Penguins. While Minnesota won the first game, the others showed how much of a mismatch it was - culminating in the Penguins clinching it with an 8–0 massacre.
• In the 1994 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the New York Rangers swept the New York Islanders 6–0, 6–0, 5–1 and 5–2.
• Patrick Roy has been the victim of two curb stomp battles, both against the same team (the Detroit Red Wings). The first was on December 2, 1995, when Roy's Canadiens lost 11–1, and Roy was only pulled after allowing nine goals in two periods, five of them coming in the first. This resulted in Roy (who felt the coach, Mario Tremblay^note a former teammate of Roy's who did not get along with him, even nearly coming to blows with him before being hired as the Habs' coach, left him out on purpose to humiliate him) demanding a trade, and he moved to the Colorado Avalanche. His second came in Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals. While the blowout wasn't as bad (a 7–0 loss this time), Roy still allowed six goals (out of 16 shots) in the first two periods before being benched.
• Every now an then, a Game 7 ends with that. And when the home team is the one getting trounced (0-5, 1-6), it's one hell of a Gut Punch, to the point once the Vancouver Canucks lost Game 7 in the 2011 Stanley Cup Final 4–0, a riot ensued.
• 2011-12. Calgary Flames 0, Boston Bruins 9.
• November 4th, 2016: Montreal Canadiens 0, Columbus Blue Jackets 10. Ironically, on December 10 of the same season, Montreal themselves went on to destroy the Colorado Avalanche 10–1.
• October 5th, 2017: Pittsburgh Penguins 1, Chicago Blackhawks 10. This was the Blackhawks' season opener and the Penguins entered the season as the Stanley Cup Champions.
• April 16th, 2018: Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 1, Game 3 - Anaheim Ducks 1, San Jose Sharks 8. This game holds the largest playoff blowout suffered by the Ducks (their previous record was 2017 Round 2 Game 6's 7–1 loss at the Edmonton Oilers).
• August 17 & 19, 2020: In what's officially considered the first round of the 2020 Bubble Playoffs, the Arizona Coyotes upset the Colorado Avalanche in Game 3, people thought that the series was going to be interesting going forward. It kind of was, but not in a way Arizona was expecting it to be. For both Game 4 & Game 5, the Avalanche effectively showcased the difference between a Stanley Cup and a pretender team that made it due to pandemic-related reasons, ending both matches in 7-1 massacres that effectively eliminated the Coyotes' chances at a Cinderella season before they even began.
• And on both those notes, while one cross-state beatdown was going on, so was another as the aforementioned defending champions were up against their hated rival Philadelphia Flyers, who they swept in the regular season. They faced off in the first round as the Penguins trounced the Flyers in a 7-0 slaughter at PPG Paints Arena. Philly would take the next game 5-1, but their momentum shriveled as they dropped both games at home in Wells Fargo Center 5-1 and 5-0, the first of which they would give up two goals within six seconds of each other. They took Game 5 on the road 4-2, and in Game 6 the wheels fell off after a 4-2 lead in the second, as the Penguins rattled off five unanswered goals including two within ten seconds of each other. That final score would be 8-5. So the Flyers were outscored 26-6 in their losses, including 19-6 between all three home games.
• 17 March 2021: The New York Rangers beat the Philadelphia Flyers 9-0. What REALLY makes this embarrassing for Philly is seven of those goals were scored in ONE period, a player who had been suffering a scoring slump ended up with a hat trick, the Rangers technically didn't have a coaching staff because all of them had entered COVID protocols, so they were making do with the coaching staff from their AHL affiliate, the Hartford Wolf Pack, and said Wolf Pack coach, Kris Knoblauch, had been fired from the Flyers.
• June 21, 2021: New York Islanders vs. Tampa Bay Lightning Game 5 ended 8-0 in favor of the Lightning. The Islanders would bounce back in Game 6 to win in overtime, only to lose Game 7 with a final score of 1-0.
• April 29, 2022: Montreal Canadiens 10, Florida Panthers 2. It was 8-1 after two periods. The Panthers actually ended up taking more shots (39, with 37 for the Canadiens), but obviously had trouble scoring.
• 18 June 2022: Tampa Bay finds themselves on the losing end of this trope against eventual Stanley Cup Champions Colorado Avalanche, who trounced them 7-0. Predictably, Tampa started a fight in response.

International Competition

• The usual result of a game between a "Big Six" team ^note Canada, United States, Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Sweden and any other team (with a few exceptions).
• 2011 Ice Hockey World Championship final. Sweden (5 championships) was confident that it would easily defeat Finland (1 championship). Finland proceeded to win 6-1, with the only Swedish goal scored by a half-Finn...
• The Bulgarian Women's Ice Hockey Team suffered four of these in the 2010 Winter Olympics Qualifiers, losing 82-0 to Slovakia, 41-0 to Italy, 39-0 to Latvia, and 30-1 to Croatia, conceding a total of 192 goals in four games. Keep in mind a hockey game is 60 minutes long and each goal only counts for one point: the Slovakians were scoring, on average, once every 43 seconds.
  • Then Canada curb stomped Slovakia 18-0 in the actual Olympic tournament.
  • Speaking of Canadian curb stomps, the Canada-Russia game on the men's side of the same Olympics has to be mentioned. Many of the best NHL players play for either team, so everyone naturally assumed this would be a close affair. What actually happened was, as some forum-goers put it, Team Canada utterly dominating the Russians 7-3. While the score doesn't seem that one-sided, keep in mind that the score at one point was 6-1.
  • China also got on the wrong side of this trope, losing 12-1 to the USA.
• The Soviet Hockey Team dominated international competition between 1954-1991 winning seven of nine Olympic Golds and twenty of thirty one World Championship Gold Medals in that span. Many of their wins were in dominating fashion. However this also comes with a bit of an asterisk as these were all amateur events and the Soviet definition of amateur wasn’t exactly the same as the definition in Capitalist nations.
  • The Soviet team is Mostly Remembered though for losing the Miracle on Ice game to the USA in 1980. However they went 6-1 in the tournament outscoring their opponents by a combined total of 67-19. They even defeated the USA 10-3 at Madison Square Garden just a few days before the Olympics in an exhibition game.

Mixed Martial Arts

• Anderson Silva, former Middleweight UFC champion, has delivered a few of these. Coming off a lukewarm record in other promotions, Silva made his UFC debut by mauling the rugged Chris Leben in only 36 seconds. He next faced Rich Franklin, the two-time defending middleweight champ. Silva pummeled Franklin with punches and knees for three minutes before Franklin dropped with a shattered nose. When Silva moved up a weight class to face James Irvin, some wondered if Silva could handle a seasoned striker who outweighed him. Silva knocked Irvin out with a single punch just 1:01 into the first round. When Silva went up in weight again, he faced the former light heavyweight champ Forrest Griffin. Silva massacred Forrest in under four minutes, spending most of the fight with his hands down and contemptuous of Griffin's power.
• UFC light heavyweight Lyoto Machida (15-0, 7-0 UFC) had an odd form of curbstomping where he would make good opponents look bad by nullifying all of their offense and landing perfectly timed strikes. Machida uses a family variant of Shotokan karate combined with other MMA disciplines in a unique style that perplexed his opponents. FightMetric has the numbers, along with his career numbers. However, Machida's dominance would fall threatened after lackluster performance against Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson.
• Controversial heavyweight slugger Kimbo Slice was scheduled to fight Ken Shamrock in the main event for Elite XC: Heat until Shamrock dropped out. Seth Petruzelli, a virtually unknown light heavyweight with a mediocre record, was pulled from his scheduled fight literally minutes before the event to face Kimbo. Petruzelli dropped Kimbo with a jab in 14 seconds. This one was so bad that Elite XC folded almost immediately after the fight ^note (mainly due to mismanagement but also because the league was trying to build Kimbo Slice into the next Hulk Hogan, which failed due to the loss and Slice's lack of skills).
• In 2003, Fedor Emelianenko challenged the then-greatest heavyweight ever in Antônio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira. He was viewed as not standing a chance. He proceeded to spend twenty minutes absolutely torturing Nogueira, assailing him with unbelievably powerful punches. In December of 2004, he did it again. Fedor has gone on to crush many more opponents, but he's always the clear favorite.
• Pretty much the only way to describe BJ Penn vs. Diego Sanchez UFC 107, where the victor took more strikes to the head celebrating than his opponent landed in five rounds.
• The very first UFC champion, Royce Gracie, curbstomped just about everything in sight from UFC 1-5 due to his opponents' unfamiliarity with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. UFC 2 was the most telling, as both he and Patrick Smith demolished three opponents to reach the final, and he proceeded to demolish Smith.
• Bas Rutten, a great fighter from the early days of MMA, did this to Jason Delucia in a Pancrase fight. Throughout the fight Delucia claimed Bas punched him in the face multiple times (closed fist strikes to the face were banned). After getting a yellow and red card, essentially losing 30% of his paycheck, Rutten proceeds to utterly demolish Delucia with body shots so powerful he actually ruptures Jason's liver.
• In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Roger Gracie went on an unprecedented streak in the 2009 and 2010 World Jiu-Jitsu Championship ("Mundials") of sixteen straight submission victories, submitting everyone he faced except for the 2010 super heavyweight division finals... who instead was defeated on points, 13 to 2. (His "absolute" division finals opponent was injured, so Roger won that by default.) Just to make it crazier, in the 2009 Mundials every submission was by mounted choke.
• Thai folklore contains an example of a mythological MMA curbstomp battle. From The Other Wiki:
  At the time of the fall of the ancient Siam capital of Ayutthaya in 1763, the invading Burmese troops rounded up a group of Thai residents and took them as prisoners. Among them were a large number of Thai kickboxers, who were taken by the Burmese to the city of Ungwa.
  In 1774, in the Burmese city of Rangoon, the king of the Burmese, Hsinbyushin (known in Thai as "King Mangra"), decided to organize a seven-day, seven-night religious festival in honor of Buddha's relics. The festivities included many forms of entertainment, such as the costume plays called likay, comedies and farces, and sword-fighting matches. At one point, King Hsinbyushin wanted to see how Muay Boran would compare to the Burmese art Lethwei[citation needed]. Nai Khanom Tom was selected to fight against the Burmese champion. The boxing ring was set up in front of the throne and Nai Khanom Tom did a traditional Wai Kru pre-fight dance, to pay his respects to his teachers and ancestor, as well as for all the spectators, dancing around his opponent, which amazed and perplexed all the Burmese people. When the fight began, he charged out, using punches, kicks, elbows, and knees, pummeling his opponent until he collapsed.
  The referee however stated that the Burmese opponent was too distracted by the kick, and the knockout was invalid. The King then asked if Nai Khanom Tom would fight nine other Burmese champions to prove himself. He agreed and fought them all, one after the other with no rest periods in between. His last opponent was a great kickboxing teacher from Ya Kai City. Nai Khanom Tom mangled him by his kicks and no one else dared to challenge him any further.
  King Mangra was so impressed that he remarked, "Every part of the Thai is blessed with venom. Even with his bare hands, he can fell nine or ten opponents. But his Lord was incompetent and lost the country to the enemy. If he would have been any good, there was no way the City of Ayutthaya would ever have fallen."
• On the women's side, there's Ronda Rousey; she's won 9 of her 12 fights (1 in King of the Cage, one in Hard Knocks, 4 in Strikeforce, 6 in UFC) in 1 minute, 6 seconds or less. She won her fight vs. Alexis Davis in sixteen seconds, and her match against Cat Zingano, which was hyped up as her toughest challenge yet, lasted all of fourteen seconds, a UFC record for shortest fight. Her first eight wins all came by armbar submission, leading to the popular slogan "Death. Taxes. Rousey by armbar." In her match against Bethe Correia (which Correia had made rather personal), she exclusively used what everyone considered to be her biggest weakness: striking. The fight was still over in only 34 seconds: Rousey hit a right hook on Correia's face, and Correia's face hit the ground immediately.
  • Rousey herself was on the receiving end of one at UFC 193 by Holly Holm, who was able to easily counter Rousey's aggressive fighting style and avoid falling victim to the armbar. Holm proceeded to beat up Rousey for the duration of the fight, before knocking her out with a hard kick to the head early in the second round.
  • Happened again more brutally to Rousey in her comeback fight against Amanda Nunes. Nunes stopped her in 48 seconds of the first round, ruining what was supposed to be a triumphant return for Rousey.
• UFC 239: Jorge Masvidal knocked out Ben Askren in just five seconds with a flying knee to Askren's head, recording the fastest knockout in UFC history. After the fight was over, Askren would summarize the fight succinctly on Twitter: "Well, that sucked."
• When the high-ranked contender Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone returned to welterweight, his first match ended up being against Conor McGregor, who was coming off a loss against Khabib Nurmagomedov. McGregor quickly caught his opponent with a hard head kick that disoriented him and then ruthlessly capitalized on the advantage, and as a result Cerrone was TKO'd in the first round of a fight that lasted less than forty seconds.

Motorsport

Formula One

• Back in the 1952 season, when things were a little less organized, Alberto Ascari entered 6 of the 7 races that year (not counting the Indy 500, which was part of the F1 championship in those days). He won them all... and set the fastest lap in all of them... and took pole position in all but one. Since only the best four results counted towards the championship that year, Ascari effectively won the maximum number of points possible (if that system hadn't been in place, he would have scored double what the runner-up got, making it even more of a Curb-Stomp Battle).
  • Jim Clark did this twice. In 1963 he won seven races out of 10, when only the top six results counted - but not only that, he took seven pole positions and six fastest laps, set the record for highest percentage of laps led in a season (which still stands!), and scored more total points than the next two guys (Graham Hill and Richie Ginther) put together. In 1965, when again only the top six results counted, Clark went on to win six of the first seven races. The one he didn't win? That was Monaco, and he didn't even enter it - because he was in America, winning the Indy 500!^note And the Indy win was a curb-stomp in its own right; Clark finished two minutes ahead of his nearest challenger.
• McLaren almost did the same thing as Michael Schumacher below in 1988, when they had Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, two of the greatest drivers of the era, in the same team. Thanks to the rivals' season-long battle (which Senna eventually won), McLaren won all but one race^note Ferrari in 2002 and Mercedes in 2016 came up closest to tying this record, winning all but two races and scored 199 points, while the other teams combined scored 201. McLaren got triple the points of the team in second! They only failed to win the Italian Grand Prix because Prost ran into terminal engine problems and a substitute Williams driver with rally experience took Senna out late letting Ferrari claim a 1-2 on home pavement in the first race after the death of their founder Enzo Ferrari.
• 1992 was this for the Williams team and Nigel Mansell. After hiring Adrian Newey, they managed to secure a deal for Renault engines, and developed several innovative (at the time!) systems such as traction control, active suspension, a semi-automatic gearbox and other little features. They then convinced Mansell not to retire, such was the potential strength of the package. The result was a car that is still considered to be one of the most advanced to ever race in the sport, and it shows. Mansell had the championship wrapped up by the 10th race, the car won 10 out of 16 races and was so good the team were able to keep using an updated version in 1993, where Prost and Hill took the majority of the wins and both titles. The domination was only stopped when the FIA banned such devices for 1994.
• The 2002 season in particular stands out, with Michael Schumacher winning a then-record 11 of the 17 races and finishing second in all but one of the others (where he finished third, meaning Schumacher got a podium on every single race on the season). He ended the season with 144 out of a possible 170 points, almost double the points tally of the nearest challenger (his team-mate). To top it all off, in the Constructors' Championship, Schumacher's Ferrari team scored the same number of points as all the other teams combined. Such was Schumacher's dominance in 2002 that the FIA actually changed the scoring system to try and make the championship closer (2nd place now scored 8 points instead of 6, for example). It worked the first year, with Schumacher winning by just 2 points... then in 2004 he won 12 of the first 13 races^note (he retired from the other one after crashing), smashing his own record as well as everyone else's title hopes.
• The 2023 season was a year of near-absolute dominance by Red Bull Racing and their star driver Max Verstappen, who claimed the drivers' title for the third straight year by winning 19 of the 22 races of the year, while teammate Sergio Pérez took first place in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan and only Ferrari's Carlos Sainz Jr. managed to snatch a win away from the Red Bulls in Singapore.
• On a single-race level, the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix is one of the biggest curbstomps in Formula One history, with winner Jackie Stewart finishing two laps ahead of Bruce McLaren, who came in second. This happened again at the 1995 Australian Grand Prix, with Damon Hill beating Olivier Panis to the finish by two laps.

Others

• The 1994 Indianapolis 500 - Roger Penske utilized a little bit of Loophole Abuse (since at the time the Indy 500 was run under slightly different rules than the rest of IndyCar) to put a ridiculously overpowered Mercedes-Benz/Ilmor "stock block" engine in his team's cars. Emerson Fittipaldi and Al Unser Jr. were the drivers, and they basically walked the race (leading all but 7 of the 200 laps). By Lap 175 Fittipaldi had a 25-second lead over his teammate in second, and 5 laps later Fittipaldi was the only car on the lead lap. It was only because of a crash 6 laps from the finish that Fittipaldi didn't win, while Unser drove his machine to Victory Lane. This ended up being a major Pyrrhic Victory for Penske, though: the loopholes that allowed the stock block engines were closed, and Penske's cars failed to qualify for the 1995 Indy 500. Furthermore, Penske's performance in the 1994 Indy 500 was a major factor in Speedway president Tony George announcing the formation of the Indy Racing League that summer, effectively starting the CART/IRL split that essentially destroyed the popularity of IndyCar racing for over 20 years.
• In the early days of NASCAR, especially until The '70s, it was pretty common to see a driver won by having everyone else (in several cases, except several few of them, usually other powerhouse teams) lapped. The main reason of this is because there were only a few professional teams during the early days, thus most often the cars were self-owned cars. More competitive racing, and the rise of professional teams started in The '80s have curbed the win by a lap performances, with the last one coming in the fall 1994 race at North Wilkesboro, won by Geoff Bodine. The most extreme cases of this happened in two races in 1965, both won by Ned Jarrett. In the Southern 500, Jarrett won with a gap of 14 laps or 19.25 miles, the largest distance-based gap in NASCAR history. Meanwhile in a race in Spartanburg that same year, Jarrett won by a gap of 22 laps (admittedly, the track length is shorter than Darlington, but still), the largest lap amount-based gap in NASCAR history. Both records still stand to this day, and they are extremely unlikely to be beaten.

Olympic Games

• Aleksandr Karelin is widely considered the best Greco-Roman wrestler of all time, with only one defeat in his thirteen-year professional career.^note (To American Rulon Gardner in the final of the 2000 Olympics.) Almost all these matches ended with his opponents scoreless.
• Tennis: Serena Williams curb-stomped Maria Sharapova at the 2012 Olympics, winning 6–0, 6–1. As one newspaper noted, "At one point near the end of the first set, Williams had hit more aces than her opponent had won points."
• The "Final Five", the USA women's gymnastics team at the 2016 Summer Olympics, did this to the rest of the world and then some.
  • They posted the best team score on all four events (balance beam, floor exercise, uneven bars, vault). Without a single noticeable bobble, to boot.
  • Their margin of victory was 8.209 points, absolutely ridiculous in a sport where fractions of points often decide medals. It was the largest team margin in the Games since the USSR stomped Czechoslovakia by 8.997 points in 1960—but back then, six scores in each apparatus were counted instead of three, and the most difficult routines of 1960 would roughly compare to what 10-year-olds can do today. If not younger.
  • Someone with too much time on their hands did this calculation: If the four scores that Simone Biles, the overwhelming favorite to win the individual all-around, posted in the team final are thrown out and replaced with the qualification scores from the gymnast not used in the final ^note four gymnasts go up on each apparatus in the qualification round, but only three in the team final; the one who misses out in the latter is almost always the one who got the lowest score in qualification, and this was the case for all events for Team USA in that competition, Team USA would still have won by about 2 points, an impressive margin in itself.
  • And then, in the individual all-around, Biles went out and annihilated the rest of the field, finishing a full 2 points clear of teammate Aly Raisman, and nearly 4 points ahead of bronze medalist Aliya Mustafina (Russia)^note for anyone keeping track, this also means Raisman beat Mustafina by well over a point — especially noteworthy because Raisman and Mustafina had tied for third in 2012. To put this in perspective, Mustafina was separated from the tenth-place finisher by just over one point.
  • And then, in the individual apparatus finals, of the seven routines performed by USA gymnasts, six of them win medals, and the USA takes at least a silver in every final: gold for Biles on vault (a first for the USA), silver for Madison Kocian on bars, silver for Laurie Hernandez and bronze for Biles (with a major mistake) on beam, and gold for Biles and silver for Raisman (the reigning Olympic champion) on floor.^note The one miss was Gabby Douglas on bars; she qualified into the final in third and would probably have had bronze with a hit routine, but had a mistake and finished seventh.
• Also at the 2016 Olympics, Katie Ledecky's victory at the 800 meter freestyle in swimming. Not only did she beat her own world record time by almost two full seconds, the silver medalist finished a full twelve seconds behind Katie. This in a competition where margins of victory are usually decided by hundredths of a second.
• Also at 2016, in men's rugby sevens, Fiji defeated Japan 20-5 in the semifinals...and then did themselves one better in the final by beating Great Britain 43-7 to win the gold medal. For bonus points, this was Fiji's first ever Olympic medal.
• Eric Heiden won Gold in all five speed skating races at the 1980 Winter Olympics. He set the Olympic record in four of those events and the World Record in the other. He’s the only athlete to win five gold medals at a single Winter Olympics, and the first of three to have won five individual golds in a single Olympics, whether Summer or Winter.
• In the 2022 Winter Olympics, host China had a series of brutal losses in ice hockey. Over the three game group stage they were outscored 16-2 and finished dead last in the tournament standings, being blanked 8-0 and 5-0 by the United States and Canada in the process, before being eliminated 7-2 by Canada in the knockout stage. A more brutal defeat was only averted as due to the ongoing pandemic, the NHL kept the very best players out of the tournament.

Rugby

Rugby Union

• While fifteens can be a defensive affair, there is a gulf between traditional powers, like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, France and the Home Nations^note England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and most others. Over the course of World Cup history, notable curbstomps have included New Zealand's 145-17 thrashing of Japan in 1995, and Australia's 142-0 over Namibia in 2003.
• Sevens has a relatively level playing field^note to wit, this is the format that Fiji and Samoa have excelled in; not to mention that the likes of Kenya and the United States have been known to play against the best rather well and even have a podium finish at a tournament, and Japan at one point had beaten New Zealand there, and while a century couldn't be attained in a short timespan unlike fifteens, it can be a high-scoring affair. Still, curbstomps have been known to happen, such as in the 2016 Olympic final, with 2015-16 World Sevens Series champion Fiji^note right after facing the aforementioned Japan, and even going through close matches against Argentina, the US and New Zealand to get there facing Great Britain^note It was only just assembled in three months from England, Scotland and Wales players; it had just beaten 2015-16 World Sevens Series runner-up South Africa in a defensive 7-5. Not only did Fiji win its very first Olympic gold^note as well as first medal ever, it did so with a rather dominant 43-7.
• The 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup also produced a rather ugly stomp, with New Zealand blanking Hong Kong 121-0. A whopping nine tries were scored in the first half, with ten more to finish off the game, with thirteen conversions to complement it all.

Rugby League

• Round 18 of the 2023 National Rugby League campaign saw two truly brutal examples. On the 1st of July, the North Queensland Cowboys steamrolled the Wests Tigers 74-0, with the 74-point margin being the third highest in league history, and the first 70+-point win in 88 years! Then one day later, the Newcastle Knights walloped the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs 66-0.

Other Sports

• 2016 the Go KI "AlphaGo" won against world-class Go champion Lee Sedol with 4-1. You may file it under this trope when considering the expert opinion expected rather the opposite result, and anyway, very soon we will have the same situation as in chess.
• Horse Racing legend Secretariat's thirty-one-length victory in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, which won him the Triple Crown. He set a record for a mile-and-a-half on dirt that is not only still standing but that has not even been approached; then he proceeded to set a track record for the mile-and-five-eighths while coasting out from under the wire.
• There's a video out there of a karate instructor going to encounter a pimp after his actions caught his attention and interrupting a session with his class. The pimp attempts to intimidate the master, the woman with him trying to pull him back. When the pimp gets too close, the master strikes him with one chop to the neck. As the woman and his driver are trying to get the still knocked-out pimp to his car (a taxi, mind you), the instructor looks back at his filming students and just shrugs his shoulders.
• Tennis: The 1988 French Open women's final between Steffi Graf and Natalia Zvereva. Graf won 6-0, 6-0 in 32 minutes, making this the shortest ever Grand Slam final in both games and time. Also, it is the only double bagel in a Grand Slam final in history.
• Even in non-Olympic years, American gymnast Simone Biles is known for this, especially in the all-around competition and on floor exercise — she has won every single all-around or floor exercise final she's competed in since mid-2013. Aly Raisman, the 2012 Olympic champion on floor exercise, once jokingly complained that, "I'm the reigning Olympic champion on floor, my routine is harder than it was in 2012, and I still can't catch Simone!" (Raisman ultimately won silver on that event behind Biles in the 2016 Olympics.) In 2018, Biles won the women's all-around at the world championships with a record margin of victory^* a record which she would then go on to break a year later, despite having to count two falls (on vault and balance beam), and went on to win a medal in every single event. While battling a kidney stone.
  • In 2019, while Biles was unable to repeat her feat of winning a medal on every event, she won a record-tying five gold medals (which, even as good as she was, she had never done before). For those keeping track, there are six gold medals total available on the women's side (Team, All-Around, and the four individual apparatus finals).
• USA women's gymnastics in general has won every World Championships team competition since 2011. If that's not a strong enough statement by itself, there's also the following:
  • In 2011, Alicia Sacramone was injured in training just days before the event and was unable to compete, but team coordinator Marta Károlyi decided not to officially remove her from the team (because the alternate was also slightly injured), so the United States had only five gymnasts competing in the team final as opposed to the standard six, and had also lost by far the most experienced member of the team. Despite this disadvantage, the remaining five team members rallied to pull off a decisive win in the team competition.
  • In 2014, a relatively young Team USA took the team title with a nearly seven-point margin of victory. To put this in perspective, the difference between the second place team and the eighth (last) place team was not even half a point more than the difference between Team USA and the second place team.
  • In 2015, Károlyi again made the decision to have only five team members compete after team member Brenna Dowell turned in low scores on what were usually her best events (uneven bars and floor) in the qualification round. Team USA still won by over five points.
  • In 2018, Team USA won the team competition by almost nine points, despite an unusually troubled performance from American star Simone Biles on balance beam.
  • In 2019, the team was forced to count a fall in the team competition for the first time in nearly a decade, as well as another major mistake. Despite this, they won by over five points.
  • It's also worth noting that, while all but one of these victories involved star gymnast Simone Biles, a similar calculation to the one mentioned under "Olympic Games" showed that the team would still have won all of those titles (albeit by narrower margins) even without Biles. ^note And that's only calculating based on the other gymnasts who were on the team with Biles, not even taking into account that there would be an additional gymnast on the team to fill that last slot if Biles wasn't there.
• Perhaps the most infamous case of this in the Fighting Game Community came about during a first-to-10 showmatch in Mortal Kombat X between Carl "Perfect Legend" White and Dominique "SonicFox" McLean during 2015's Summer Jam 9. SonicFox easily trounced Perfect Legend with a perfect 10-0 rounds, especially glaring since the entire match was based on a rivalry instigated by Perfect Legend — a veteran champion of the FGC — intending to put this hyped-up newcomer in his place. Then he made things even worse for himself by continuing to challenge SonicFox to an additional 3 rounds on his own terms, then proceeded to lose them too, earning him the long-lasting distinction of being the first person to lose 0-13 in a first-to-10. Considering SonicFox would later establish themselves as one of the FGC's all-time greats, many look back at this stomp as a Passing the Torch moment... where the new guard pried the torch from their predecessor's hands, then used it to beat them to death and set them on fire.
• Netball is one of the core sports in the Commonwealth Games^note Through the 2022 edition, this meant that it had to be included in each edition. From 2026, the term "core sports" has been redefined to include what had previously been "optional" sports. Sports that must be included are now called "compulsory sports", with only athletics and swimming (plus their Paralympic versions) in this category., and as a result matches can end up like this - there have been several games where one team has scored over 100 points, matches with 50-point margins are common and the most one-sided match came in 2010, when Australia thumped India 113-18, a 95-point gap.

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