Worst upset in sports history? Vegas odds

Factual Questions
1

It’s an oft-debated topic, but I’m trying to find an answer with at least a concrete, factual component to it. In terms of Las Vegas (or similar) oddsmakers, what’s the worst upset in sports history?

The question comes up as the 25th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice is upon us. Most people in the conversation had the opinion that it was a foregone conclusion that this event was the worst upset in sports history. But what about Greece winning the World Cup? Or Cassius Clay taking out the “invincible” Sonny Liston? Or the Soviets snatching the gold from the US in basketball in '72? Or even the Red Sox coming back from 0-3 to take the AL pennant and go on to win the World Series.

I realize that this is a difficult question to ask, as the odds may be phrased differently: The preseason odds of the Red Sox going all the way probably were nowhere near as bad as when they were teetering at 0-3.

If you wish, for purposes of simplicity, you can reduce the question to a single event, like the simple odds of US beating the USSR on gameday in 1980 rather than the pre-tournament odds.

Interpret the question however you wish, but mainly I’m looking for oddsmakers odds on great sports upsets.

2

A contender’s gotta be whatever the halftime odds were on the outcome of the 1992 (I believe - I might be off a year) playoffs game between the Houston Oilers and the Buffalo Bills.

3

cough I meant gold medal, of course. Interestingly enough, their pre-tournament odds were 80-1. Pretty bad, but surely that can’t be anywhere near the biggest upset, can it?

4

Actually, it was Greece winning the European Football Championship.

I think the biggest underdog in terms of points in college football winning a game was UTEP beating BYU in 1985. I think it was around 35 points.

BYU entered the game as the #7 team in the country. UTEP had won only 14 of its last 121 games and in its last few meetings against BYU, they’d be giving up point totals like 65 and 83 points.

UTEP won 23-16.

Since it was a WAC game and played at night, it didn’t register much with the rest of the sporting world which pretty much ends at the Mississippi River, but Las Vegas paid attention.

5

I know very little about Vegas or betting and the actual techniques involved, but this is how I remember the story:

The winter after the Twins finished last…

Wait.

ONE of the winters after the Twins finished last in the league a family friend went to Vegas and on a lark picked the Twins to win the world series the following year. The odds were, IIRC, either 500-1 or 250-1, I can’t remember which. Cost him a buck.

After the Twins won the 1991 series he realized he had lost the ticket.

I don’t think this actually answers the question as neither the Twins nor the Braves were “underdogs” by the time they hit the WS, but the odds at the beginning of the season were pretty bad.

6

Most people were correct. It was a much bigger upset than even after the third quarter Oilers score during the '92 Bills-Oilers game, when they went up 35-3. It was a much bigger upset than the two touchdown underdog New York Jets beating the Colts in the Superbowl.

Any debate on the subject has completely forgotten the context of that hockey game. It wasn’t a game of equals in any way.

The Russian team was chock full of the best players on the planet. It was easily as good as any all-star team ever assembled when considering individual talent of the players. Couple that with the fact that they had been playing together, as a team, for years and years building team cohesion, and it was probably the best hockey team ever assembled.

They destroyed all European competition by double digits. They humiliated the NHL all-star team before the Olympics that year. Their typical final score against the best the world had to offer was something like 12-2.

The Americans, on the other hand, weren’t even professionals, much less the best professional team the world has ever seen. They were college kids who hated each other because they’d just been beating each other’s brains in at rival schools. Rank amateurs would be putting it kindly.

It is unimaginable that the Americans won that game. The Bills coming back from a 32 point deficit several minutes into the third quarter was a mortal lock no-brainer in comparison.

It would be about as big an upset if your local highschool football team beat the Patriots in a Superbowl.

7

Here is a famous one well told at 334* :

Ian Botham resigned as England captain after bagging a pair and so ended a poor run of form as England captain. At this point, the selectors had to consider sacking Botham, but as history shows, they didn’t and what a relief for England that they didn’t! Mike Brearley was appointed England Captain for the remainder of the series.

The Third Test at Headingley will go down as the most famous Test match of all time. Botham had managed to survive the guillotine and remained in the England Eleven. Australia batted first and made 401 for 9 declared, Dyson scoring a century. Ian Botham was finally on form taking 6 wickets for 95 after being released from the shackles of captaincy. England in reply only managed to score 174, but it was Botham who was the only batsman to offer any resistance with a hard knock of 50. Kim Hughes enforced the follow-on and Graham Gooch was dismissed for the second time that day. When Botham came in to bat, England were out of the match at 5 for 105. They soon lost another two wickets and found themselves at 7 for 135. England still needing 92 to avoid an innings defeat were quoted at 500-1 in the local bookmakers, both Lillee and Marsh placed a bet on England winning. On the 4th day, Botham then took the attack to Australia scoring his century in only 87 balls, scoring his last 62 runs in boundaries. Dilley supported Botham with a brave knock of 56, with Old and Willis chipping in, Botham was left on 149 not out at the end, England leading by 129 runs.

Botham then started about the Australians with venom rarely seen at Headingley. After he took the first Australian wicket, Bob Willis then started to take wickets at regular intervals. Australia were looking incredibly comfortable before the first wicket fell on 56 and once this one went, more followed and Australia were 8 for 75. Lillee and Bright then put on 35 for the 9th wicket to cause consternation in the England camp, but thankfully for England, Willis took both remaining wickets to win by 18 runs. Bob Willis ended with 8 for 43, but it was Ian Botham that won the Man of the Match award with his 149 not out. It was only the second time in Test history that the side following on had won.

Note - Lillee and Marsh were two of Australia’s best players at the time and the fact that won thousands of pounds created quite some controversy. Both remain revered figures to this day - in the hall of fame and used by various coaching academies.

8

I remember when NC State won the 1983 NCAA basketball tournament, they were the 6th seed in their region. I don’t know what their odds were of winning it all, but it had to be large. I believe they were the underdog in every game they played (with the first game a possible exception).

North Carolina State 69, Pepperdine 67 (2ot)
North Carolina State 71, UNLV 70
North Carolina State 75, Utah 56
North Carolina State 63, Virginia 62
North Carolina State 67, Georgia 60
North Carolina State 54, Houston 52

9

I’d lay the odds of the average American understanding don’t ask’s cricket post at 1000-1 against. :smiley:

While I’m sure that was an incredible feat of sports derring-do… I understood less than half!

10

[QUOTE=pulykamell]
It’s an oft-debated topic, but I’m trying to find an answer with at least a concrete, factual component to it. In terms of Las Vegas (or similar) oddsmakers, what’s the worst upset in sports history?

Here in Australia, where sports betting is a religion, our general yardstick for the worst upset doesn’t concern a winner (no one can recall the name of the winner on the day), but a loser - the day in 1939 that mighty Ajax, one of the greatest milers of all time, ran third at odds of 1-40 - the shortest odds ever on a losing horse in our long and proud racing history.

mm

11

Just a comment, but I’d say that it’s unfair to compare single game odds (Oilers vs. Bills or Englans vs. Australia) with pretournament or preseason odds on a single team, where the preseason odds are taking 28 or 32 or 64 teams into account. As an example, in the book here, the odds-on favorite to win Superboxl XL is New England at 4:1. For a single game between two teams, 4:1 odds would indicate a pretty steep underdog.

12

For a single game, I have to echo to Miracle on Ice semifinal game between the USA and USSR. The odds of that happening were, by any reasonable approximation, utterly astronomical. It was roughly equivalent to an All-Indiana team of high school basketball players defeating the 95-96 Chicago Bulls, or the UCLA baseball team defeating the New York Yankees.

The magnitude of this upset has been forgotten as the nature of international hockey has changed, since now every country uses professionals. In 1980, the USSR sent pros, and the USA sent children. It was a ridiculous situation, with the Communist countries basically stealing the medals by lying about the “amateur” status of their pro athletes. It was so bad that CANADA actually boycotted Olympic hockey a few times.

For the USA to win that game, and the gold medal, EVERYTHING had to go right; the stars and planets had to be perfectly aligned. And they were. They had a genius coach, Herb Brooks, the greatest coach in the history of amateur hockey, who unleashed a hyper-aggressive strategy - sort of Canadian Hockey On Roids - that took their opponents by surprise. Wouldn’t have worked longer than two weeks, but it worked long enough. That time and situation was precisely right for Brooks’s approach; given the reins of a much better team in the 2002 Olympics, Brooks had his ass handed to him in the gold medal game by Canada. They had a goalie who got hotter than he had ever been or would ever be.

And the stars seemed to cross the Soviets; they just happened to slump at the wrong time, needing some comebacks in the initial draw to get some wins. They then made a series of critical errors in the game against the USA. Tretiak made a brutal mistake on Mark Johnson’s goal, and coach Tikhonov, frustrated and worried about his team’s lacklustre play in the round robin, panicked and pulled him - probably the worst in-game coaching mistake in the history of hockey. Once Team USA went ahead 4-3 in the third, Tikhonov panicked again and sat most of his younger players - a catastrophic error, since the USA was a) young, and b) extremely well conditioned, as any scouting report would have told. Brooks quick-shifted and for the last ten minutes of the game the younger Americans were simply outskating the tired Soviet veterans. Panic and fatiue setting in, the Soviet’s normally disciplined offense became sloppy. Tikhonov failed to recognize the problem or react appropriately to it; he was a truly great coach but that game was his worst performance.

ANY of those things don’t happen, and the USA doesn’t win. Craig isn’t hot? They lost 9-4. Tretiak’s on his game? They lose 4-1. Any other coach in the world is running the program? They don’t even make it to that game. Tikhonov makes a different decision? They lose. Olympics held somewhere else? That probably would have been a big disadvantage. And it was still a close game, 4-3; all the breaks IN the game went their way. It was like a really precarious Jenga; every block was needed to hold the structure up.

13

Here’s a contender:

Chaminade 77 UVA 72 (1982) (college basketball)

UVA was the #1 team in the country, featuring then-dominant 7’4" center Ralph Sampson. Chaminade was an 800-student NAIA school.

In the lead-up to the Chaminade game, UVA had beaten Georgetown (and Patrick Ewing) and Houston (with Hakeem Olajuwan). The latter victory they managed without Ralph Sampson, who was out sick.

The loss to lowly Chaminade was absolutely mind-boggling.

14

I gotta agree with the '80 hockey team, but how about another one that no one has brought up yet? Buster Douglas KO’ing Tyson in his prime. I seem to recall that Vegas wasn’t even taking bets on this fight, which is unheard of.

15

The Miracle on Ice for all the reasons RickJay says above.

However, the thing that jumped to my mind when I read the thread title was Buster Douglas (45:1 underdog) beating Mike Tyson. Back in the late 80s, nobody but nobody thought Mike was EVER going to get beat.

However, I think upsets in individual sports are a lot easier to pull off than in team sports. And though I don’t know the actual odds, Team USA had to have had much worse odds (probably 3-3.5 goals).

16

I shut down when I saw the term “bagging a pair”.

I thought maybe it was about Fox Hunting and the fix killed all the dogs.

To get back on the topic of “biggest upsets according to Vegas odds”, you probably can’t get a good satisfactory answer. There’s usually an upper limit on the money line (the way you’re thinking of odds). That UTEP-BYU story is the biggest point-spread I’ve heard of where the dog won, but there probably weren’t odds on the contest.

Usually when a team is favored by 14 or more in foots or hoops, you won’t even see a money line. The PATS were a 14 point underdog to the Rams, and I think the ML was about +950. In baseball, the biggest I’ve seen for individual games is about -400 with +350 coming back.

There probably wasn’t even a money line on the USA hockey game.

You NEVER see lines like 45-1 (the “accepted” Tyson-Douglas line even though it varied.) in team sports. The most you usually see is about -1000 against, and then you’ll only get something like +900 coming back.

I’m sure that some horses have gone off at 70-1 or even 99-1 that have won a race.

17

The US victory over England in the 1950 World Cup is practically identical to the 1980 hockey victory, but without all the fanfare.

The US team was assembled of third-rate players in a nation that knew nothing of soccer. Most Americans had never even heard of the game at the time. Half the starters were from St. Louis, showing the lack of breadth the game had in the US (in the same way that the 1980 hockey team was almost all from Minnesota and Massachusetts).

England was a pre-tournament favorite to win it all and had promised to beat the US by multiple goals. The US team was in good spirits, however, having lost their opener to Spain 3-1. A closer result than expected.

The game’s lone goal was scored by a New Yorker who worked as a dishwasher. Only one American reporter was present at the World Cup (he wasn’t even sent to cover the Cup, he just happened to be vacationing in Brazil at the time). He likened the US win to Oxford beating the Yankees in baseball. After the game, England collapsed losing 1-0 to Spain and failing to advance. The US team was crushed by Chile in it’s final game. The US goalie said if they played England again they would probably lose 10-0.

18

Are parimutuel horse races in the U.S. maxed out at 99-1 or is that an artificial limit established because old tote boards couldn’t handle the extra digits?

19

You beat me…I thought the post was in the wrong thread! :smiley:

20

Don’t know.

If I had to guess, it was probably something established because of the old tote boards. I THINK it’s the highest I’ve ever seen in the morning lines, though, and that might just be “legacy”.

I would IMAGINE in a parimutuel system, they pay the true odds.

I only hit the track a few times per year, though.