Also, Brazil was minus three of their starters if I recall correctly, so the Brazilian team that entered the WC wasn’t the one that Germany thrashed in the final. It’s likely that they would have beaten Brazil anyway, but that’s a major asterisk in my opinion.
This is actually a pretty good candidate. USC was favored by only one point and murdered them on live television.
I still think the Redskins, a 3-point favorite, a defending Super Bowl Champ, and a team that entered the Super Bowl with a record of 16-2 getting blown out by the Raiders is slightly better. But the 2004/5 Orange Bowl is pretty much right up there with Super Bowl 18.
Actually, Alabama losing to Clemson might be the winner if you judge according to the criteria I’ve laid out: a defending national champion, competing in a title game attempting to get it’s second straight championship, and favored to win - by 5.5 points in this case.
So I guess maybe it’s Alabama in 2018/19
I don’t think Alabama was overrated - they’re a solid number 2. But Clemson was underrated in part because the rest of their conference’s mediocrity (at least in terms of records).
College football is a greater challenge for odds makers than the pros. Conferences and competition can vary greatly, whereas the talent level is much more even from week to week in the pros.
1999 - The Miami Dolphins bring in a ringer coach Jimmy Johnson to get Dan Marino his Super Bowl ring.
First round of the playoffs, Jacksonville spanks Miami so hard (62-7), that it ends up being the last NFL game for both Marino and Johnson.
On the other hand, the Skins were 3 point underdogs in Super Bowl XXII, and whomped the Broncos, 42-10.
But Miami was only a 9-7 team by then; Jacksonville was 14-2 and heavily favored. Few expected the Dolphins to win.
It would fit the criteria more if the Dolphins had walloped the Jaguars 62-7; *that *would have been a stunner.
That was '95.
'96 was the year we took it all.
The 1996 Fiesta Bowl (played January 2, 1996) was the game where the score was 62-24. That ended the 1995 college football season. 
Ok, not a team…but Buster Douglas comes to mind
1940 NFL championship. The 8-3 Chicago Bears defeated the 9-2 Washington Redskins.
73-0 :eek:
The game set NFL records that still stand.
Not only that, but three weeks earlier, the Redskins had defeated the Bears in the regular season.
Perhaps he counts due to the colony of gut flora living in his digestive tract.
1960 World Series. The Yankees had a roster loaded with Hall of Famers. The games they won were by the scores of 10-0, 12-0, and 16-3. They outscored the Pirates 55-27. In the end they were beaten by a bad hop on a ground ball to Tony Kubek and a home run by a light-hitting second baseman in the least hospitable ballpark ever built for home runs. I’m a Pirates fan and a Yankees hater, and even I can say that objectively the better team lost. That’s why they play the games.
In our vernacular we call these boil-overs, the final score isn’t remarkable, just the winner/loser are round the wrong way to expectations;
VFL 1963 Round 10. Last placed Fitzroy (0-9) played ladder leaders Geelong (9-0).
The match clashed with an interstate fixture and Fitzroy’s captain/coach Kevin Murray wasn’t available as he was playing for Victoria. The field was a swamp but Fitzroy prevailed 9.13 (67) defeating Geelong 3.13 (31).
It was the only game Fitzroy won for the season, finishing last 1-17 while Geelong finished second with 14-4 and went on to win the’63 premiership. Fitzroy lost their next 29 games.
In the four seasons 1962-65 Geelong’s record was 56-16; Fitzroy were 11-61
Other examples from baseball would include the 1914 World Series, in which the heavily favored Philadelphia Athletics lost in four straight games to the Boston Braves (who had been in last place before catching fire in mid-season). Some have asserted that there may have been “external factors” (think Pete Rose) involved in the result.
Another example was the 1954 Cleveland Indians’ World Series loss to the New York Giants. The Indians, who’d set a National League record with 111 wins, fell in four straight. In the mid-1980s, a friend of mine who knew a long-time maintenance guy at the Indians’ stadium said that the team had never really recovered from that loss. In fact, the maintenance guy told him, they’d never really recovered from"that catch", Willie Mays’ legendary catch (and throw) off Vic Wertz in the first game, which stopped an 8th-inning Indians rally and set the stage for the rest of the series.
Thank you for not mentioning the 1999 WC Final.
:eek::smack:
I thought a team as brilliant, fragile and bent on high rotation as Pakistan didn’t fit the OP. 
Yes, Slingin’ Sammy Baugh and his Redskins got totally waxed. I had a phone conversation with Sam Baugh back in the 1990s. Nice guy. He later autographed my NFL book that I sent to him. And then in 2016 on a road trip with my mom from CS to TX, I visited his grave, there in the cemetery just outside of Rotan TX.
Yes, 73-0 is a true shellacking.
QFT. Iron Mike Tyson back then (early 1990s) was a beast, formidable, fearsome. He destroyed opponents, he did not just beat them. But James “Buster” Douglas dominated Tyson that day. It made for shocking headlines.
The ESPN 30 for 30 show about it, titled “42 to 1” for the long odds facing Douglas in that fight, is good and worth a watch.
The 1989 Denver Broncos won 10 of their first 12 games before finishing the season at 11-5. They had gone to two recent Super Bowls, for the 1986 and 1987 seasons. Although they lost both Super Bowls (39-20 to the NY Giants in Super Bowl XXI, and 42-10 to the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII — anybody else remember QB Doug Williams’ MVP performance in that one? 4 TD passes in the 2nd quarter). Although they lost both, the Broncos had a formidable team and were returning to their 3rd Super Bowl in 4 seasons. And Denver QB John Elway’s performance in the AFC Championship Game was widely considered his best ever.
But the San Francisco 49ers had a strong team that year and were favored to win Super Bowl XXIV.
The 49ers defeated the Broncos by the score of 55–10, winning their second consecutive Super Bowl, and tying the Pittsburgh Steelers with four Super Bowl victories. The game remains the most lopsided game in Super Bowl history. San Francisco’s 55 points were the most ever scored by one team, and their 45-point margin of victory was the largest ever. The 49ers are also the only team to score at least eight touchdowns in a Super Bowl and at least two touchdowns in each quarter — the only mistake was Mike Cofer’s missed extra point attempt.
55-10!