Sports

The Highest-Scoring College Football Games Ever: The All-Time Shootouts

By Ryan R. Bonini Lindys Sports

Updated July 13, 2026 11:29 AM

Ask a room full of fans for the highest-scoring college football game ever and someone will shout a number before the question finishes. Usually it is 222. They are right, mostly. On October 7, 1916, Georgia Tech beat Cumberland 222-0, and more than a century later no team has scored more points in a single game, no game has ended by a wider margin, and no scoreboard has ever shown a larger total. That is the answer, and it is also a trap, because "highest scoring" turns out to have several honest answers depending on what a person actually means.

Do they mean the most points one team ever hung on another? That is the 222. Do they mean the wildest shootout between two teams that both showed up to compete? That is a different game entirely, decided in overtime with both offenses trading haymakers. Do they mean the modern record at the sport's top level, the one that will show up on television graphics? That belongs to a seven-overtime SEC classic. Bowl games, playoff games, and the lower divisions each keep their own record, and the numbers rarely match.

This is a guide to all of them: the untouchable blowout, the real shootouts, the FBS record, the regulation record, the bowl and playoff records, the marks in FCS, Division II, and Division III, and the reason college football keeps scoring more than it used to. The scores are real. The stories behind them are better.

The short answer, by every measure

For readers who want the record first and the storytelling second, here is the scoreboard, sorted by what "highest scoring" can mean.

Most points by one team, and most lopsided game ever: Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland 0 (1916).
Highest combined total in a game where both teams scored: Abilene Christian 93, West Texas A&M 68, a Division II playoff in 2008, for 161 combined points.
Highest-scoring FBS game: Texas A&M 74, LSU 72 in seven overtimes (2018), for 146 combined points.
Highest-scoring FBS game in regulation: SMU 77, Houston 63 (2022), for 140 combined points.
Highest-scoring bowl game: Marshall 64, East Carolina 61 in double overtime (2001 GMAC Bowl), for 125 combined points.
Highest-scoring College Football Playoff game: Georgia 54, Oklahoma 48 in double overtime (2018 Rose Bowl), for 102 combined points.
Highest-scoring FCS game: Weber State 73, Portland State 68 (2007), for 141 combined points.
Highest-scoring Division III game: Hartwick 72, Utica 70 in four overtimes (2007), for 142 combined points.

Every one of those is a legitimate record. The rest of this guide explains why they differ, and why the oldest number on the list is the one guaranteed to outlive everyone reading it.

Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland 0: the number that will never fall

The most famous score in college football history was not really a football game. It was a grudge, a math lesson, and a contract dispute wearing a football game's clothes.

Earlier in 1916, Georgia Tech's baseball team, coached by the same John Heisman whose name now sits on the sport's most famous trophy, lost to Cumberland 22-0. Heisman believed Cumberland had stacked its baseball roster with paid professionals, and he did not forget it. He also carried a running argument with the sportswriters of his day, who ranked teams by raw points scored without much thought for the quality of the opponent. Heisman wanted to prove how absurd that was. Cumberland, as it happened, gave him the perfect target.

By the fall of 1916, Cumberland had disbanded its football program. The school no longer wanted to play the game that was already on the schedule. Heisman refused to let them out of it. He threatened a forfeit fee reported at $3,000 if Cumberland failed to appear, a sum no small Tennessee school wanted to pay, and offered $500 plus travel expenses to make the trip worthwhile. Cumberland's student manager, George E. Allen, scraped together a roster of law students and fraternity brothers, most of whom had never played organized football, and boarded a train to Atlanta.

What happened at Grant Field was less a contest than a demonstration. Georgia Tech scored 63 points in the first quarter, 63 more in the second, and led 126-0 at halftime. Heisman, apparently worried the massacre was dragging, ordered the final two quarters shortened from 15 minutes to 12. It did not matter. Tech added 54 in the third and 42 in the fourth to finish at 222, having scored 32 touchdowns. Cumberland never earned a single first down, finished with negative rushing yardage, and gained ground on only a handful of plays, the longest a 10-yard pass.

The result still holds as the most points scored by one team and the most lopsided final in the history of the sport, and it is effectively unbreakable. No modern coach would run up 222 points, no modern schedule would pit a real program against a team of volunteer law students, and the sport's overtime and mercy conventions make a total like that impossible in a competitive setting. The 222 is safe not because offenses cannot score, but because nobody will ever again be allowed to try in that particular way.

The highest-scoring game between two teams that both competed

Strip out the 1916 curiosity and a different question emerges, one that captures what most fans picture when they imagine a shootout: what is the highest-scoring game in which both teams actually played, and both teams actually scored?

The answer took a strange, rapid climb through the fall of 2007 and into 2008, and it lives entirely outside major-college football.

It started in the FCS. On October 27, 2007, Weber State and Portland State met in Portland and combined for 141 points, with Weber State winning 73-68. Portland State quarterback Drew Hubel threw for 485 yards and nine touchdowns and still lost, and his 68 points remain the most ever scored by a losing team in an FCS game. The 141 combined points set a record for the most points in a game at any NCAA level.

That record lasted two weeks. On November 10, 2007, Division III programs Hartwick and Utica played four overtimes in upstate New York, with Hartwick surviving 72-70. The 142 combined points nudged past Weber State and Portland State to become the new all-division standard, and the game delivered Hartwick a share of the Empire 8 title and its first trip to the Division III playoffs.

Then Division II raised the ceiling out of reach. On November 22, 2008, in the second round of the DII playoffs, Abilene Christian beat West Texas A&M 93-68. The 161 combined points broke the record again and stands as the highest-scoring game in the history of the NCAA playoffs across all divisions. Abilene Christian running back Bernard Scott ran for 292 yards and seven touchdowns, both playoff records at the time, while West Texas A&M quarterback Keith Null threw for 595 yards and seven scores in defeat. The two teams combined for 1,531 yards of offense. If the standard is a real game between two competitive teams, 161 is the number to beat, and it has stood since 2008.

The FBS record: Texas A&M 74, LSU 72, and 146 points across seven overtimes

For the record that shows up on broadcast graphics, the one confined to the Football Bowl Subdivision where the sport's biggest programs live, look to a November night in College Station.

On November 24, 2018, Texas A&M and LSU played seven overtimes at Kyle Field before the Aggies won 74-72. The 146 combined points are the most ever scored in an FBS game, and the marathon ran 4 hours and 53 minutes from kickoff to the final two-point conversion. LSU's 72 points are the most ever put up by a losing team at the FBS level, a distinction that would sting a great deal more if the losing quarterback had not been a sophomore named Joe Burrow, who ran and threw for six total touchdowns and went on to do just fine. Texas A&M's Kellen Mond threw six touchdown passes of his own.

The record it broke belonged to a game almost exactly a year earlier. On October 7, 2017, Western Michigan and Buffalo also went seven overtimes, with Western Michigan winning 71-68 for 139 combined points. Two seven-overtime slugfests inside 14 months is not a coincidence. It is a symptom of the overtime format college football used at the time, which handed each team the ball at the opponent's 25-yard line and let the scoring pile up until someone finally missed.

That format is why the Aggies and Tigers reached 146, and it is why the number carries an asterisk in the minds of purists. Both teams scored on nearly every possession because the rules practically invited it. The aftermath proved the point: the NCAA began tightening its overtime rules the very next season, first requiring two-point conversion tries in earlier overtimes and later forcing teams into an alternating two-point shootout, changes designed specifically to keep a game from ever again lasting five hours and reaching the 140s. The A&M record survived the rule change. Another game like it may not be possible. As a footnote to the chaos, Aggie fans stormed the field afterward and the SEC fined Texas A&M $50,000 for it.

The highest-scoring FBS game in regulation

Seven overtimes will inflate any total, so the more revealing modern record is the highest-scoring FBS game decided in the standard 60 minutes, with no bonus possessions to pad the score.

That belongs to SMU and Houston. On November 5, 2022, the Mustangs beat the Cougars 77-63, for 140 combined points and no overtime required. The game was a passing exhibition from start to finish. SMU quarterback Tanner Mordecai threw nine touchdown passes and Houston's Clayton Tune answered with seven, and their 16 combined touchdown passes set an FBS single-game record, breaking the previous mark of 15 that had stood since 2014.

The regulation record SMU and Houston broke was itself a modern one. In 2016, Pittsburgh outlasted Syracuse 76-61 for 137 points inside regulation, and that game held the top spot until the Mustangs and Cougars traded touchdowns for four quarters six years later. The fact that both the overtime record and the regulation record were set within the past decade is not an accident of memory. It reflects where the sport's scoring has traveled, a subject worth its own section below.

The highest-scoring games in FBS history

The single records tell the headline, but the leaderboard tells the story. Here are the highest-scoring games in FBS history by combined points, a list dominated by the past 20 years and by the wide-open offenses of the Group of Five conferences.

Texas A&M 74, LSU 72, seven overtimes (2018) - 146 points
SMU 77, Houston 63 (2022) - 140 points
Western Michigan 71, Buffalo 68, seven overtimes (2017) - 139 points
Pittsburgh 76, Syracuse 61 (2016) - 137 points
Boise State 69, Nevada 67 (2007) - 136 points
Navy 74, North Texas 62 (2007) - 136 points
UNLV 69, Wyoming 66, three overtimes (2016) - 135 points
Arkansas 71, Kentucky 63, seven overtimes (2003) - 134 points
Western Kentucky 67, Marshall 66, overtime (2014) - 133 points
West Virginia 70, Baylor 63 (2012) - 133 points
San Jose State 70, Rice 63 (2004) - 133 points
Middle Tennessee 77, Florida Atlantic 56 (2016) - 133 points
Michigan 67, Illinois 65, three overtimes (2010) - 132 points
UCLA 67, Washington State 63 (2019) - 130 points
Toledo 66, Western Michigan 63 (2011) - 129 points

A few patterns jump off that list. Nearly every game came after 2000. Overtime games are heavily represented near the top, which is exactly what one would expect from a format that gifts extra possessions. And the conferences involved skew toward the pass-happy leagues of the American, the Mountain West, the MAC, and the Big 12 rather than the defense-first SEC of that era. The West Virginia and Baylor game in 2012, a 70-63 shootout, is a small monument to the Big 12's air-raid heyday. The blue bloods do appear, but the scoring frontier has usually been pushed by programs willing to trade defense for tempo.

The highest-scoring college football bowl game

Postseason football keeps its own record, and the highest-scoring bowl game ever was also one of the great comebacks the sport has produced.

On December 19, 2001, Marshall and East Carolina met in the GMAC Bowl at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama, and combined for 125 points in a 64-61 Marshall win that took two overtimes. That total shattered the previous bowl record of 96 and still stands as the most points ever scored in a bowl game. East Carolina's 61 points are the most ever scored by a team that lost a bowl.

The Pirates earned that dubious distinction by nearly pulling off a rout. East Carolina led 38-8 at halftime, and it took the single biggest comeback in Division I-A bowl history to erase it. Marshall quarterback Byron Leftwich, a future first-round NFL pick, completed 41 of 70 passes for 576 yards and four touchdowns and was named the game's most valuable player as the Thundering Herd clawed all the way back and won it in the second overtime. The two teams combined for 16 touchdowns. It is the rare record that doubles as one of the best games nobody outside Huntington and Greenville remembers.

The highest-scoring College Football Playoff game

The playoff era is young, and its scoring record is comparatively modest, which says something about the caliber of defense that reaches January.

The highest-scoring College Football Playoff game is Georgia's 54-48 double-overtime win over Oklahoma in the 2018 Rose Bowl, a national semifinal that produced 102 combined points. Running back Sony Michel ended it with an overtime touchdown, and to date it remains the only playoff game to crack 100 points. The 12-team playoff that debuted with the 2024 season has produced plenty of drama and a few blowouts, but through the first-round and quarterfinal games of December 2025 none has come close to the Rose Bowl's total, with the highest-scoring bracket game of that era landing in the mid-80s. When the best offenses meet the best defenses with a national title on the line, the scoreboard usually behaves.

The highest-scoring college football games by division

The lower divisions of college football play a wilder, higher-scoring brand than the television audience usually sees, and their records reflect it. In fact, once the 1916 outlier is set aside, every all-division combined-scoring record has been set below the FBS level.

FCS: Weber State 73, Portland State 68 (2007) - 141 combined points, with Portland State's 68 the most ever by an FCS losing team.
Division II: Abilene Christian 93, West Texas A&M 68 (2008) - 161 combined points, the most in any NCAA playoff game across all divisions.
Division III: Hartwick 72, Utica 70, four overtimes (2007) - 142 combined points.

Set those beside the FBS record of 146 and the picture sharpens. The biggest programs, with the deepest talent and the best defenses, do not actually produce the highest-scoring games. Smaller schools, where a single dominant quarterback can overwhelm a thin secondary and where defensive depth runs out fastest, are where the true scoreboard records live. The FBS mark needed seven overtimes to reach 146. Abilene Christian and West Texas A&M reached 161 inside a Division II playoff game that simply refused to slow down.

The 100-point club and the most points by one team

The 222 sits at the top of a small and mostly ancient club: teams that scored triple digits in a single game. Most of its members belong to the sport's earliest decades, when scheduling mismatches were common and the forward pass was still a novelty.

Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland 0 (1916)
King (Tennessee) 206, Lenoir 0 (1922)
St. Viator 205, Lane 0 (1916)
Oklahoma 179, Kingfisher 0 (1917)
Central State of Ohio 101, Lane 0 (1989)
Houston 100, Tulsa 6 (1968)

That Houston result is worth pausing on. On November 23, 1968, the Cougars became the last major-college program to score 100 points in a game, and no team at the sport's top level has done it since. The 100-point game has grown nearly extinct: there have been only a handful of them anywhere in college football since 1970, and just two since 2003, both at the small-college level. Modern scheduling, mercy-minded coaches, and the simple decency of calling off the dogs have made triple digits a relic. When a fan asks for the most points scored in a college football game by one team, the honest answer is a number nobody will approach again.

Why college football scores so much more than it used to

None of these modern records happened by chance. College football is living through the highest-scoring era in its history, and the shootouts of the past two decades are the natural product of how offenses evolved.

The turn came around the early 2000s, as spread formations and the air-raid passing systems that grew out of them spread from the fringes to the mainstream. Offenses learned to stretch the field sideline to sideline, snap the ball faster, and run far more plays per game, and for years their creativity outran the ability of defenses to counter it. The scoreboard kept the receipts. National scoring climbed steadily until it hit a then-record average of 29.65 points per team in 2015, and in 2016 it crossed 30 points per team for the first time in the sport's history, at 30.04. Games that once would have been considered aberrations became a normal Saturday.

Two structural forces sit underneath the record book. The first is that overtime, in the format college football used through 2018, was a scoring machine, which is why so many of the highest FBS totals carry a "seven overtimes" tag. The second is that the sport keeps tinkering with those rules precisely because the totals got out of hand, tightening overtime after the 2018 A&M and LSU marathon to make another 146-point night far less likely. That is the strange tension in the record book. The blowout record from 1916 is untouchable because the sport grew more humane. The FBS scoring record from 2018 may be untouchable because the sport changed its rules. The regulation and small-college records, meanwhile, sit out in the open, waiting for the next quarterback who gets hot on the right afternoon against the wrong defense.

More college football trivia

What is the highest-scoring tie game in college football history before overtime was introduced?

The highest-scoring tie game in FBS history occurred on November 16, 1991, when San Diego State and BYU battled to a spectacular 52–52 deadlock. Aztec running back Marshall Faulk ran for 154 yards, while Cougar quarterback Ty Detmer threw for 599 yards, combining for 104 points in an era when regular-season games simply ended when the fourth-quarter clock expired.

Has a team ever scored a defensive two-point conversion to win an overtime game?

Yes. Under NCAA rules, if the defense intercepts a pass or recovers a fumble during a two-point conversion attempt, they can return it 100 yards to the opposing end zone to score two points for their own team. While multiple teams have used this to extend leads, it functions as an automatic "walk-off" victory if the scoring play breaks a dead tie during the shootout phases.

What is the lowest-scoring FBS game of the modern era to balance these shootouts?

To find the absolute opposite of the 222-point blowout, fans point to the infamous 2014 matchup between Wake Forest and Virginia Tech. The two programs played 60 minutes of regulation entirely scoreless, entering overtime tied 0–0 after missing multiple field goals. Wake Forest eventually secured a 6–3 victory in double overtime, marking the lowest-scoring modern FBS game ever played.

This story was originally published July 13, 2026 at 11:22 AM.