15 Championship Games That Were Never Even Close

Championship games are supposed to be where the best meet the best, the kind of night where you settle in expecting overtime, a late comeback, or at least a little suspense. Sometimes you get that. Other times one side walks in and spends the next few hours making everyone wonder how the other team got there in the first place.

That doesn't mean these were bad performances. Most were the exact opposite: historic, ruthless, and almost comically dominant. The problem is that dominance can be rough on anyone hoping for a nail-biter. We're talking Georgia beating TCU 65-7, the most lopsided Super Bowl ever, a Stanley Cup clincher that ended 8-0, a World Cup final that was 4-0 after 16 minutes, and championship fights that barely lasted long enough to sit down. Sometimes the biggest game of the year just isn't much of a game.

Inter had spent the whole Champions League campaign looking like a team built for a tense final. Then PSG scored in the 12th and 20th minutes and never looked back, winning 5-0 in Munich on May 31, 2025. It was PSG's first European Cup/Champions League title and the biggest winning margin in the competition's final history.

TCU's Cinderella run ended like somebody unplugged the game. Georgia led 38-7 at halftime and scored on its first six possessions on the way to a 65-7 win, outgaining TCU 589-188. The 58-point margin turned a national championship game into a coronation before the second half even started.

Denver came in with the highest-scoring offense in NFL history, which made what happened next even stranger. Seattle scored a safety on the first play from scrimmage, went up 36-0 before Denver finally scored, and won 43-8. If you were waiting for a Peyton Manning versus Legion of Boom classic, the suspense lasted about one snap.

This is still the most lopsided Super Bowl by margin, and it was not exactly sneaky about getting there. San Francisco led Denver 27-3 at halftime before finishing off a 55-10 demolition, with Joe Montana throwing five touchdown passes. A 45-point championship-game loss is the kind of score that makes the halftime show feel like the main event.

Buffalo was making its third straight Super Bowl appearance, but this one turned ugly in a hurry. The Bills committed a Super Bowl-record nine turnovers as Dallas rolled to a 52-17 win. The most memorable late-game moment was Don Beebe chasing down Leon Lett to stop the score from becoming 59-17, which tells you pretty much everything about the drama level by then.

Florida actually led Nebraska 10-6 after the first quarter, so for a few minutes this looked like the national title showdown everyone wanted. Then Nebraska scored 29 unanswered points in the second quarter, led 35-10 at halftime, and won 62-24. The Cornhuskers rushed for 524 yards while Florida finished with minus-28 rushing yards, and no, that is not a typo.

Celtics-Lakers is supposed to mean drama, bad blood, and one possession deciding everything. Instead, Boston led 58-35 at halftime and buried Los Angeles 131-92 to clinch the championship. The 39-point margin set the NBA record for the largest win in a championship-clinching game, so the celebration started long before the final horn.

Duke would become the team everyone remembers from the early 1990s, but UNLV absolutely flattened the Blue Devils before that dynasty got going. The Runnin' Rebels won the 1990 national championship 103-73, a 30-point margin that still stands as the record for an NCAA men's title game. Championship night basically became a UNLV highlight reel.

Minnesota entered Game 6 needing a win to keep the Stanley Cup Final alive. Pittsburgh responded by hanging eight goals on the North Stars while Tom Barrasso pitched a shutout, winning 8-0 to claim the franchise's first Stanley Cup. The eight-goal margin remains the largest in a Stanley Cup Final game, which is about as decisive as hockey gets.

The 1985 World Series had plenty of drama getting to Game 7. The deciding game itself? Not so much. Kansas City crushed St. Louis 11-0 behind Bret Saberhagen's five-hit shutout, turning a winner-take-all championship game into a party for Royals fans well before the ninth inning.

A rematch of the 2011 Women's World Cup final sounded like it had instant-classic potential. The United States apparently had other plans, going up 4-0 in the first 16 minutes while Carli Lloyd completed a hat trick. Japan made the score a little more respectable, but a 5-2 final does not really capture how quickly this one was decided.

Brazil arrived as the defending World Cup champion with a chance to add another trophy. Instead, Zinedine Zidane scored twice in the first half, France took a 2-0 lead into the break, and Emmanuel Petit added a third late in a 3-0 win. France's first World Cup title was historic for the hosts, but neutral fans waiting for a classic never got much of one.

There are straight-set wins, and then there is winning every single game. Steffi Graf beat Natasha Zvereva 6-0, 6-0 in the 1988 French Open women's final, giving Zvereva exactly zero games on the scoreboard. For anyone hoping the championship match would turn into a battle, there was never even a first-set scare to cling to.

Two unbeaten heavyweights, a massive payday, and enough hype to make this feel like it might define an era. Mike Tyson needed 91 seconds. He dropped Michael Spinks twice and retained the heavyweight championship in Atlantic City, ending one of boxing's biggest events before plenty of viewers had probably settled into the couch.

This one had nearly a year of buildup, a promotional world tour, trash talk, and the feeling that a five-round war was coming. Conor McGregor knocked out Jose Aldo in 13 seconds at UFC 194, ending Aldo's decade-long unbeaten run and setting the UFC record for the fastest finish in a title fight. The introductions lasted a whole lot longer than the championship fight did.