That got me thinking and looking up some things. As far as I can tell, the biggest upset in sports history, or at least since Vegas started taking action, was this one:
10/6/2007 373 STANFORD +41 -110 o57 - 110 +7500
374 USC -41 -110 u57 - 110 -14900
All of which means that Stanford was given less than a 1% chance of winning that game. It was a less important game I guess, to the extent that the outcomes of sporting events can ever be truly important, but Stanford was on the order of ten times as big an underdog against USC as the USA was against the Soviets.
If Angola had beaten the Jordan/Magic/Bird Dream Team I guess that would have been a bigger upset, but there aren't many sporting events I can recall that included a favorite with >99% chance of winning.
I can't think of any in soccer or hockey.
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