5 biggest road upsets in modern FBS college football history

Upsets always happen when it comes to college football but it’s more impressive to pull off the feat on the road. Some teams shocked the world by doing so. 

Whether or not the fans of the best teams in college football like to admit it or not, upsets happen. That’s the name of the game when 18-to-22-year-olds (give or take) play a game such as this. Of course, not all upsets are created equal.

It’s one thing for an unranked or lesser ranked team to welcome a superior opponent to their own stadium and pull off the win in front of their home fans. However, there’s an added layer of pressure and, frankly, impressiveness about a team being able to go on the road and pull off an upset, particularly a huge one.

That obviously begs the question of what some of the best instances of that are. Don’t worry, that’s where we come in to give you a bit of an upset-centric history lesson with the greatest road upsets in FBS college football history.

Note: For clarification, the FBS team is the one getting upset in this capacity, even if they lost to a team that is not an FBS school or was not at the time.

Biggest college football road upsets in modern FBS history

5. Howard upsets UNLV, 43-40 (Sept. 2, 2017)

UNLV doesn’t necessarily have the strongest or at least most consistent football program out in Sin City, but they were hoping to open their 2017 season with an easy win against a Howard Bison team that went just 2-9 the previous year. As such, the Rebels came into the game as a ridiculous 45.5-point favorite.

Howard, led at the time by Caylin Newton, the younger brother of Cam Newton, was not about to let things play out in that matter. In a historic performance, the Bison quarterback totaled 330 total yards and three touchdowns in Las Vegas and was able to lead his team to a truly stunning victory.

Sure, UNLV might not have been a ranked team, but by most measures that can be found on the internet, this is the biggest upset in terms of the point spread in college football history. And the fact that Howard went across the country and pulled it off only makes it wilder that it happened.