What is scorigami?

Scorigami is a final score that has never happened before in a league's history. When a game ends 44-32 and no game in that league has ever ended 44-32, that score is a scorigami: a brand new entry in the set of every final score that has ever occurred.

The word and the idea come from sports writer Jon Bois, who introduced the concept for the NFL in 2014 while at SB Nation, combining "score" and "origami" into a name for the art of creating a never-before-seen score. It grew a devoted following, complete with a live NFL tracker and a community that watches late-game situations purely to root for a number that has never existed.

How it works

Take every game a league has ever played and mark each final score on a grid, winning score on one axis, losing score on the other. Most games land on well-worn cells. NFL games have ended 20-17 exactly 302 times. But some cells have never been touched, and every game that finishes is a chance to fill one in. That moment is scorigami.

Whether scorigami is common or nearly extinct depends on the sport's scoring system. The NFL, with its 3s and 7s and occasional 2s, has filled about 43 percent of its realistic score space in 18,234 games, and still produces a few new scores every season. Major League Baseball is the opposite case: 235,971 games have produced only 330 distinct final scores, and there has been no new MLB score since July 16, 2021. College football sits at the other extreme, with only 16 percent of its score space filled after 84,334 games, partly because Georgia Tech's 222-0 win over Cumberland in 1916 stretched the possible range beyond what any modern game approaches.

Scorigami beyond the NFL

The concept began with football, but any sport with final scores has scorigami. Scorigami Center tracks it across 36 leagues, including the NFL, college football, the NBA, the WNBA, MLB, the NHL, and 15 soccer leagues, with about 1.58 million games back to 1869. Each league has its own live grid showing every score that has ever happened, how often, and which cells are still waiting. When a game ends on an empty cell anywhere, the site records the new scorigami as it happens.

Recent scorigamis

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Common questions