something closer to an objective measurement. Winning or losing is an objective fact. Whether or not an objective fact "almost" happened is nearer to something that can be quantified.

"Competitive" is entirely subjective. It could be so broad as to be nearly meaningless: there was a competition held between two teams, ergo it was competitive! Alternatively, it could mean how you seem to be using it, which is that a team that won by 3 scores did not win by enough, therefore it was competitive.

I'm not really interested in an argument about how many points, exactly, Oregon must win by to have the game no longer be considered "competitive." I am interested in discussions about the relative strength of various teams, but before that happens, the discussion has to put away hyperbole like claiming that a team that lost by 17 points "almost" beat Oregon.