While most people can’t even about pumpkin spice everything, flannels, and cuddling during the fall, I get jazzed up because autumn is the heart of college football. Whether I am at the tailgate lot, or growing into my couch watching games, football season is always the time when I am happiest. Pac-12, ACC, SEC, Big 10 and even Mountain West, I love a good hard-fought college football game.
You know what I don’t love though? Running up the score.
You see it a lot during weeks one and two of the season, when teams are having their tune up games, and every now and then during the regular season. I don’t like when teams run the score on other teams, but there are a few exceptions.
First, when teams run the score up during conference games it shows that the losing team doesn’t belong in the same league. Take the Rutgers and Michigan game from a few weeks ago. The Big 10 has a solid cast of teams near the top. Marquee teams like Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State give the conference credibility. But with the Big 10, you are either really good, or really bad. Rutgers falls in the very bad column. Games like this would be akin to the U playing Cyprus High School. Sure, there are some decent athletes, but the overall talent level is highly skewed.
Running up the score can also be a scary thing for a team. If a coach is keeping first and second string players in a game where they are up by 40-50 points, they risk injury at every down. Imagine if you are a losing team and you are down by 50 points; your motivation quickly changes from, ‘I want to make this play,’ to ‘I want to get my shots in on the other guy.’ If you know you are going to be that much better, take a note from San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and rest your starters. I’m sure they have some nagging injury, or simply need a week off.
While we are on the subject of resting players, let’s look at the roster spots for college football. Looking at the U Football roster, there are 129 players listed on the team. That’s a lot of guys for 11 guys on offense and 11 guys on defense. Now, naturally the number is high to account for injury, or academic trouble, but most of these guys never see the field. What a perfect time to put guys in for a game that you know you are going to dominate from the get-go.
But there are a few exceptions to this: for example if it is a rivalry game. Normally I don’t want to see one team completely obliterate the other, unless the team obliterating is Utah and the team being obliterated is BYU. That would be my one time that I pray a team wins by 80 or 90.
Or if they ran the score up on you recently. If I were Rutgers next season I would want to blister Michigan so bad that there would be no relief. Or maybe if the other team was “talking smack.” A big part of sports is the art of trash talk, but an even bigger part of sports is being able to back-up what you say. If some defensive back is smearing your team’s name through the mud on Twitter, you better defend your honor and make them regret their words.
I have had scores run up on me before. I understand the killer instinct and “step on their throat” (metaphorically speaking) mentalities. But if you are up by 30 or more porints, give the third stringers a chance. If you’re still scoring with them, send out the fourth string. If you are still having your way with a team at that point, then all you can do is wish that the mercy rule was in effect for college games, because it is going to be a long afternoon.