Style Points: Why Running Up the Score Is The Best Part Of College Football

Every college football season, the top teams in the Bowl Subdivision start their season against non-conference opponents who, generally speaking, don't belong on the same field as them. They schedule these easy games to ensure wins heading into conference play to keep their hopes of a title intact. Often it leads to the best part of college football: running up the score.

Teams at the top of college football don't stop trying to put up points against inferior opponents, looking to increase their cache to the BCS computer rankings. The resulting scorelines are ludicrous and make the sport for me. Here are just a few examples from the first weekend of the college football season.

#1 USC 49, Hawai'i 10

#3 LSU 41, North Texas 14

#7 Florida State 69, Murray State 3

#11 West Virginia 69, Marshall 34

#18 Ohio State 56, Miami (OH) 10

#19 Oklahoma State 84, Savannah State 0

#22 Kansas State 51, Missouri State 9

The fact that the 27 point win by LSU is the most tame blowout on this list is just awesome. During some of these destructions, teams went for it on fourth downs in the fourth quarter, threw the ball non stop and did everything they could to keep their point total rising.

Many people think that this is a problem, and that college sports should be more about sportsmanship than running up the score. To them, I say that I would rather watch a team win 84-0 over a squad they are clearly better than over watching them win by 20.

Of course, if the NCAA would just mandate teams from BCS conferences to play quality competition, such as other BCS conference teams, during non-conference play, we may not have this problem. Until it does that, keep running up the scores!