High scores make college football fun

There was a moment at a Texas football practice last week when the winningest coach in program history approached the man who has been in charge of the Longhorns since 1998.

Darrell Royal had a question for Mack Brown.

“He asked what percentage of passes (quarterback) Colt (McCoy) was completing,” Brown said. “I said, ‘Coach, about 82 percent.’ He said, ‘My gosh, we used to complete 75 percent, but it was three out of four, not 38 out of 45.’

“Times have changed. It’s amazing. You look at a 63-28 game anymore and feel like it was a good game. Right now, defensive coordinators are having nightmares trying to hang in there.”

It’s not just right now. Migraines have been pulsating for some time inside those paid to design ways to stop such attacks, but no amount of Ibuprofen will suffice.

Pain never looked so good.

It took Sam Houston and his Texan soldiers 18 minutes to defeat the Mexican Army of Santa Ana. It probably will take that much time for Texas and Texas Tech to score four touchdowns in Lubbock on Saturday.

Each.

If you want low-scoring football, watch Manchester United against Hull City. If you desire stout defense, hope Tennessee and Baltimore reunite in the NFL playoffs after their 13-10 yawner weeks ago. If you despise the forward pass, cheer for Navy.

But for what most of college football has become the last several years, meaning any team whose quarterback owns a pulse and whose coach a clue, there isn’t a better thing going now for weekly amusement.

Why? The only thing worse than bad is bad and boring. For that, we have Katie Couric.

Teams across the country could score 100 if they wanted some games, but most coaches are image conscious in a way they purposefully wouldn’t want to expose what are egos bigger than the stadiums where they work. It’s a shame.

I’d love them all to think as those running the Haven High team did back in 1927, when the boys from Kentucky rolled up 256 points in a game. Sure, Haven likely was playing against the great-grandfathers of many current UNLV defensive players, but there’s something to be said for trying to reach three Ben Franklins worth of scoring.

Think about it. One hundred points in a college game. Two weeks ago, New Mexico scored 70 against San Diego State, and it wasn’t even the day’s high score. (Tulsa ripped off 77 against Texas-El Paso.)

It’s like arena ball has gone back to school, and we don’t have to tolerate the absurdity of Jimbo Ferraro to enjoy it.

Ten teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision average 40 or more points. Forty average more than 30. Tulsa is putting up nearly 56 points and more than 605 yards of offense a week, and the Big 12 has five of the nation’s top 10 scoring teams. Face it. NCAA Football ’08 has jumped off your television screen in HD and come to life. It’s great stuff.

No matter the reason for such an outbreak of points — longer kickoffs and fewer touchbacks, different pass-protection rules, being able to block downfield on screens, swifter play clocks that tax defenses against a no-huddle scheme, teams in all conferences merely closing their eyes and pretending they’re running a continuous two-minute offense against UNLV — changes in recent seasons to create more scoring have succeeded beyond expectation.

The best part is, it’s not going to stop. No-huddle now is the rule rather than the exception. Spread no longer refers solely to your favorite cream cheese. Teams are running options of it; the I-formation out of it. It has become the veer of 20 years ago, only faster and more complicated to defend. Smaller programs compete and beat more prestigious ones all the time now because of it.

“There has always been an ebb and flow to our business where someone seems to gain an edge one year and the next one people come back with an answer,” said Texas Christian coach Gary Patterson, whose second-ranked defense nationally will line up against UNLV here Saturday. “If you’re one-dimensional (defensively) and just play a zone or rush or play man and blitz … I think you have to get where you can attack and not just line up and play and allow the offense to do whatever it wants.”

Which is pretty much the way it’s going most weeks for most teams. Which is the way I hope it remains, or at least until someone figures out how pathetic Wyoming averages as many points (8.8) as most teams do warming up.

It’s like this: Texas plays at Texas Tech on Saturday, and the teams combine to average 93.6 points. “It might be 52-51, but we just want to find the number that gets us a win,” Brown said.

To be safe, might I suggest 100?

Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.