Redistribute the Points!

Things are getting way out of whack in college football today. The point gap between the top ten teams and the bottom ten teams is simply unacceptable. Don’t the hard-working, low-ranked teams deserve the joy of point accumulation just as much as the top ranked teams? Why should we turn a blind eye to the injustice that’s perpetrated on low rank college football teams every week, all in the name of competition? Come on. What kind of system do we have that calls some teams winners and everyone else losers?

Take the season that just finished. The top ten teams averaged over 40 points per game. Now contrast that with the average of the bottom ten teams: 18.68 points per game. And last year’s final statistics showed an even wider gap, with the top ten teams averaging 42.28 points per game for the season, and the bottom ten teams trying to survive on only 15.90 points per game. In today’s competitive environment, who can succeed on only 15.90 points per game? No one. Something needs to be done.

There are many steps that could be taken to help decrease the point inequality between football programs. Let me just list six:

1. Rotate Coaches: any coach who leads his team to two consecutive winning seasons, must switch places with a coach who has suffered through losing records for two or more consecutive seasons.

2. Restrict Recruiting: any team that beats the overall average of points per game for all teams by more than 15%, loses all scholarships for the next year’s recruiting class.

3. Bench Top Athletes: during a game, once a team has met the overall average of points per game, all first string athletes have to sit the bench; if the team surpasses the overall average by more than 10 points, even after benching the first string players, the second string players also have to sit down and the kicker has to play quarterback for the rest of the game.

4. Impose a Point Tax: at the end of each season top point producing teams will be assessed a point tax. Tax brackets will be determined by the number of points per game on average the team exceeds the overall average for all teams. The tax will be assessed in the next season. At the beginning of each game, the opposing team will be given the number of points the taxed team exceeded the average the season before. This method not only punishes the selfish, point-hording teams, but also makes the less successful teams feel better about themselves because they’ll actually have points on the board-a real self-esteem booster.

Note: It may be possible to develop a system where certain greedy teams who know they are likely to exceed the point per game average can purchase point credits from other teams willing to sell them some of their points ahead of time.

5. Implement a Mercy Rule: The mercy rule would take affect at any time in the game when one team is whipping the other team by more than 10 points. In this case, the game wouldn’t be called; instead, the current scores would simply be switched, so the team that was winning would now be losing and they would know what it feels like.

6. Implement a Mercy Rule, Option Two: once a team has scored more than 10 points above the overall average for points per game, any points scored after that would actually be given to the other team.

Any one of these six proposals would go a long way to righting the point inequality found in college football today. Of course, there are other ideas that probably deserve discussion as well (e.g. caps on point spreads; elimination of points completely; redefinition of what it means to win in football; re-education classes on how winning isn’t everything and, in fact, might be nothing at all; etc.)

Anyone who opposes these measures needs to take a step back and imagine how wonderful college football would be with some of these measures in place. For example, think about how coaching would take on a whole new level of strategic thinking: Do we want to score or should the quarterback just take a knee? If we let the other team score right now, we’ll actually be the ones who get the points-make it happen! If we fumble and throw one of their players on the ball in our end zone, we’ll win the game!

Of course, in the end, it’s all about fairness and justice. We know the world isn’t a fair experience for any of us, but we can sure do a lot to make college football a place where players and teams are not judged on individual talent or team cohesion or even necessarily on desire and effort, but where good intention is worth more than actuality and competition is a thing of the barbaric past. Time to redistribute those points!


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