Every Saturday afternoon, the best programs in college football stomp a broad and dominant path through a handpicked schedule of weaker non-conference opposition. It's business as usual among the NCAA's superior class, and that's why they hand out fat expense checks, not written apologies to their willing victims.
This is the natural order of things: The sweet aroma of tailgating, the cool sound of brass bands and the dizzying sight of the home team's scoreboard lighting up like a gas pump's price line. These bench-clearing Saturday afternoon maulings are the vehicles that propel top-rated programs to keep rolling out top-10 talent; they use the weak as pincushions and practice props, and everyone accepts their roles in this never-ending circle of college football life.
So once again, let me lodge my discontent with all the whining voices that seem to be swooning over the idea that the fifth-ranked Missouri Tigers are treating their early season opposition unkindly. If the 52-3 trouncing of Southeast Missouri State or the 69-17 spanking of Nevada made you squeamish, please don't express your distress so loudly.
This is the way it is. This is the way it has to be.
So if the Tigers get the opportunity to run up the score against the visiting University of Buffalo on Saturday afternoon in Columbia, here's what I want everyone to do.
I want Gary Pinkel to forget about the apologies and continue to allow his high-powered offense to light up the scoreboard with relative ease. I want Chase Daniel to feel no necessity to holster his rapid-fire passing attack, and the last thing I want to see is the breathless Jeremy Maclin feel some misguided compulsion to lift off the accelerator as he smokes past another flat-footed defender on his way to the end zone with a bushel of touchdowns.
But most of all, I want the squeamish to avert their eyes, because I want more points. This doesn't make me a glutton. This doesn't make me greedy. This doesn't make me cold or callous or a bad winner.
I'm an old-school football purist who doesn't understand the concept of not going for the unequivocal victory. There's nothing in the book of good coaching or great playing that should ever instruct any athlete to lighten up, back down or slow down. The basic nature of Mizzou's lethal spread offense is to attack. Fast and furious is this offense's creed, and quite frankly after the past two weeks of staggering offensive execution, I am curious to see just how fast and furious that could be.
I want to see if this offense can actually play a perfect game.
The players admit that they have contemplated the idea of that perfect game where the ball never touches the ground. No fumbles. No incompletions. No punts. No field goals.
"Of course we talk about it, we dream about it,"
Maclin said.
"I think it could happen,"
said tight end Chase Coffman. "I don't know when, but we've come close in practice to doing it."
Selfishly, I must admit that the Tigers provide me with a positive inoculation against the more depressing Sunday obsession I have with the pro football Rams. But that is not the reason why Pinkel should let up or slow down his offense. And here's the real reason why:
College football is not a "team"
game. It's a "program"
game. Pinkel's job is working at constant dual purposes, winning in the here and now and planning for the future. That's why he kept inserting a kid named Chase Daniel into games three seasons ago, when he was a freshman understudy to Brad Smith. Daniel would come into games at critical times, and he was allowed to run the offense at high throttle. He played in 10 games, completed nearly 60 percent of his pass attempts (38 of 66 for 347 yards, 1 TD and 2 INTs), and led the Tigers on a fourth-quarter comeback when Smith was injured against Iowa State.
So now Daniel is a senior, and there's another freshman QB phenom named Blaine Gabbert on the team. This year's squad is far more advanced than the one that Daniel played on as a freshman, which means that so far, Gabbert hasn't had much chance to come into games in critical, competitive moments. By the time he has come into the past two contests, the games were already over. But what sort of learning experience will Gabbert get by coming into these blowouts and running a scaled back game plan that goes against everything he will be expected to do next year when he's supposed to step in as Daniel's heir?
What benefit does Gabbert get by getting game experience where his primary directive is "keep it close and don't score"
?
For that matter, what benefit do any of the MU backups get by coming into games and being instructed to take it easy?
The answer is nothing.
That's not how to build a program.
So that's why I am constantly amazed when I hear people grumbling or scratching their heads when they see their highly ranked team "running it up"
(particularly when that highly ranked team used to be on the wrong side of those butt whippings not so long ago).
It's not running it up. It's just running your offense, period.
