Dorm Report: Is there such a thing as too much offense?

Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – Let’s face it football fans, we love offense.

Watching a team roll up ridiculous yardage totals and lighting up the scoreboard always grabs our attention. Flashy performers who break off big plays and set a wild pace capture our focus (see Johnny Football). I mean, why else would the parents of current Texas A&M quarterback Kenny Hill apply to have his nickname “Kenny Trill” trademarked?

It’s all about the offense, right? Even the casual fan loves big numbers, and leans off the edge of their seat just a little more when a quarterback drops back with time winding down in the first half, and lets loose with a Hail Mary toward the end zone. Just ask Houston Cougars fans who watched John O’Korn launch a 45-yard scoring strike to Daniel Spencer just inside the goal line at the conclusion of the first half versus No. 25 BYU on Thursday night.

But at what point does tearing up an opponent become too much, perhaps even bad for the game? Some of us may have sympathy for a weaker opponent, might wonder why a powerhouse program has to teach the competition a lesson, but we still thrive on numbers because fantasy football has become almost better than the real thing.

Big numbers are big headlines, which might be why the United States has a hard time supporting professional soccer in the same way that it worships the NFL and college football. Soccer players … we need more offense, it is as simple as that.

You rarely remember the football team that led the nation in scoring defense, or held opponents to minuscule numbers on the stat sheet over the course of a season, outside of perhaps Alabama in recent years. But early on I made sure that I filed away in my head that ridiculous Georgia Tech-Cumberland College score from Oct. 7, 1916 (ok, maybe not the exact date) where the Yellow Jackets, then known as the Engineers, delivered a powerful 222-0 win.

That blowout, the likes of which have not been seen since and should be good on Trivia Night at the local pub at some point in my life, has taken on mythical stature, with Cumberland being held to almost negative-100 yards on the ground, and Tech using more than 1,600 rushing yards to produce a staggering 32 touchdowns.

Some might call out the Engineers for being downright abusive, but there were some interesting story lines behind the contest, perhaps most notable being that the Georgia Tech head coach at the time was none other than John Heisman, the man for whom the most celebrated individual college football award is named.

So clearly, Heisman was a fan of demoralizing opponents, laying waste to anyone who dared stand in his way. But when does belittling the team on the opposite sideline become too much, too cruel?

Typical at the Football Bowl Subdivision level, teams schedule non-conference opponents early on in the season before kicking off their league slates, and sometimes that means finding combatants from outside the FBS. Many schools bring in sacrificial lambs from the Football Championship Subdivision, perhaps even a Division II foe here and there. In college basketball, because there are so many schools and so many holes to fill on the schedule, a Division I power might even troll for a junior college opponent, but that’s another story for another time.

When FCS teams accept the challenge they understand what’s at stake, the potential for being the next day’s headline in the sports section or maybe even a spot on the night’s highlight reel, typically for all the wrong reasons. The outcomes rarely favor the underdog, yet even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. Just ask Appalachian State about the time it took down the mighty Michigan Wolverines, 34-32, in Ann Arbor on Sept. 1, 2007.

That year, the Wolverines were favored to win the Big Ten Conference and perhaps make a run at the national championship, but even being ranked fifth in the country was in no way a guarantee that Michigan would simply cruise against the Mountaineers, an opponent who at the time was ranked No. 1 in the FCS.

Every year since that fateful day when David slayed Goliath, FCS teams have held on to hope that they could write the next chapter in the upset handbook. Maybe, just maybe, in addition to being handed a sizeable check for setting themselves up for a possible pounding, money that goes a long way in sustaining the sports programs for these smaller institutions, there’s another upset in the cards somewhere.

The very first game of the 2014 campaign involving an FBS program, Georgia State, went right down to the wire before the Panthers knocked through the game-winning 26-yard field goal with four seconds remaining in order to send tiny Abilene Christian packing in a 38-37 decision. That game gave all the little guys hope that maybe blowout losses were not the order of the day. Could there be a few exceptions to the rule this year?

Unfortunately, the rest of Week 1 in college football failed to live up to those aspirations. Howard bowed to Akron only hours later (41-0), Presbyterian was hosed by Northern Illinois (55-3), Michigan State throttled Jacksonville State (45-7), Pittsburgh hammered Delaware (62-0), Maryland mangled James Madison (52-7), Stanford stomped UC Davis (45-0), Memphis governed over Austin Peay (63-0), Middle Tennessee raided Savannah State (61-7), Texas State wasn’t faking against Arkansas-Pine Bluff (65-0), and East Carolina shot down NC Central (52-7).

The second week of FBS play saw some similar scenarios with Clemson collapsing on SC State (73-7), Arkansas routing Nicholls (73-7), Appalachian State assaulting Campbell (66-0), Georgia Southern soaring over Savannah State (83-9), LSU letting loose on Sam Houston State (56-0), West Virginia dominating Towson (54-0), Baylor bowling over Northwestern State (70-6) and Texas A&M lambasting Lamar (73-3).

The lists are long and monotonous and that’s just the first two weeks of action. If you thought reading through those crushing defeats was painful, just imagine how the players on the losing sides must have felt, being thrown around like rag dolls for the better part of 60 minutes while the dominators padded their stats.

Put yourself on the sidelines with the Tigers of Savannah State the first two games of the season. Competing in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, SSU may have picked up some decent paychecks in the early going, but is that enough to keep up the morale for a squad that has surrendered an average of 72.0 ppg versus two opponents that are as far away from the power conferences that an FBS member can be right now? Middle Tennessee and Georgia Southern combined to post an incredible 16 rushing touchdowns against SSU, and converted all but one of their 16 third-down attempts.

We fans love our offense, the more points the better, but you have to feel for a team like Savannah State and head coach Earnest Wilson III after the meeting with Georgia Southern.

“They felt the sting of that one,” Wilson said. “But, like I told them, ‘Learn, guys, learn.’ And that’s what they’re doing. The guys are fired up. We’ve got a bunch of freshmen and they knew what they were getting into when they came. They knew it would be tough. And they’re fired up about it.”

Fortunately for the Tigers, the schedule gets a little easier as the team hosts Division II Fort Valley State, a squad that was crushed in its season opener last week by the Statesmen of Delta State, 56-13. Savannah State should be able to apply some of what it learned in the first two games against this week’s opponent.

Pour it on this weekend Savannah State, because we love a good offensive pounding.

Categorized in: NCAA Football