It’s hard to look away from a train wreck, of course, so we looked briefly just now at the college football Top 25 scoreboard, and we were shocked by what we saw: annihilations, blowouts, and massacres. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish beat the Tennessee State Tigers by 53 points; the Oregon Ducks beat the Portland State Vikings by 74 points; the Mississippi Traitors beat the Mercer Bears by 66 points. You know of this trend.

Pathetic. Want more? Here’s a shiny one: Oklahoma 73, Arkansas State 0.

These games should not be allowed. It’s an insult to the sport itself—but also humiliating for the losing teams. What is the NCAA mission statement? “Provide a world-class athletics and academic experience for student-athletes that fosters lifelong well-being.” Yeah, not so fast … there is nothing about these games that provides world-class sport or fosters lifelong well-being. The losing teams need therapy, basically.

But hey, you gotta feed the cash cow, right? Evidently.

With the College Football Playoff expanding in 2024 (and the number of power conferences reduced to four at the same time), perhaps these silly out-of-conference games should be outlawed. It’s not good sport, good sportsmanship, or even good theater. For every random upset like Appalachian State over Michigan, there are hundreds of blowouts like the ones happening today and shown above. Honestly, no one needs this crap.

They don’t improve a team’s playoff profile; they can only hurt the winning team, in truth. And they really don’t help the losing team, obviously, despite the usual guaranteed cash payoff. If the CFP set it up right, the power teams could schedule each other for their OOC games with the knowledge that a loss isn’t going to end their hopes of reaching the mythical national championship game—like what basketball does right now.

Real matchups would generate more TV revenue, along the lines of the Akufo League, really, because … really … who tunes in to watch Mercer, as opposed to all the TVs in the Confederacy tuning in to watch Ole Miss? Just imagine the TV reach if Ole Miss was to play Oregon instead, for example. Or the Sooners chose to play the Fighting Irish. Those are the heavyweight matchups people want to see right away, every season.

Insulate teams with the proper playoff qualifying process and structure? This could be possible … as long as the sport is heading to destruction, anyway, we might as well make it as fun as we can in the meantime.