First, I should say that, unless you're Chattanooga or The Citadel, I think "running up the score" is a lame excuse for failing to play 60 minutes. It's weak. No one in a game between reasonably competitive teams should ever be expected to throttle down to spare the other sideline's feelings. I can't stand allegations of "whining," but I'll make one: "Running up the score" is whining. It's for fragile losers.

I bring it up now because it gets thrown around too often, and it's come up a couple places in response to Oklahoma's overwhelming beatdown of Missouri Saturday night: The Oklahoman's Berry Tramel wonders if it might have cost the Sooners some votes, Kirk Bohls calls Bob Stoops out for "poor sportsmanship," Burnt Orange Nation is predictably upset and John Feinstein (with whom I always disagree) called Stoops "a coach who likes to run up the score" this morning for the NPR crowd.

All of which is bogus. I appreciate the killer instinct, for one thing. And not only do I not care if one team runs up the score in a championship game -- it's the championship game; the opponent is supposed to be competent enough to defend itself -- I don't even think the charge against Oklahoma and Florida this year is all that fair. They're certainly scoring a lot, and winning by wide, wide margins, but those margins aren't coming by inflating the score in the fourth quarter. The vast majority of beatings are already long over by then -- take a look at the games OU and UF have put away by the third quarter this year (games with at least a three-score lead entering the fourth), and how consistently they throttled down:

I charge each team with "running up the score" once: Oklahoma against Missouri, and Florida against Georgia. The Sooners and Gators continued to throw late in both cases, but then again, these were two of the biggest games of the season for any team, against worthy, ranked opponents who began the year in everybody's top 10 and which should never be so pitiful as to cry about the big, bad meanies who continue to score on them.

Otherwise, Oklahoma consistently let its foot off the gas in the fourth, time and again, even against teams like TCU, Nebraska, Texas A&M and Texas Tech, which ought to be able to at least make the Sooners break a sweat; for the season, OU has outscored opponents in the fourth quarter by all of eight points, and that's after outpacing Missouri by fourteen. I don't charge Florida with running up the score against Arkansas, LSU or South Carolina, because of the specific circumstances: Against Arkansas, UF scored on the first play of the fourth quarter to go up 34-7, then effectively went into hibernation mode by running the rest of the game; this still produced two long touchdown runs, but there was clearly no effort to score by throwing the ball. Ditto South Carolina, where the Gators scored a touchdown seconds into the fourth and later ran several times in a row for another with the backup quarterback in the game. I don't even count Brandon Spikes' interception return for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter against LSU, but the 10 points that followed came as a result of running the ball. In none of those cases was there an effort to throw and play scoreboard pinball. The other team -- in two of the cases, ranked teams with highly-paid coaches of their own -- just couldn't stop even the watered-down version of the offense. That's their problem.

I'm fine with taking a knee, but the point of the game is to score points. We only have a handful of games by which to compare teams by that standard. I expect those comparisons to be based on complete, 60-minute performances. If you're so good that people get angry at you for not going out of your way to quit trying halfway through, your day has been a staggering success.