The Front Row with JASON ELLIOTT Sept. 8, 2012

While the argument for who should be playing for a national championship in college football is a long way from being settled, watching some of those contenders last Saturday put up ridiculous amounts of points made it clear.

They need to schedule someone else to prove their point.

FOR THOSE schools that need to play the so-called "money games" so they can afford to redo facilities around their campus, what does it prove to go out and get beaten by 50 points by a top-ranked school?

That your team, while losing, is a lot better than the score appeared when you return to the reality that is your conference schedule.

Fans of Oklahoma State that paid to watch the Cowboys whip Savannah State 84-0 last Saturday must have thought their team had picked up from the Fiesta Bowl and is well on the way to a national championship.

Beating a team by that many points only proves that you're just running up the score, instead of looking for a competitive game.

Oregon, which many think will be in the mix for a Pac-12 Conference championship, took a 50-10 halftime lead before its backups let Arkansas State back into a 57-34 win at Autzen Stadium.

Teams like Michigan, which was ranked in the top 10 before getting blown out against Alabama in a neutral site in Arlington, Texas, at least tried to prove they belonged with those contenders, even if it meant getting a loss that first week of the season.

WHAT DOES a team winning a game in the manner that Oklahoma State did prove anyway?

They can score points? Well, that's proven because the only thing that stopped them from scoring 100 points was the clock had to run out at some point.

When it comes to college basketball, teams often can't avoid early losses due to teams playing cross conference matchups like the ACC/Big Ten Challenge or the Pac-12/Big 12 Challenge, in addition to countless tournaments across the country.

If conferences had this in place for football, with Oklahoma State playing either Stanford or Washington — chances are those games might be a little closer.

After looking at the stats from last week, I’m not sure that today’s game between Eastern Washington, an FBS school in Cheney, and Washington State of the Pac-12 won’t be closer than most think.

While I understand the appeal of some of those lower level teams wanting to get paid, that shouldn’t mean that those contenders should schedule them.

Out of the BCS conferences, nobody wanted a chance to play either Oklahoma State or Oregon to start the season?

Maybe those teams should have played each other, pitting two really good offenses against each other.

As a professional wrestler liked to say, “To be the man, you’ve got to beat the man.”

Not his little brother.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at [email protected].