Bryan Burwell

This is one of those classic autumn athletic traditions we don’t like to talk about, and when we do, it’s usually the wrong conversation. 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.

Yet for some strange reason that is beyond me, too many people complain about it. In Columbia, Mo., Gary Pinkel, coach of fifth-ranked Missouri, spent the week explaining and apologizing for the Tigers hammering their last two opponents by the combined score of 121-20. But he is not alone. No. 18 BYU just finished stomping UCLA, 59-0. Penn State, ranked No. 22, hammered Coastal Carolina, 66-10. No. 4 Oklahoma dispatched Chattanooga, 57-2. No. 19 South Florida smoked Tennessee-Martin, 56-7.

But I don’t know what the big commotion is about, quite frankly, because 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 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.

We are deep into the non-conference portion of the collegiate season, which means that this weekend, there will be more blood. These are the most likely candidates for unsightly routs:

• Unranked Buffalo at No. 5 Missouri.
• Unranked Arizona State at No. 3 Georgia.
• Unranked Rice at No. 7 Texas.
• Unranked Troy goes against No. 13 Ohio State.

So here’s my humble advise to all of the big boys:

No surrender. No retreat.

Let me lodge my discontent with all the whining voices that seem to be swooning over the idea that the powerhouse programs are treating their early-season opposition unkindly. If you are a fan of these programs and their video game victories have already made you squeamish, please don’t express your distress so loudly.

Piling it up is simply the way it is, and the way it has to be.

So I want to see the third-ranked Bulldogs unmercifully roll over Arizona State. I want No. 5 Missouri to run up the score against Buffalo.

And by all means, I want to see the Buckeyes put a wicked thrashing on the Trojans, even if those men of Troy are from Southern Alabama not Southern California. And if anyone at Troy has the audacity to grumble even a little bit if Ohio State does decide to repair its bruised ego from last week’s trouncing in Los Angeles, these Troy Trojans (who piled up 736 yards in a 65-0 beat down of Alcorn State last week), better not so much as whisper their discontent.

I’m simply 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.

So I want Pinkel to forget about the apologies and continue to allow his Missouri offense — which could be second only to Southern Cal as the most frightening offense in the country — to light up the scoreboard with relative ease. I want his quarterback Chase Daniel to feel no necessity to holster his rapid-fire passing attack or diminish his Heisman Trophy statistics by slowing it down. And the very last thing any true football lover should ever want to see is the breathless multipurpose receiver/return man 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.

The basic nature of the spread offense is to attack, and few do it with such lethal brilliance as Mizzou’s starting 11. Fast and furious is this offense’s creed, and quite frankly after the last two weeks of staggering offensive execution, I am curious to see just how fast and furious that could be.

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I want to see if the Tiger offense can actually play a perfect game.

The Missouri players admit that they have seriously contemplated the idea of that perfect game where the ball never touches the ground. No fumbles. No incompletions. No punts. No field goals. They have come close the last two weeks with only one incompletion from Daniel two weeks ago and five last week in 28 attempts. In those two games, the first unit has scored on 13 consecutive offensive possessions (12 TDs, 1 FG), while completing 39 of 45 passes for 650 yards, 7 TDs and zero interceptions.

“Of course we talk about it, we dream about it,” said Maclin.

“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.”