I've been watching college football for over half a century now. Here's a recent change I don't like at all: the sudden focus on "style points." This refers to how big a team wins. For example, once upon a time, if a team was leading by 28 points in the 4th quarter, the coach would put the reserves in. No one wanted to be accused of "running up the score," which was considered bad sportsmanship.
Today it's the opposite. You DO run up the score in order to get "style points" and improve your computer rating, which affects your overall rating in the BCS. In other words, a computer is more impressed with a team that wins 70-0 than one that wins 50-0. Sad but true.
But this goes along with the cultural standard today of arrogant behavior everywhere you look. A linebacker sacking the QB, which after all is his job on a blitz, prances around like he did something special. Wrong. He did his job.
An arrogant society like ours loses its sense of history and proportion, its sense of a proper place in the cultural universe. Mediocrity is praised to the hilt. It's quite amazing to witness actually. It's like visiting a planet of aliens.
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