In the waning seconds of Ohio State’s win against Oregon in the National Championship on Monday night, the Buckeyes opted to tack on one more touchdown to a game that was no longer in doubt, winning by a final score of 42-20, rather than 35-20.
Urban Meyer ran up the score on Oregon, and that’s OK
That is how sports work.
OSU almost certainly could have taken a knee at the Oregon one-yard line and still won the game, and Urban Meyer’s decision to win by 22, rather than by 15, upset a lot of people. To them, this was running up the score. Forbes writer Mike Ozanian wrote that Meyer is a hypocrite for saying he believes in God and also trying to score a few extra points in a football game. Or something. The Oregonian’s Jason Quick said it showed a “lack of class” from Meyer.
Meyer said after the game that he had no second thoughts on scoring another touchdown.
Urban Meyer: "I didn’t even think about taking a knee … We play to win."
— Land-Grant Holy Land (@Landgrant33) January 13, 2015 You see, Meyer is the coach of a sports team, and the goal in sports is to score points. It’s the job of the other team (in this case Oregon) to stop Meyer’s team from scoring points. Sometimes, trying as hard as you can to score points is actually “not classy” when the other team is completely and utterly incapable of stopping you — like when this high school girl’s basketball team won a game 100-0. But there were the two best teams in the country, and Oregon is perfectly fit to stop Ohio State from scoring points.
Did Meyer really need to score those extra points to win? Almost certainly not. But the objective in sports is to score points, and Meyer is not a godless, hypocritical monster for wanting to put an exclamation point on an incredible run and win by 22, rather than 15.
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