On Friday, September 6th, The Robinson Knights suffered a loss at the hands of the Plant Highschool Panthers, losing 59-0 in a sobering defeat. This comes as the 19th year that Robinson has lost to Plant, making it seem as though Plant is simply the better team. However, when you look at the two schools, it becomes hard to view the thrashing as a truly fair matchup.
“Football is football,” wide receiver and running back Xander Logan (’25) said. “It doesn’t really matter what the size of the school is.”
However, when taken a lot at the analytics, this may not be true.
Firstly, according to premiere high school football website MaxPreps.com, Robinson is only a 3A school, while Plant is a 6A school. This refers to the size of the school, with Robinson being on the smaller side, and Plant being in one of the larger divisions. Additionally, the larger school size enables Plant to have a wide variety of players to choose from to make the team, while Robinson has no such luxury. Plant is positioned in the heart of South Tampa on South Himes, an extremely desirable area that often attracts large number of potential football players who would otherwise gone to other schools.
All of these factors give Plant a clear advantage in football, and call into question: Is football rigged against small schools?
Every Saturday all across the US, millions of Americans unite to watch one of the nations most beloved sports, College Football. The sport brings in massive crowds, both in stadiums and on T.V., with primetime college football games commonly reaching above seven million viewers according to foxsports.com. However, even in one of America’s favorite sports, the discrepancies between competitors such as those between Plant and Robinson are still present.
On Saturday, September 7th, the Ohio State buckeyes, the number two team in the country and frequent national champion contenders who have one of the biggest sports programs in the country defeated Western Michigan, a lesser-known division one team 56-0. Western Michigan, similar to Robinson, is a decently sized school, boasting seventeen thousand students. However, Ohio State is home to a monstrous 60,540 students, over three and a half times bigger than its week-two opponent. Just like Plant, OSU attracts better players due to its size and strength in football.
The schools, despite being geographically close like Robinson and Plant, were not in the same conference. As previously mentioned, not at all the same size or the same strength in football. In fact, the power discrepancy was so large that Ohio State had to pay Western Michigan, With OSU due to pay 1.8 million to Western Michigan according to the ColombusDispatch.com. Paying schools to play is a common practice in college football, with virtually all powerhouse teams taking part, often leading to large payouts and even larger victories, as the larger school collects their not-so-free win. Although this system may seem like a win-win, with the larger school picking up an easy win and the smaller school getting a much-needed paycheck, this system neglects one of the most important parts of college football; the fans.
Due to the massive losses suffered by the Robinson football team, fans are becoming more reluctant to go to home games.
“I’m a little discouraged from going to the games because of the losses,” Robinson student and fan Will Heath (’27) said. “It’s hard going to the games when we lose by such large margins.”
Fans are easily one of the most vital parts of a team, yet schools push them away by playing bigger schools where they don’t have a real chance to win. Losing by upwards of 60 points is humiliating and doesn’t encouraged fans to come and support teams, hurting smaller schools that may already cater to a smaller demographic, similar to Robinson, who, unlike Plant, have a much smaller pool of students to come to games. So, when Robinson loses by 55, it’s safe to assume that the turnouts at the next few games will be lacking, especially if the turnout of the opponents fans is also weak, as Robinson is often underestimated.
“Robinson has been the underdog for two decades and every time we go into those environments, they doubt us” linebacker George Logan (’27) said.
Despite the numerous disadvantages faced by Robinson, our football team continues to work hard and fight back against much larger teams, utilizing said hard work to combat the definitive unfairness of some of our matchups.
