It’s time for Dr. Pepper to ditch the chest pass from the scholarship gift contest – Gudstory

Gerrit Cole doesn’t throw bounce passes off the mound. LeBron James has never thrown an off-speed slider on a backdoor cut. So, why do we have to watch college students throw footballs like basketball chest passes to win scholarship money?

This is America.

Dr. Pepper, it’s time to change the rules.

During last weekend’s Big 12 championship game between Texas and Oklahoma State, the soft drinks were annual Scholarship Gift Contest takes place. The winner gets $100,000 while the loser gets just $20,000, which often feels like a potential tax write-off wrapped in cheap halftime entertainment.

However, things got rocky after Dr. Pepper announced that both contestants would receive a $100,000 scholarship after a scoring error resulted in the wrong contestant winning. “In the exciting OT Dr Pepper Tuition Giveaway during the Big 12 Conference championship game, an on-court technical error led to an inaccurate calculation of a double tiebreaker. As such, Dr. Pepper will honor both finalists as grand prize winners with both receiving a prize of $100,000 in tuition fees. The company wrote in a statement.

Shout out to Dr. Pepper for doing the right thing and letting both kids get the money. But the company wouldn’t be in this position if it had banned the chest pass a long time ago.

This is football, not basketball.

“Anything but the chest pass… I’m not a big fan of that,” Kirk Herbstreit said.

“But no chest pass,” Kevin Negandy added.

To be clear, this is not on the students. You can’t dangle that much money in front of broke college kids and raise the issue when one of them is smart enough to realize that a basketball pass with a football is an easier way to win this game than actually trying to throw the ball. whirlpool. But once each contestant decided that throwing a football the way balls were supposed to be thrown was a bad business decision, Dr. Pepper should have stepped in and changed the rules.

Spirals, or that Wobbly ducks thrown by Peyton Manning Only in his final seasons.

Since you should never complain about a problem unless you have a potential solution, let’s discuss what can be done to turn things around:

• Change the contest to something where students have to run back and forth between the ball pit and the blow-up can. The person with the most balls wins, but return it 10 yards instead of five.

• Have the contestants stand sideways so that they have to throw the balls into the inflatable can as if they were trying to pass/throw the shovel as an option.

• Have them throw it like a quarterback.

• Move this contest to the Final Four and allow the contestants to throw basketballs into the inflatable can using . . . Basketball-like chest passes.

Since Dr. Pepper began implementing the Scholarship Gifts Program in 2008, More than $13 million in tuition money has been awarded to students. Surprisingly, the people — mostly Republicans — who stand against student loan forgiveness did not object. But in all seriousness, the idea of ​​a game that gives college students a chance to win some life-changing money is a great idea. The fact that Dr. Pepper allows them to play basketball with soccer balls is not. Just change the rules and make them throw ducks.