The short headline on ESPN.com’s homepage was something like this: “Coach fastest to 100”.

My first thought?

A college football coach’s team had scored 100 points. And he had done it early in his career. Or early in a game. Maybe in the third quarter?

As it turned out, it was about a Division III guy who got to 100 victories in fewer games than anyone previous.

But given the explosion in scoring, in college football, you can see how I might have thought someone had slapped up 100 points.

Yes, even on the other side of the world, we have noticed that it is far, far too easy to score in college football, and someone will score 100 any week now.

What to do about this?

Let’s first back up a moment and consider some of the ridiculous numbers going up.

Today, TCU defeated Texas Tech 82-27.

Which left us wondering why Oregon and Cal had so much trouble scoring, in their game that ended 59-41 the night before. Or how Arizona and Washington State ended “only” 59-37.

Cal is having a particularly silly season. In addition to that 59-41 they also have been involved this season in games that ended 60-59 (won), 59-56 (won, in double overtime) and 49-45 (lost).

And back to the TCU game. In 31 games, last season, TUC’s basketball team scored 82 points only once. Are we on the way to referring to big numbers in basketball as a “football score”?Too many points.

It seems to stem from five-receiver sets, from a blizzard of formation, with an emphasis on running as many plays possible, as quickly as possible.

And that’s too much of a good thing. We like touchdowns. We like them way less when a team scores 10 in a game.

Also … I am not going to track down the “time of game” for any of those monster scores, but I would bet you every one of them lasted more than four hours — and college football games have been lasting too long for about 20 years now. If the NFL can do it in three hours, why can’t the collegians?

What to do?

–Legalize defensive holding, about the waist. Or relax the rules against it. If receivers can’t get off the line because defenders have both hands on them … that will slow offenses.

–Guarantee X amount of seconds between the end of a play and allowing an offense to snap the ball on the next play. This should allow defenses to make situational substitutions. Many of the run-and-gun offenses depend on exhausting defensive players.

–Limit how many substitutes can enter the game on each play. Let’s make it “one”. You can bring in one different guy on each play. Let’s go further: The defense can make as many substitutions as it wants. Every play.

–Two feet in bounds when making a catch. Not just one. The NFL rule, that is.

–And if those measures don’t get things under control, then we consider a return to one-platoon football — when guys had to play on both sides of the ball.

An odd thing about 100-point college football games? They once were semi-common, in you go back a century. But more than 83 percent of them were played in the first 30 years of the last century, and the opponents were shutout the overwhelming number of times. In theory, games like that don’t get scheduled any more.

I’m not saying we should go back to an era when people could talk about Army and Notre Dame playing a 0-0 game in 1946 and suggesting it was the finest ever played.

I am suggesting that 31 points out to be enough to win most of the time. And the 31 points at the end of the game, not at halftime.