That's a very intriguing number. All games combined really average that kind of a margin? That is... well... very counterintuitive to say the least. Something is wrong if the average game score of a loss is (almost) 30 points a game. That indicates to me, anyway, that the competition is seriously flawed. It also indicates that the margin for a running clock should be set well above 30 points.
I'd be curious to know where you got that number from. Is it just playoff games? First Round games? (I'd think that 30+ was low in the 16 teams per Region years.) I would think most teams of even size and football program emphasis, their game margins would be much closer than that. (IOW, to use a totally ridiculous example, most match-ups are NOT Massillon vs. Richmond Heights.)
Hope you will come back and elaborate on that.
Couldn't find my numbers, and didn't feel like going through my old records. So, used joeeitel.com.
For 2022, Joe had 4,422 total entries for all ten weeks of the regular season. Of those, 4,344 had scores. And after removing the 1-0 scores, there were 4,339 total games with scores. This is for both Ohio games and any non-Ohio game that was factored into Harbins. This includes Ohio club teams. As well as any Ohio 8-man games.
However, I think we can all agree that 4,339 total games is a good way to find an average margin.
Of those 4,339 games, the largest margin was 80 points. There were no ties. There were 157 one-point games.
For mean, (i.e., the halfway point), game #2169 in the list had a margin of 25 points.
All 4,339 games had a total score of 161,996 to 52,985. A total margin of 109,011 points. For an average score of 37.33 to 12.21. An average margin of 25.1235 per game. So, I did hyperbolise a little saying "almost 30" when the total was a hair above 25.
For the first round of the playoffs in 2022, there were 224 total games. Six games were 1-point margins, and the largest was a 70-point margin.
The mean was 30.
For the 224 games, the total score 9,416 to 3,102. A total margin of 6,314. For an average score of 42.04 to 13.85. For an average margin of victory of 28.1875. A few points higher than the regular season average.
Overall, there's some discrepancy as I am not filtering out 8-man games nor out-of-state games from Joe's list for the regular season. Stilll, the national average hangs somewhere in the mid-to-high 20s.