One thing's for sure-the producers of this series knew about as much about high school sports as my cats do. A few episodes before this one they had Robbie trying to gain enough weight to get to 125 pounds so he could be on the school wrestling team. In high school wrestling, they have over a dozen weight classes-you only wrestle against people who weigh about the same as you. Robbie would, at 123 pounds as stated, be wrestling in the 125-lb division, which means he weighs too much for the three lower divisions. It may have been slightly different then, but high school wrestling has always been a great sport for the smaller guy because you don't have to get flattened by the biggest guys around.
Now Robbie is totally focused on the upcoming high school football game. One's mind is bewildered by the producer's choice of having an episode about high school football air in MARCH, as it did in 1962. Do they have no clue as to what season of the year is football season?
The story is about Robbie being totally wrapped up in football and not at all interested in studying for math. A chance encounter with Rob's teacher, gets Steve to lay down the law-he tells Rob if he doesn't pass Friday's math test, he cannot play in the football game. Even then, Robbie avoids studying, because "he just doesn't get fractions." This makes me wonder how he got past 5th grade because fractions is not normally what you study in high school math. I believe we were taught something about them in 4th grade, and much more in 5th.
Desperate to avoid failing the test, Robbie then gets the "brilliant" idea that if he can get close enough to his little brother, he can catch the cold Chip has and not have to go to school on Friday-the next day-thus he can play in the game. Robbie also doesn't seem to understand that being exposed to Chip's virus Thursday night is not about to get him sick by Friday morning-it takes a couple of days or more.
I find it hard to believe the school would let a boy play in the game when he stayed home from school that day because he was sick. It would seem even harder to believe that Steve would let him do so-especially if he figures he wasn't really sick.
Since almost the whole episode is not funny or at all realistic, I cannot give it a higher grade than a 3.