[Kudos]

You don't have to design around the 0% case, so long as you functionally handle it as this design does.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure I've seen one of the Spanish stations use the vertical score format, a quick search turns up this (Barcelona vs Real Madrid) [1].

> I know they currently keep two different score boards but I'm not sure that has to be that way

It does have to be, because goals are infrequent it's unfair to add 3 or more goals to a teams tally, the goals can be used to differentiate between teams with the same points in league systems. There's also essentially no limit to the number of penalties that can be taken.

I'm not arguing for this design (though I do like some aspects of it), I'm just defending it against what I see as illegitimate criticism.

[1] http://a3.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/120/Purple/da/d0/4c/mzl.wlqf...