Connecticut high school football coaches are facing a suspension if they win a game by more than 50 points next season. They say the rule isn’t aimed at any one guy, but… there is one particular dickhead who was calling timeouts en route to a 60-0 win last year. The opposing coach was arrested after punching an assistant coach on the winning team.
I do think that coaches who run up the score are quite loathesome, and they might deserve to have someone egg their house or slash their tires… but I don’t know about this rule. I think high school is about the age where we have to stop worrying about protecting feelings. But I may be the wrong guy to ask… I don’t have kids, and I am of the opinion that it’s absurd that they don’t keep score in T-ball. I think if you’re old enough to play sports, you’re old enough to learn about both sides of the ass-whooping.
And I just don’t know if this rule is going to prevent anything harmful. If it’s me, I’d rather lose 70-0, as opposed to losing 49-0 while the other team has to intentionally run backwards every third play, just so they don’t care. The former would anger and humiliate me. The latter would force me to incite a brawl.
If they wanted to institute a mercy rule, where the game ends when one team takes a 40-point lead or something, that would be preferable. But they’re setting themselves up for some awkward and contentious situations with this one.
Sometimes, a team’s 3rd-string, their absolute worst players, are better than some other team’s best players. It happens. You can send all your scrubs out, put the waterboy in, put the managers in, but if the other team can’t tackle them, they can’t tackle them. That’s how it goes sometimes. Ask Temple.
Fan's Attic
when i was in high school we had a really good football team and the team beat an opponent by 50 or so and the coach had to send a letter of apology for beating our opponent by so much.
May 25, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Bouj
“Dear Opposing Coach,
Sorry your team sucks so much that you can’t keep withing 60 pts. of us.
Sincerly,
Coach X”
May 25, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Fan's Attic
i hope that’s what it said.
May 25, 2006 at 5:03 pm
jorite
I’m not sure what some of these coaches are supposed to do. When I was at Pitt the team lost to Ohio State 72-0 (52-0 at halftime) and it wasn’t even that close. As Johnny Majors said in the post-game press conference, “They tried to keep it under 70, but we wouldn’t let them.”
May 25, 2006 at 5:57 pm
jeff
when i was in high school, our district had a rule where once it was a 35 point game, the clock never stopped running. helped keep blowouts managable. we still whomped some teams pretty badly. made it good in the late november/december games when it was freezing, and we just wanted to go home.
May 25, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Jimbo Mercy
Back in my day shitty football players got their asses kicked with unneccessary prejudice. That’s the way it was and we liked it!
May 25, 2006 at 10:38 pm
jerloma
I couldn’t agree with you more mjd. Having the opposing team show mercy is way more humiliating. It amazes me how so many people involved with sports fail to understand the concept of sport.
May 26, 2006 at 9:50 am
Raldo
Being from Connecticut, I know who the guy this rule was aimed for. He is kind of a Bobby Knight-type of person. The kids repect him for pushing them so much but he continues to really beat up on opposing teams by some large margins. I don’t think a coach should get suspended. On the other hand, it’s no fun to lose by 60, 70, or 80 points.
May 26, 2006 at 9:58 am
srl
We had this rule in high school and my team sucked every year. So when teams would go up by 50, they would put offensive lineman in to play QB and just pass every play. Sadly they even threw a few TDs against us. But, I did make the all conference defense because I returned 3 interceptions for TDs because, well, it just isn’t hard to intercept a 300 pound lineman.
May 26, 2006 at 10:15 am
Dave's Football Blog
Even the lowest levels of pro football don’t pull this crap. Last weekend in the AIFL, the Richmond Bandits beat the Carolina Ghostchasers by a score of 113-0. When asked why they even bothered to play the game, one Richmond player said, “We love to play. And another thing about this league, if you don’t play, you don’t get paid.”
May 27, 2006 at 10:45 am
thedon3wv
The worse that should happen is they should just stop the game when its obvious a team cannot stop another team from scoring, it would be the same as stopping a boxing match when its clear a boxer cannot defend himself anymore.
May 28, 2006 at 6:37 am