Any Connecticut high school football coach who runs up the score in a game now runs the risk of being suspended. The football committee of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, the state board that governs high school sports, has adopted a "score management" policy to keep teams from winning by more than 50 points.
The rout is considered an unsportsmanlike infraction and, beginning this fall, the head coach of the offending team will be disqualified from coaching the next game, said Tony Mosa, assistant executive director of the Cheshire-based CIAC.
"We were concerned with any coach running up the game. There's no need for it," Mosa said Wednesday. "This is something that we really have been discussing for the last couple of years. There were a number of games that were played where the difference of scores were 60 points or more. It's not focused on any one particular person." ...
Football committee chairman Leroy Williams ... formerly coached high school in the city and remembers well the beatings his teams were handed. He recalls being down by 54 points in one game and having the opposing team line up for an onside kick after scoring.
"Try to explain that to kids," Williams said. "When you get someone down, you don't have to kick them. The key thing to remember is, it's about the quality of the game. It's about teaching kids right from wrong. It's about the game of life and that's how we had to look about it."
The problem, it seems to me, is quite real: It is indeed dispiriting and embarrassing to be so badly beaten. One possible solution (which the story describes, but which wasn't adopted) is to stop the game when the score gap gets too large. Another is to split the league into divisions in each of which the teams would be more closely matched, though that might not work well for a small league. There are other reasonable alternatives as well.
But the solution of requiring the winning team to essentially stop competing effectively strikes me as worse than the problem. As the Laissez Faire Books blog points out,
[I]f the players of a team, after having gotten 50 points ahead in a game, suddenly begin moping about the field, carefully abstaining from scoring a single further point, the players on the losing team are going to know why.
They are going to know, first, that they are playing lousy compared to the other team. They're going to know, second, that the official rules of the game now declare that beyond a certain point they must be deemed to be playing so lousy that their opponents must be officially hobbled lest the members of the lousy team be humiliated further. And it is an elementary law of psychology that the knowledge that you are being officially declared irremediably lousy by the very rules of the game is not going to cheer you up. "We're such lousy losers that we can't even be allowed to play an honest game in the fourth quarter," is what all the players on the losing team will be thinking.
Some of the same persons on the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference proposing the penalty for too-success coaching have also opposed a "run out the clock" rule (i.e., a rule that would finish the game faster if one team is being pulverized by outlawing any more time-outs). According to the AP, "Mosa [an assistant executive director of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference] said committee members believed the clock rule would be unfair to junior varsity players who likely would be on the field during lopsided games." But why is it unfair to impair players under a run-out-the-clock cure for the agony of defeat but not under a cure in which a winning coach will be punished if his players continue to play their best? Whether or not such a clock rule is justified, it would, obviously, at least allow all players on both sides to continue doing their best, under the same rules, and without arbitrarily penalizing coaches....
UPDATE: Some commenters defend the new rule on the theory that a coach who's winning by 50 points ought to send in his second- or third-string players, which will make the contest more even and give his weaker players some game time. That's a sensible approach, and one of the "other reasonable alternatives" I mention. Among other things, it would at least involve each player trying to do his best, though it would now be weaker players doing that.
But that's not what the rule calls for; according to the article, the rule generally prohibits "run[ing] up the score." If team A is losing by 50 points to team B's first string, it's eminently possible that team B's second or third string will still keep scoring touchdown after touchdown against A. (Some commenters in fact reported such experiences from their own lives.) Are B's second string players now supposed to spend their rare game time playing deliberately weakly, for fear that if they play their best they'll be "run[ing] up the score"?
Others suggested that the winning team ought not be allowed to use onside kicks or to throw "forward passes of more than 30 yards." That I just don't buy, for the reasons mentioned above. But even beyond this, if A is losing by 50 points, it's probably not because of onside kicks (though maybe because of forward passes). Ban onside kicks, and the other side will still score a lot -- unless they are indeed required to basically just not try to score.
Good football requires that teams enjoying an insurmountable lead keep the ball on the ground, chew up the clock, protect their best players against unneccesary injury, and perhaps give their second stringers some helpful experience. A dominant team will probably still score running the ball on the ground late in the game, and I can't imagine this rule would penalize them for it. But any coach who lines up for an onside kick while up 54 points is not teaching good football or good sportsmanship, or educating anyone in the art of being a proper human being.
That said, I would definitely support a similar type of CT rule for law school. Anything to help mitigate my downward spiral and/or put the brakes on straight A students.
Personally as a coach when we were winning by buckets I didn't always have second-, let alone third-string players - but I did make my team play very very pretty football to try and get some skills out of it.
But when we were losing I think the only thing that could have made me feel worse was a rule like that. As it was when you scored consolation points you knew the other team had slacked off a bit, but it was still a satisfaction.
This would be terrible.
This rule doesn't make sense. One might go so far as to say that it is retarded. A mercy rule is one thing -- but a "deliberately don't play well" rule? If the game is so over that the other team isn't even allowed to try to score, then why continue the game?
Moreover, it's completely pointless, as the quote above points out. You're not fooling the losing team by making the better team play badly.
As I recall the reason this rule came about is because of one idiot coach in the state whose team routinely wins by 70 plus as they continue to play the first string and throw the ball. A possible solution to this is to implement some sort of rule where the conduct of the wining coach is investigated after a 50 point victory. DId he bring in the subs, was he running trick plays, did he do onsides kicks, etc?
A shorter version of this rule: don't be an ass.
I would be annoyed, but would understand if, after a certain point, the refs announced that this was a lopsided game, and that the winner could nolonger perform some actions like blitzing, onside kicks, fake kicks, forward passes of more than 30 yards, and the like. If the lading team does do that, it is 15yard unsportsmanlike penalty.
Some of the actions described are probably unsportsmanlike, and if the conference provided a way for the ingame officials to penalize I'd probably grudgingly agree.
I seem to remember that the original story I read commented that was the crux of the problem - the coach that seems to have caused this issue does not ever put his second string in, even when the game is obviously a blowout. Of course, my memory may be faulty.
If that is true, it seems to me that the CIAC is using a blunt rule to try to send a message to that coach. They should have been more honest and blunt, and send the coach’s bosses (administration and/or school committee) a letter pointing out that however many W’s he has, the coach is a lousy coach by not giving play time to other players when it is obviously both appropriate and good sportsmanship to do it, with the typical warning "you do something or we will".
I have seen references to complaints by other coaches who even put their JV team in when they got far enough ahead, and the JV players racked up another 21+ points. I think this problem has been (partly?) addressed by adding an appeals process to the suspension.
As someone else on this blog who tends to be fairly liberal (though not blindly) let me say that the last thing this blog needs is more substance free criticisms of the form 'X is dumb that's just like those Ys'. I see this enough from the conservatives trying to pin every stupid thing a liberal does on liberalism we certainly don't need to encourage this.
However, I agree that this policy may not be as stupid as it looks on first glance. In particular we need to know the facts about why these high scoring games happen in this area. If it is just because one team is so much better and they don't have any second stringers to send out on the field then yes this policy is stupid and counterproductive. If, on the other hand, there are couches refusing to let their second stringers/JV lineup play just to rub the score in to the other teams face, or even to give their front line players more practice this is a perfectly reasonable policy.
If rather than making the better team's players do a half-assed job this policy causes them to be replaced with the second line players then everyone wins. The worse team gets to play out the whole game and gets to practice against people who aren't totally crushing them but players on both sides can do their best. Conversly this also makes sure that coaches obsessed with crushing their opponents have an incentive to give their less good players time on the field.
Having been on both sides of this, both as a coach and player, it seems to me that there are some pretty well worn ways of dealing with this.
The winning coach should never try to run the score up, and yes, it should be obvious that the second (and third) stringers should have been in the game long before it reached such embarassing proportions. I coach soccer, and if we are winning I just insert kids in different positions, play our best offensive players in goal or on defense (if they are not already sitting) and let the weaker players run around the midfield and up front. You can also work on fundamentals like making clean passes.
That said, it is completely humiliating to be losing and then figure out that the other team has stopped competing. The losing team has earned the right to continue competing.
If the second and third stringers are able to run up the score, then the league has not done its job of ensuring some level of balance.
The mercy rule is important in baseball becuase there is usually another game waiting to be played. It does not work well in clocked sports.
There is a gentleman's rule among many coaches of not running it up unnecessarily. Gentleman's rules are unwritten guides -- an "etiquette" if you will. But implementing an actual rule makes it not a gentleman's rule.
I was part of a team in high school that often won by 30+ point margins and several times 60+ points. Our coach was a great coach who ended up a few years later as the head coach at a Pac10 Division I football program. And we had some very talented players who played DI football in the Pac10.
Our biggest "run up" was typical: after the team scored twice in two possessions, the coach started substituting 2nd stringers, and the entire 1st string was out well before the end of the 1st quarter. By the mid-2nd quarter coach was putting third stringres in and by the half the whole second string was replaced by the third string, including guys with little prior game time. In the second half, he emptied the bench. Not one player who played the 4th quarter had been in a varsity game for more than a couple of plays before. Guys who had never carried the ball in a game scored. A guy who'd never played QB before but always wanted to got to try, and threw a pass for a touchdown. Final score 70-6.
When some people gave coach a hard time about the score, he explained how he'd progressively substituted his less experienced and younger players, and the guys who'd suited up for 3 years, worked hard at practice, but never played, and then said: Are you asking me to tell those kids who've finally gotten a chance to play not to play their hearts out? I'll quit before I'd do that. I owe those kids who come out and practice every day a chance to do their best when I feel I'm able to put them in.
Sport is designed to be played to the best of your ability, from beginning to end. If you find yourself in a position where you cannot win, then you can stick to your tackle as best you can.
Learning to struggle in the face of insurmountable odds is the lesson of Sisyphus. We call it "education."
On the other hand, there is virtue in learning how to play hard and not give up even though you are getting slaughtered.
And what better way to teach some life lessons in being thoughtful of others than to be on the other side of that experience?
Yes, it's no fun being on the wrong end of a losing score. So what? It's a damn GAME.
I also agree with the sentiment about it sometimes being more embarrasing to have a rule come into play to "protect you" from losing too bad than simply being beaten badly.
In wrestling, they stop the match if one person is up by 15 points and call it a technical fall. They also stop the match if someone gets pinned. A pin gets your team 6 points and the technical gets your team 5 so, in theory, if you are going to lose big you'd rather take the technical fall. Either scenario stinks but I know many wrestlers who are mortified by the thought of performing so badly that they invoked a rule that essentially says, "you are simply too bad to continue competing against this superior athlete. He hasn't pinned you yet but it's just too painful too watch anymore."
If traveler described the entire situation, then there simply isn't a problem - the coach is being a good sport and the other teams are simply outclassed. It happens.
If there are bad sportsmen running teams, their employers should simply discipline the employees for failing to teach sportsmanship well. After all, isn't that really the core of his/her job?
As noted above, if a coach is creating the problem by never substituting even when his team is far ahead, the solution is simple: pack that coach off to college and let him experience real competition.
Having played high school sports as a perinneal third-teamer, I would have wanted to play in these situations (alas, my teams were more on the receiving end!). Being denied that opportunity would certainly have hurt me and the other third-teamers and certainly would have been remembered.
The root core of the problem: how do you stop someone from being a jerk, if they're bound and determined to be a jerk?
That said, it seems to me the true problem here is that sports is big money and these days that consideration dribbles down all the way into elementary school. Under-privileged high school students are vying to catch a college recruiter's eye to get a shot at big league university sports and a chance at professional sports. Under these circumstances "gentlemanly" and "sportsmanlike" behavior is bound to seem a quaint relic. The first time I realized this was when I noticed the savage victory dances that professional athletes have become wont to perform after a touchdown, great hoop shot, etc. These are not gentlemanly or sportsmanlike, but perfectly reasonable behavior on the part of a poor kid who's making big bucks and getting more attention from the world than he ever thought possible. We're far from the day when a Harvard football player (undoubtedly from a privileged Yankee background) would cry when he learned that a competing player had cheated. Rules may be neccessary to obtain even the semblance of decent behavior in amateur sports. Perhaps this may even eventually temper the boorish behavior of athletes that are exposed to enforced proper sportsmanship.
That said, in our corner of Michigan, there are two factors that help keep huge blowouts from being an everyday occurance. The first is that the new, bigger league the school moved into a few years after I left places teams in divisions based on recent performance. The second is that there is a mercy rule: when the score gets over a certain amount, the clock does not stop running. This effectively means there is only about half as much playing time for the remainder of the game. It seems to work pretty well in practice.
I think a coach who plays his first string once his team is up by more than 4 touchdowns is clearly an ass; but a rule taking away the chance for the third and fourth string players a chance to shine on the field would be very wrong.
If your coaching staff and team are that good, why not just coach every other game? Still handicapping, I s'pose, but....
Beats bowing.
Cheers,
PGE
Perhaps the sports powers that be in the state could set up some sort of goofy bankruptcy rule. During the last seconds of a rout, a team can declare bankruptcy and the game would end in a scoreless tie. The power could then step in and break up the team that would have won and level the playing field. We could achieve the peaceful state of a level playing field with no winners, only losers.
Have we all gone mad?
If at any point in the second half a team gains a 45 point lead, the game ends. If this happens in the first half, then play continues until halftime.
This works pretty well to stop the beating. Actually, unevenly matched teams will often fight *harder* when down, trying not to win but just to make the game run the distance (a moral victory of sorts).
But first and foremost, the issue is sportsmanship. It's hard to legislate that, and judgement and punishment should really be conducted through mores and standards, not through laws. Make everything a law, and you remove any place for honor to exist.
What this rule essentially does is tell your second and third string players that they get to play, but not really play, since if they score it hurts the team. Suppose you've got a high school with so much talent that even the second string players have a shot at getting a look from a college or juco - and every state has a handful of highschool programs like that (FL and TX probably have many). Is it fair to tell that kid he can't exhibit his skills, because it might make the other team feel bad? Of course, not.
Also, if it makes someone feel better to have the opposing team take a knee four downs in a row, instead of actually trying, they don't need to be on a football field. Better to be blown out on your feet (or flat on your back, as the case may be) than to have the other team patronize you by handing over the ball every down. What kind of character do we want to inculcate in the losing team? An expectation to have everything handed to you in life, to have people lighten up on you, despite your own mediocrity or inferiority? Good luck with that attitude in the real world.
But the problem was JV. In the prep school, these JV players were almost all freshmen (or freshwomen here) many of whom weren't sure this was their sport or weren't very good. The public school JV teams they played were mostly juniors, were somewhat taller, and a lot better. The result was that the private school JV team would be beat. Always. And often by a lot of points, once going over 50 - mostly with the 1st string. The one school that held it to a 20 point lead and went into a stall the last couple of minutes, was really appreciated. But then this private school's varsity would come out and beat the varsity for the schools that just pounded their JV. My heart went out to these girls.
I have a lot more emphathy for a HS JV team that should be playing freshman teams, except that the school only has enough players for the two teams, than for, for example, college teams playing in the big conferences. Those schools could downshift their conference if the competition were too hot, plus often the team running up the score is trying for the national title, or at least a step up in the national polls.
I am a competitor. If lopsided victories are routine, my spirit of competition has already been dampened. As a vicotr, I am not "competing" -- it's more a dog-and-pony show if the opposition can't muster much opposition. If such outrageous "victories" occur more than once or twice a season -- or continue on for more than one season, assuming a freak "dynasty" at the high school level -- likely the system needs to be tinkered with to provide better parity, so the dominant team is actually experiencing true competition.
Again, this might be an American thing, inbred in physical sports, different from "game-playing" strategies of achieving victory.
Courant article
I didn't play, but I watched enough football to know that when the score approached blowout levels, the refs would tell the coaches that the clock would run continuously; timouts stop the play clock but not the game clock.
And, if the dominating team was keeping the starters in, they would find themselves with a lot of ticky-tack holding/false start/offensive pass interference calls.
As for the Onsides kick: I can understand wanting to practice an unusual maneuver against real opposition. If the stats of getting the kick back are what I think they are (around 33%) than I’d also see it as a nice gesture. You are giving the receiving team the ball on your side of the field in a legitimate manner.
The real problem I see with the rule is that one coach can “stick it” to another coach by having his team commit repeated safeties and forcing an investigation if not suspension. Also, if you are losing by 30 or 40 points, do you put in your backups because it doesn’t matter anyway?
I do really like the idea of refs ejecting starts after the winner is decided. I’m guessing if the players are following the coaches’ example, there really IS a lot of legitimate unsportsmanlike behavior going on anyway.
AS an aside, I played as backup goalie for a pretty good soccer team (at least in our league). One year I played 9 of 11 positions, and goalie wasn’t one of them. Another year I played in goal while our starter played offense. In that game, the coach said he’d make us run laps immediately following the game if we didn’t pass 10 consecutive times between shots.
Let the kids win at true competition, I'd say. Running up the score against weak defenses is not truly competing and most people watching can see that.
"Competition in sports is about getting the W or a display of grit when the game is on the line. Not one single college scout will say "hey this guy is competitive" when they see some quarterback throw 5 more touchdowns after leading by 3 touchdowns in the fourth quarter."
If we going to politicize, it's like the right setting up special situations: letting their kids kid themselves and think they are great competitors, even that they have experienced true competition and been been tested. Someday perhaps when they are tested, in a true physical match, they will fall well short and wonder why, when really perhaps they were overrated all along, in running up the score against non-competive (to them) opponents.
Think about it...
Also, Spurrier ran up the score on Kentucky, coached by Bill Curry - the final score was 70-6. Excessive? Perhaps, but Spurrier was still pissed because Curry had fired him when he was an assistant at Georgia Tech (on Christmas Eve, Spurrier says).
And maybe a nice relaxing game of boggle at the 40 for the second string.
Eight-man football in Kansas does have a mercy rule. 45 point lead at halftime or at any point in the second half ends the game. I think it's the only fair way to do it.
We also beat a team in basketball 112-46. We played second string all the second half but it didn't matter. The other team just couldn't play.
Some teams just suck and can't do any better. Should players just fall down?
Would that be the same Jack Cochran who refuses to put in said second and third string until the other team concedes defeat? This rule is a bad idea, but I can't say I feel sorry for him or his team.
Listen, first-stringers practicce, work-out, and sacrifice just as much as bench-warmers. Is it their fault that they are better than their opponents. Everyone's solution seems to be "substitute early on" and let the bench players play the balance of the game. That is unfair to the starters, who want to play as much of the game as they can.
Most of the teams that I played on, from pee-wee through college, were on the wrong side of blow-outs. It hurt, but as long as you gave your all, you were happy to be playing the game. I played on three powerhouse teams in my 15 year career, and while winner was great, I never actually got to play all that much. Usually by the second quarter we were up 3-4 TDs and were sitting. That was not much fun.
Spurrier once said that it was the other guys' job to stop his team, not his. I agree with that whole-heartedly. If I can't stop you from scoring, shame on me. Sportsmanship comes from giving your all, every play, cleanly, and knowing that you opponent is doing the same. I don't need a hand-out or mercy--this is competetion. Let the kids compete.
Listen, you can play with conference schedules, move teams around, etc., but the fact is blow-outs can happen at any time; some team is on fire while the other is all backfire. Those of us who play (or played) recognize that as a fact of life in sports.
Again, it is not the other guy's job to make things easy for me. Why is that so hard for some people to grasp.
And eventually, enough ass-kickings and you'll get fired up to turn the tables; the shoe will be on the other foot soon enough (unless you're Columbia. Poor, poor Columbia.)
The next year, UF and Spurrier went to the Sugar Bowl and spanked FSU for the Nat'l title. Lesson? Blow-outs build character.
Another Question - (personally I say put in everybody on the bench including the water boy in the game, but) if I'm up 54-0 at the beginning of the second half, and put in my fourth string what happens if the losers start to score? - it has happened. Do I let them tie the game before re-inserting the starters? I think the reason we play is that we love the game, and of course we love to win. But if mere losing, even losing badly makes you forget that, you probably ought to be trying something else, probably non-competitive.
I also remember a girls basketball team in the area that got these complaints. They would win by 60 or 70 points. People complained about running up the score, but if they didn't, the first string wouldn't get the practice for when they moved up to a more competitive team, maybe in the playoffs.
If we are going to apply this type of "taming down the winner", rather than applying to law school grades (or any grades), I'd rather apply it to $. Bill Gates shouldn't be allowed to earn any more money. He's too far ahead of the rest of us.
We beat another high-school team 73-0 once. We tried to stop in the 40 range. But they insisted on passing! Every time we intercepted, the interceptor scored. What was he supposed to do, fall over?
On the last play of the game, we were lining up for a field goal on a first down or something. The holder, in the huddle, threatened to run around end and score a touchdown because it would be easy. I told him if he tried, I would tackle him. When the play started, I didn't bother to block; I turned around and went back to the holder, who looked at me and shook his head; no, he wouldn't run. He just held the ball with his knee down; no kick. End of game.
When you are losing by 50 points, you go out and TRY HARDER. If you're losing by 70 points, you go out and damnitall you put forth your best effort.
And the other team puts forward theirs.
And you go home and think about how you can make yourself a better player.
There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with losing by 100 points. Or being pinned in the first fifteen seconds. Or coming in four minutes behind the second to last finisher in a three mile race.
It happens.
And you know what? When you're AHEAD by 70 points, you go out and you TRY TO WIN. You try to conquer your opponent within the rules of the game. Then when it's over, you shake their hand and you both can acknowledge that best efforts were put forth.
You can't humiliate an opponent who is playing their best game. You can only beat them.
-Michael
What if a coach (or player) losing 49-0 is so upset that he deliberately takes a safety? That's what I would do!
is when they are down. They are down where
your feet already are.
Hey, in the "game of life" there are bastards that will kick you when you're down, and it is your character that will sustain you. I think it's very easy to explain that to kids and it certainly provides a better teaching moment than "Oh, we're loosing, better quit."
The Right's position is, if you were whipped this time, practice more, damnit or find another sport.
If there has to be a rule to prevent blowouts, mercy rules are far safer. If the teams want to keep playing it is up to the stronger team to not go over the mercy score. Better of course to just let the coaches and refs muddle through.
1) In some sports, point differential matters for tournaments and playoffs. (soccer)
2) Player stats are an important aspect of getting a college scouts to come to an unnamed school.
3) What happens when the backup players are that much better? Do they not get to play?
As for "running dives for almost an entire half," what possible reason could there be for that? It doesn't make anybody happy -- not the people on the team having to take a dive (literally), not the people on the other team who have to sit and watch the opposing team take a dive, not fans. Players risk injury for no purpose. Players who actually like playing -- especially those who might not get to play much ordinarily -- get screwed out of their opportunity to do so. It is not "good sportsmanship" to quit. It's insulting. When I've competed, at sports or other games of skill, even against those better than me, I wanted to compete. I don't want them to "let me win." Not a game, and not a possession. Think about the poor losing team that finally (say) tackles the leading team's running back for a loss -- only to find out that it was phony, that he let himself be tackled.
Again, if it's that important not to run a lead past 50 points, put in a mercy rule.
Talk about unexpected. I actually stopped and stood there, trying to process what had just happened.
It should be on the losing coach - if he thinks there is something to be gained, great - let him compete to the best of his ability. If not, he can always forfeit.