It’s considered poor sportmanship, especially in areas like high school and college where the talent differences between the teams can be tremendous.
In pro sports, there have been many memorable comebacks (most notable is the Buffalo Bills comback from a 35-3 halftime deficit against the Houston Oilers with a second string QB and RB), but the talent is generally more evenly distributed. I recall a quote, which I’d like to attribute to Joe Torre, that went, “I’ll stop trying to score when they stop trying to score.”
IIRC the last time the net points tiebreaker was relevant in a playoff race was a few years ago between Green Bay and someone. I don’t recall exactly when it was - I just remember watching the highlights on Primetime, where they were cutting back and forth between the games, as each team heard about the scores going up in the other game.
However, I think this was before the most recent changes to the tiebreaking formulas. As it is now, it looks extremely unlikely that the net points tiebreaker will be used. It’s now after several best-record tiebreakers and strength of schedule.
I agree that not trying to upstage your opponent shows good character, but in the example you chose Jacksonville was just being smart. The game’s over if they kneel; if they try to score there’s a (small) chance for Pittsburgh to come back.
Beyond a point it’s just humiliating. That’s why boxers don’t punch an opponent who is on his knees, for example. Winning is one thing, but it’s not the only thing.
Yes, but there are certain situations where it is considered bad sportsmanship, such as when a team has enough time to run a play that might result in a touchdown at the end of the game, but they kneel down & don’t run the play instead.
Another example is if you keep your starting players in when the score has already been run up so high that there is pretty much no chance they could catch up…this is when you start bringing your benchwarmers in, give them a chance to play, and keep the score within some reasonable level.
The point is to win. If you have a huge lead, like 49-0, it looks like you’re just trying to embarrass your opponents, which is not sporting. When a team has a big lead like that, they generally remove their best players, stop throwing passes, don’t call timeouts to stop the clock, and don’t run complicated plays. Things like that.
I should mention, though, that IMO, these are things that coaches ought to do on their own to teach good sportsmanship to their players, NOT the kind of thing that should be put down as rules in a league. If some asshole ran the score up 90-0 on my team by leaving his starters in, etc., I would just use that as an example for them of someone NOT to emulate in their own lives.
There’s a difference between kicking an opponent when they’re down and poor scheduling of good vs poor teams.
I think the 50 point ends the game is a fair rule, but punishing the coach when it’s not his fault the other team is completely incompetent is not fair. How do you know the other team isn’t deliberately playing bad so the winning coach faces suspension?
That works in football and basketball, as you can substitute your starters back in.
That doesn’t work in baseball. Even with large early leads, you keep about 2/3rds of your starters in. Your opponent can score late the same as you did early, and you can’t bring in someone you took out.
I agree with all of these general sentiments, but I don’t see how they really apply to a rule attempting to discourage a team from beating another by more than 50 points. Seems to me that even with such an “anti-blowout” rule in place, there’s still plenty of leeway for teams to exercise competition, lose some and win some, play some non-close games, and avoid “an artificial environment of equality”.
spazattak and others have a good point that other types of “anti-blowout” or “mercy” rules might work better and be more fair than suspending the coach of the winning team, but I don’t see a strong case against having any type of “anti-blowout” rule at all.
I agree that players shouldn’t be asked to deliberately fumble or fall down or whatever. But wouldn’t the starting players—the ones that scouts would presumably be looking at—have enough of a chance to show their skills earlier in the game, before the anti-blowout rule comes into effect? How much more would a scout learn about a player just from watching them run up the score against a paper-thin opposition in the fourth quarter, anyway? (In fact, if the teams are severely mismatched and the opposition’s totally inadequate, will a scout really get any useful estimate of the winning team’s skills in competition? Wouldn’t it be kind of like watching them run practice drills instead of playing a game?)
What’s the big deal here? Conn. had a problem with an idiot coach running up the score so they instituted a rule to stop it. The coach in question didn’t run up the score, therefore he didn’t get suspended. What’s the problem?
You play your worst players, give your bench a workout, and run simple plays up the middle. The problem with that is carelessness leads to injuries. The mercy rule is better.
The problem is the middle step you’ve left out, the one just before “didn’t get suspended,” the one where he has to rely on the opposing coach and the game officials to show up, on their own time, and rebut the presumption that the 56-point win rule created.
But if you want to be snarky, Eyer8, then let me ask you: as between liberals and conservatives, if you had to guess, which group would be more likely to create and support a rule like this? Be honest.
That said, I will point out the obvious: both REASONABLE liberals and REASONABLE conservatives will likely see some sort of problem with this rule. It’s not a liberal v. conservative issue, because to attribute support of such rules to “the liberals” would be a strawman the size of Cincinatti.
I still don’t understand what the big deal is. So the ref and the opposing coach had to take an hour out of their life to go down and testify. Actually, I don’t even know if they even had to do that. For all I know it could have been a 5 minute phone call. I mean is that really what this thread is about? The hour or so that the coaches and the refs needed to spend to deal with this?