No, it’s trying to win by too much. The point is that the game is already won. Trying “harder” to win doesn’t mean anything when you’re up 70-0 in the middle of the 4th quarter. Coaches who do this aren’t trying to win, they’re trying to put up big numbers while they win.
It’s not about goofing off, or asking players to play poorly, it’s about selecting strategies that respect your opponents, rather than selecting strategies that humiliate them. In football, it means running rather than passing, putting in the 2nd and 3rd string players, and letting the play clock run down between plays, instead of hiking as fast as possible. In basketball, it means playing the 2nd string players, and running down the shot clock before shooting. In baseball, it’s resting a few of your best players, and not stealing bases every chance you get.
The players that go out still play their best, still try their hardest, but follow a strategy that doesn’t score points quite as fast.
The rule is wrong. It’s wrong in spirit, it’s wrong in application, and it’s wrong in results.
THAT is what this is about.
Now, did anyone die? No. Was there a dramatic financial loss? No. But I’m not of the opinion that death or dramatic financial loss is a necessary prerequiste to criticize a plan, scheme, or rule.
This is the exact point I always make in these situations. Football is not a sport that you can play half-heartedly. At the amateur level, a lot of serious injuries can occur when the player isn’t playing at 100%.
Are there any high school coaches on here who can confirm this? I remember from my days, that if you’re not going to give each play 100% you’re likely to end up in the hospital.
Conservative: “Liberals are more likely to support a rule like this that punishes individual success and talent in the name of some kind of namby-pamby ‘egalitarianism’.”
Liberal: “Conservatives are more likely to support a rule like this that stigmatizes the leader of a good team in the name of some kind of macho ‘noble-warrior’ sportsmanship ritual to shield fragile male egos.”
Libertarians, anarchists, socialists and fascists can all doubtless come up with their own versions. It’s all about one’s ideological preconceptions.
Are you still objecting to the whole concept of a “mercy rule” or “anti-blowout” rule as you seemed to be doing in the OP, or do you agree with most of the other posters that such a concept is reasonable but was stupidly implemented in this particular case?
That’s the kind of nonsense that makes me want to toilet paper the fool who sponsored the rule (only use real toilets).
How frickin retarded can you get? Should the kids in a good school be prevented from doing well on their proficiency tests so as not to embarrass the crappy schools?
I would seriously like to see all the other schools in Connecticut boycott the next game in support of the coach.
Like the OP, though, you seem to be conflating “A doing better than B” with “A trouncing B by more than a given massive margin of victory”.
AFAICT, nobody is saying that a better team isn’t allowed to defeat a worse one, or even that a better team isn’t allowed to have a crushing victory over a worse one. The rule is only about how big the maximum crushing victory is allowed to be.
Sure, you can still be opposed to any kind of “anti-blowout” or “mercy” rule whatsoever if that’s how you feel about it. But let’s try to avoid the hyperbole of implying that such rules somehow “prevent” superior competitors from “doing well” at all. A 50-point maximum margin of victory still leaves plenty of room for the better team to show how good they are and hand the worse team a humiliating defeat.
Is the claim that only the first string can play 100%? Or do you mean to say that they will only play 100% if it’s a long passing play, instead of a run? I submit that the 2nd and 3rd stringers will put just as much effort in a blowout as the starters, since this is one of the few opportunities they will get to play and showcase their skills
Magiver, what would these other coaches be protesting, exactly? A non-suspension?
I’m with Bricker. The rule should be abolished. It takes away from one of the great lessons of high school athletics, which is that sometimes you must deal with assholes who get their jollies by beating up on the weakling so as to feel powerful. It sucks, but it’s the truth. They’re out there. I know quite a few personally.
When I was a senior in HS, my school made it to the state football championship. (Yay!) We unfortunately had to play St. Xavier (Louisville) high school, one of the best teams in the country. I think the final score was 63-9. ( :mad: ) And everyone on the team learned that you can work as hard as you possibly can and do everything in your power to win and still be humiliated. I believe that that’s a lesson high schoolers are old enough to handle, and indeed one that they should learn. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, survival of the fittest, etc.
I am not, however, defending intentionally running up the score. It shows a mind-blowing lack of class. And we shouldn’t (IMHO) prohibit things because they’re classless. I would, however, be fine with a stipulation requiring the coach who runs up the score to be forced to wear a shirt that proclaims “I overcompensate for my small penis and lack of testicular fortitude by humiliating children.” And maybe a similar bumper sticker superglued onto his car. That’s a solution I could embrace
And of course, the coach in the OP did nothing wrong, and I’m glad he was exonerated.
One of the best influences on my life was my participation in high school football. Learning to give my all and conduct myself as an example to the community.
At a time when a team has a accomplished certain victory, the primary objective, it is time to focus on other objectives. These can be play time for less talented team members and the preservation of starters. There is also an opportunity for a lesson in empathy and generosity. That has its own reward. But not if it is a rule. Think about Bill Gates for example.
If the US had a law that you cannot rack up a fortune beyond a billion dollars…
While I would support the Mercy Rule over the current Coach Suspension rule, I think that stopping the game early would deprive 2nd & 3rd string players the opportunity to play in a real game.
What no one seems to have mentioned is that the coach probably could have avoided this whole problem if he had pulled his first string offense after the first three touchdowns. Obviously his defense had the opposition beaten cold. And if the other guys did manage to score a few points, easy enough to put the starters back in. IOW, given the rule (of which he must have been aware), he shouldn’t have waited till the end of the first quarter (and five touchdowns) to start doing something to avoid triggering it.
As for why they wrote the rule this way, an obvious explanation is that it avoids questions of interpretation. Being a jerk or some other subjective test can be argued back-and-forth and assumes an ability to prove the coach’s motiviation. An arbitrary rule, by contrast, is easy to interpret and enforce.
BTW, I have no particular sympathy for a mercy rule of any kind. But if Connecticut wants to have one, I’m just sayin’ this one ain’t so stupid as most people posting on this thread have argued.
I know. John Mace is one of the posters who I always read and I am well aware of his views. I was trying to be funny and was going to follow up with something a little more witty, but work became crazy and was not able to get back until now. Ces’t la vie.
Yes, you are right. This has the stink of misguided liberalism all over it. I say this as a liberal. Conservatives these days would have passed a law that mandated prayer for the losers in the view that God was angry with them. Either that, or the floating of bonds to build the losing team a new gym that they could practice in, coupled with a tax cut for the parents so they could buy some more gear for the tykes and an SUV to tote it in.
I agree. Finally, just to be clear, I do think that John is in this group (REASONABLE people) and not an Bushco apologist. Anyone who has been paying attention over the last several years here should know that John’s views are more nuanced than that. He is not an apologist, is able to think for himself, is critical of the current administration, and yet, he is still usually wrong.
You’ve all explained this, I know, but I still don’t understand it. If you’re winning, you’re winning. If you’re winning by 50 pts or 70 pts or whatever, then well, the other team’d better pull up their socks, hadn’t they?
A team’s expected to field their worst players, “kneel down” on plays etc. and so forth so the other team don’t feel too bad about losing? I still just don’t get what this is about.
I was watching an Aussie Rules match the other night, where the winning team beat the losing team by nearly 100 points. Toward the end of the match they were just handballing and pissing around, and not trying to even play properly anymore. They knew they had it in the bag. To me that’s more humiliating and un-sportsmanlike than continuing to play normally, as if the score wasn’t a consideration.
I know, I know. AFL and “Football” aren’t the same game, but they’re both potentially high scoring games, and the rule could easily apply to either.
I don’t know about other places, but here in the US, it’s just considered good sportsmanship…NOT to deliberately goof off & look like you are taunting them…this would definitely be considered even more rude. But in High School games, especially, pulling the starters out is considered the best way to handle such a situation, I think. The idea is to get playing time for players who normally don’t get to play. You aren’t benefitting the starters much, anyway, if they are so much better than the opposing team. So, you put people in who are more at the level of the opponents, and that way they can all play a real game, but just at a different level of skill.
I know here in Illinois, there was a coach who would refuse to pull his players until the fourth quarter, even if they were up by 50 points or more. He was disliked enough that an opposing coach, if he wanted to be as big of a dick, could have one of his players cheap shot the other team’s star running back or quarterback, finishing his season or career. I certainly wouldn’t be HAPPY if it had happened, but that coach did open his team up to that possibility with his penchant of leaving starters in during a blowout.
Yeah, if I was a coach, that would piss me off, too, although of course I don’t condone injuring a player on purpose! But it is pretty low to coach like this, and it really does not teach the players what they are supposed to be learning about competition & fair play…it’s great to win, but not to humiliate people for no reason but because you can. As I said earlier, I would just try to use it as an example to my team about how NOT to play and how NOT to coach.
BTW, I am in Illinois, too…is this coach in the Chicago/Suburban area, or downstate? (Just out of curiosity.)
