Never mind, I see you are in Rockford…sorry for being dense! 
Actually, Sarahfeena , I used to live in Yorkville (southwest of Aurora), and the coach I am talking about coached at Morris at the time. I will go on record as saying he’s not a terrible coach RECORD wise, but his sportsmanship certainly could have used some work, leaving starters in when they were already up by 40 points, and the game in the FOURTH quarter. He did coach Plainfield North this year, but recently resigned after being suspended by the IHSA for allegedly recruiting players. Public schools cannot do this, however private schools are allowed to go a certain distance outside their district.
I think you’re passing over the fact that this happened at the high school level. For pro teams, the incentives are different, and winning pretty much is ‘the only thing’. At high school on the other hand, one of the main reasons for having a sports program (in theory) is to teach young people responsibility, teamwork, sportsmanship and general good character. Deliberately trying to humiliate your opponents goes against all of that. A lot of coaches (as well as parents and school administrators) seem to forget that, which is what caused the rule to be passed in the first pace.
Still, poorly thought out rule. A mercy rule would be much better.
Personal anecdote: I never saw this kind rule used on a coach, but I did see a coach use it on his players. Our town had just started its soccer program, and the high school team got absolutely pummeled by everyone else (who’d been playing for years). In one game, they were losing 15-0 (every game was a shut-out; their first goal in four years made the front page of the school paper), when the opposing coach told his players that anyone who scored another goal would be benched for the following game.
Geez, he sounds like a real peach of a guy.
Nonsense. These are high school students, not 2nd graders. They’re not stupid and the reality of a 49-0 trouncing is the same as a 60-0 loss. Do you think the humiliation is better when the loss becomes news? It’s now a topic of discussion on the internet.
It’s condescending enough to throw in the 3rd string early in the grade. To what extent can you limit scoring before it becomes more humiliating than the actual score? What if the coach made his team stand perfectly still while the other team scored or had his team run a touchdown on their behalf? I can think of an unlimited number of scenarios that would make the actual score irrelevant.
The coach made an honest attempt at sportsmanship without making it worse. He honored the spirit of the rule (as childish as it is) and his suspension was lifted because of it. Patronizing High School students only makes the situation worse.
In the spirit of Joe Torre’s quote, why the hell is this put in the hands of the winning team? Why not give the losing team the option to resign? Don’t want to lose by 50? Resign when you’re down by 40. That simple! Team wants to keep playing and see if maybe they can score one symbolic touchdown? Play on!
You could put in a few regulations to prevent resignations done just to piss the other team off (e.g., resigning with 1 minute left; resigning when the opposing team is just about to score, etc.).
It seems so much simpler and fairer than arbitrary mercy rules and punishing winning coaches. If the other team’s continued scoring upsets you so much, stop trying to score yourself!
In the 1940 NFL Championship Game the Chicago Bears beat the Washington Redskins 73-0. Nowadays something like that would never happen because people would be screaming about poor sportsmanship, when the reality is that it was for the league championship, the teams were the two best in football that year, and the Bears had no obligation to lighten up just so the 'Skins could get on the board. No, their job was to win, period.
That is the prototypical example of why running-up-the-score rules should not exist. If you get beat to the tune of 50+ points this year it gives you the measure of how far you have to go the next year. Furthermore, kids (and everybody else, for that matter) need to learn that in a contest people win and people lose, and sometimes they lose big. The world is not fair. For that matter, why don’t we institute a rule that a boxer will be suspended if he knocks out his opponent in the first two rounds on the grounds of abject humiliation? Wouldn’t want to teach children that some people are better than others at things, would we? Nah, it’s far better to let them have the illusion of equality their entire lives so that the humiliation and embarassment is much greater when they get older and learn the truth at a most inopportune time rather than allowing them to get a proper measure of their abilities early on.
Good thing they don’t allow the referee to stop the bout when one boxer is too beaten down to defend himself. It wouldn’t give him enough chance to realize how lousy he is, once he gets out of the hospital.
I somehow have the feeling that the kids losing 45-0 aren’t actually thinking they’re just as good as the winning team if they get a chance to play slightly more competitive ball against the third stringers.
That’s not what is in question in this case or in 99% of the cases. Coaches with a large point spread will usually throw in the 2nd and 3rd string so that their OWN team gets some field time. It’s a win/win situation for both teams. That was done in this situation and is probably why the suspension was lifted.
The rule of 50 was an attempt to codify good sportsmanship and it was directed at a specific coach in Connecticut who ignored the basic premise I listed above. There is no end to such attempts and I expect it will get worse over time.
Again, High School kids aren’t stupid. They know when they’re being patronized so it’s a matter of common sense that you don’t treat them as you would 2nd graders (who lack the capacity to deal with losing). If coaches follow this rule to the letter they are in a position to completely humiliate the opposing team. It’s not the score, it’s the intention that makes up good sportsmanship.
I’m not Bricker, but I say it’s wrong having a rule like that. Sports is about competition and doing your best. If your team is so bad that you can lose by 50 points, then you deserve to lose by 50 points. There is no shame in losing to a team with more talent and skill. I think playing a game where you know your opposition is playing around not trying to score is more embarassing than losing 75-0. At least playing against 3rd and 4th string guys doing their best will let you gauge your skill level against them.
Bassick lost 0-40 in the game after the 0-56 loss. I don’t think that they were surprised by either loss.
And because one moment of bad luck can put one of your starters on the injured list when you’re up against a more effective opponent and really need your best.
Of course, there’s a risk of that happening even if the other team isn’t deliberately targeting anyone.
And it would serve the coach right if it caused him to lose future games that he otherwise would have won.
That’s also an excellent point. Generally I think it’s just good coaching to rotate your players when you have the opportunity to do so.
Yes. Well, not morally wrong, but “wrong” in the sense of “unwise.”
Apart from the overall wrongness above, it applies an arbitrary ceiling beyond which the presumption is that the coach was acting improperly. Even if you assume that limiting one side’s efforts by rule is a good goal, this application of it is flawed, since it created a presumptive punishment where all agree that none was appropriate.
That’s a rather inept and short-sighted summary. By analogy, you might argue that a system which allows police to arrest someone on a hunch that they are guilty of some crime is not flawed in result since, after languishing in jail, being tried and convicted, the sentence was overturned by the Supreme Court. In other words, you focus myopically on the final slice of “result,” and draw your conclusion from there. In fact, the RESULT of the rule is the entire process. Here, the result of the rule was a coach who was faced with the anxiety of a looming suspension during his game and in the days that followed it; a coach that made his decisions on the field in at least some fear of the rule being applied to him, and who had to weigh his own innate sense of the right thing to do against the dictates of the rule. The mere fact that he happened to follow his conscience and the powers that be happened to decide he was correct in doing so does not ameliorate the negative effects of the rule before that point.
I really thought high school sports teams everywhere were put into “classes” like “class A” etc to match up the teams as best as possible for good, competitive games. Sometimes a team will bomb, like my high school team did once in the state championship (about a 40 point spread. IIRC). A guy that came into my work recently to buy a camera told me his son played football for a local high school. The team was really good, and no teams in the area would play them anymore. The team had to travel or have teams come to them to play. He was buying a camera because his son was going to Vegas with the football team.
So IMO, they should match the teams for skill level better or broaden the scope and travel if possible. It’s not really fun for the team that wins 50-0 because obviously it wasn’t much of a challenge. And of course the other team isn’t out there having fun.
In New Mexico there are five classes for all sports and other activities, determined by school size. A, AA, AAA, AAAA, and AAAAA. The biggest schools are 5A, the smallest are A. So, for instance, all the public high schools (I think 11) in Albuquerque are 5A because enrollment in all of them is 2000+ as are the ones in some of the larger towns like Carlsbad, Clovis, Hobbs, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces. The A teams are from places like the Mescalero Apache reservation, Fort Sumner, and Espanola.
However, this does not mean that the teams within classes are going to be equal, just that the school sizes are approximately equal, which means that funding and equipment should be approximately equal as well. I can say that my high school football team, which was a 5A school, absolutely sucked all four years I was there. And I got to see them suck almost every single game for four years because I was in the marching band. On the other hand, our basketball teams weren’t bad and the soccer teams were really, really good, especially boys soccer.
And especially with high school ball, because if you can give the freshmen and sophmore third-stringers some game time now, they’ll be more experienced next year. There’s lots of sound coaching reasons to rotate out the first string that aren’t sportsmanlike at all, just pragmatic.
It doesn’t work as well, perhaps, but there are still unwritten “mercy” rules in baseball, including the big leagues. The later in the game and the bigger the deficit–don’t steal or try for a “close” extra base, take certain pitches, that kind of thing.
In the Bigs, try stealing second when your team is up by 11 runs in the 8th inning and see what happens the next time you’re at the plate. It’s likely the opposing pitcher will assess your penalty for violating the unwritten code.
We had the opposite problem when I was in school…
Our 1st string (RBs and LBers specifically) were so dominant that we were often up by 30+ points in the first quarter. Our coach, being a standup guy, then pulls them for our benchwarmers.
Problem was, by week four our starters had played no more than 4 quarters in the first three games of the season. He was stuck between giving his good players deserved playing time and being a good sport. Eventually his solution was to create a 3rd string he nicknamed the “Rowdy Raiders” consisting of a couple 3rd stringers and 1st stringers playing ridiculously out of position. They were fun to watch.
I’ll add that lots of leeway needs to be given.
Being up big is also very valuable as you are able to try new things. Being able to practice a new formation, new routes, and new plays in a game situation would be very valuable for better competition down the road.
Obviously though, starters still in the game up 62-0 with 3 minutes left is both bad sportsmanship AND bad coaching (injury possibilities).