I’ve got no dog in this hunt. I think that there are good arguments to be made on both sides of this issue. However, I do not understand the following lines of argument:
These make it sound like football is so hazardous that the exposure of individual players must be minimized for their own safety. So when the good players on the team have risked themselves to achieve an acceptable lead, it is time to send in the less experienced players to spread the risk around, or something. Amazing that we even let the starters go out there at all, what with it being so dangerous. Seriously, though, why should I believe that the risk of injury is greater for the starters than for the second string? Or is the argument that injuries to the second string are less serious or important?
I wonder, did the Burch coach put in his second string when it became clear that he didn’t have any chance of winning?
I’m not arguing in favor of running up the score, and I think that the Matewan coach was a jerk. But what kept the Burch coach from forfeiting, if this was all so offensive to the spirit of the game? Deny the Matewan assholes their record, with ZERO risk to the health and well-being of the players on BOTH sides. Or they could have just provided no offense and no defensive coverage at all and let Matewan run up a 300-0 score with a 5000 yard rushing record, just to emphasize how stupid the whole thing was.
The answer to the first question is a resounding YES.
As for the second question, I don’t know about that particular game, but generally speaking, yes that is the norm.
As a quick example, this past Sunday the Jets got carved up by the Jaguars pretty good. (The Jags, incidentally, did indeed appear to be running up the score late in that game.) The Jets pulled some of their key starters and let the backups get some experience.
As for football being dangerous, it very much is. Injuries happen all the time. It is actually uncommon for a team to play a game without somebody getting hurt.
I realize that football is dangerous. I realize that a starting QB with a torn rotator cuff is more of a problem for the coach than a second-string QB with a torn rotator cuff. Either way, it sucks to be the player with the injury. I will need to see some data before I believe that a) starting players are more likely to be injured per minute of playing time, or b) starters’ injuries are more likely to be serious.
Perhaps my ignorance just needs to be fought here, since I don’t follow football: I was just objecting to what I saw as a peculiar viewing of the risks. I would believe that coaches would pull starters as they began to get tired, because they would get sloppy and more prone to injury. So how common is it in high school, college, and professional football for this to happen? Does the starting lineup routinely play all the way through a game? In a hard-fought game against an equal opponent, would a high-school coach pull his starters after the third quarter just to bring in a fresh second string? From what I have seen, it seems more likely that they wait until the starter gets dinged up and then replace him.
In football, there is generally a decent amount of substitutions, sometimes for just a play or two at a time to give a winded player time to recover. Rarely does a quarterback get pulled for tiredness. It’s also rare to replace an entire string of people at once, hockey style.
When it comes to a blowout, generally you pull starters because their health is more important to your ability to win the next game than the health of the backup. Also, backup players need a chance to play and hone their skills, better to do that when the game is all but decided (either way) than when the outcome is in question. So, injuries to starters are not more serious to the individual, but are more serious to the team’s prospects.
You are correct in that the danger is exactly the same for the health of the individual. The reason to pull a starter is not to reduce overall health risk, but rather to minimize the risk to the most important parts of the team.
Your instincts are again correct. I would point out that NFL teams have a maximum size of 53 players, and only 45 can be dressed for a game. (Dressed means they are eligible to take the field that game.) Since 11 players start on both sides of the ball, plus you have a punter and kicker, that means you have 24 starters. Since you can only dress 45, you don’t even have the ability to replace all your starters.
On the college level you can dress 70+ guys, and I’m sure you could if you had enough warm bodies on the high school level, so substitutions there are a bit of a different animal. Even still, it’s almost certain that for each position there is a clear best player, so when the game is no longer in doubt, it is prudent to pull them and let the backups be the cannon fodder.
And you never know; that backup could play so well in garbage time that he moves up the depth chart and gets a shot at being the starter. If he continues to play well, he could then become the full time starter and be afforded the luxury of sitting out during garbage time of blowouts.
Many fantasy players are jumping on Leon Washington this week because he played so well during garbage time against the Jaguars on Sunday. Whether that will translate into a starting job for him remains to be seen.
I have no idea. What usually happens is that the team that is losing continues to try to score, even if a win is out of the question. That means playing your best players. At the end of a game, when the starters are exhausted, the second team may well be your best players at that particular moment.
Sometimes in the pros you will see the back-up QB take some snaps if a game is out of hand, but he will still be running an offense that is trying to score.
What is offensive to the spirit of the game is usually more the purview of armchair QB’s such as myself rather than coaches engaged in the heat of the battle. Forfeiting a game with able-bodied players is very rarely done, and then usually when a coach feels that his team is in danger.
A previous poster has suggested that they should have walked off the field with McCoy 25 yards short of the record. Perhaps there would have been some ironic satisfaction in that, but refusing to play is an offense against the game as well.
My ISP is down right now so I cannot go back and read the article, but I am not at all sure that the Burch coach realized what was happening right away.* I’m sure he expected Matewan’s starters to be sitting, so the fact that they weren’t might have been a tip-off. But when they went to the no-huddle and refused to field punts he must have realized that they were trying to rack up the yards for McCoy. Still, he and coach Kinder had been friends for years. My guess is that he was so caught off guard he was not sure what to think. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts he had no idea what the national high school rushing record was. As I have tried to explain, it is basically a useless statistic. At any rate, he would have been too busy calling plays and overseeing his team to think about making some kind of statement.
Look, this is not a national disgrace. I’m pitting Kinder for being a Great Flaming Asshole, and for embarassing his opponents and his colleague for a stupid reasons, not the least of which was to deflect criticism from his use of an ineligble player previously in the year.
*Ahh, here it is.
*Hunt’s team had lost its first four games of the season, and it hadn’t scored against Matewan in seven years. But never had Burch suffered this sort of embarrassment. Midway through the fourth quarter, McCoy ran for a 77-yard touchdown that was negated because of a holding penalty. McCoy smiled, trotted back from the end zone to the line of scrimmage and, on the very next play, took another hand-off for an 87-yard score.
“It was kind of unbelievable to watch it happening,” Hunt said. "With about six minutes left in the game, I heard one of their assistant coaches yell, ‘One more should be enough!’ And here I am, my team losing by like 60 points, and I’m thinking, ‘One more was enough two hours ago.’ "*
*Hunt gathered his assistant coaches with about four minutes left in the game to form a response strategy, and together they watched McCoy run in a 25-yard touchdown to cement his record. Hunt pointed at about seven Matewan players, who screamed and danced in the end zone. “We have to do something about this,” he said.
“I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of games each season where a record like this could happen, but it’s just about who has the greed and selfishness to go out and do it,” Hunt said. “It’s not about who has the talent. It’s about who has the greed and disrespect.”
Before the clock ran out, Hunt called over one of his senior captains, Joshua Croaff, and asked the linebacker if he thought the two teams should keep with precedent and shake hands at the end of the game. “The only way I’m shaking their hands,” Croaff said, “is if I’m wearing a handcuff.”
When the game ended, Matewan players walked to midfield expecting to cordially shake hands with a bunch of kids who lived 10 miles down the road. Standing on the visiting sidelines, Croaff hesitated for a second, as if deciding whether or not to meet his opponents. Then he turned in the opposite direction, motioning for his teammates to follow. Burch players jogged directly to the locker room, leaving behind a field where two things had been broken: a record and a tradition
Leaving the kid in for the record is suspect, but I might be willing to give him a free pass. It was the NO HUDDLE and letting the punts roll (a la Bo Jackson and Techmo Bowl) that solidifies it as a punk ass move.
Basically they didn’t keep the starters in, they kept the starters in and even FURTHER modified their offense as to accrue maximum rushing yards.