I have been a Head Coach for Youth football the last 20 years. Our league has used the 35 point rule for most of those years and its really never been much of an issue. I have been fortunate over the years to be on the “good side” of the score more often than the “bad side” and I have always used it as an opportunity to get the kids that rarely get to touch the ball in a game situation a chance to run it for real. Its always a big thrill for them and the parents are very appreciateive of the chance to see their son run the ball. And several of them have even scored given them probably their biggest highlight of their football career.
I don’t mind the idea of encouraging teams to avoid blow outs. The fine thing sticks in my craw. I think I’d be really tempted to try to win by 36 points and then quit my coaching job and refuse to pay the fine. But, I’m funny that way.
It’s really about treating your opponent with respect. The opponent is an integral part of having the ability to play a game, without them, you’re just playing with yourself.
Some folks feel that mercy, not taking the fullest possible advantage of your opponent’s weaknesses, is not respectful. Others feel that trying to crush and humiliate your opponent on the field is not respectful.
With youth sports, I tend towards the second option. I also think that the coach of a youth team that is way, way up in the score who calls deep pass plays and runs a full blitz package isn’t doing it to respect the opponent. He’s doing it to make himself feel like a big man, the genius who molded these children into football juggernauts.
For 7-11 year olds, the priority should be learning the fundamentals of the game and having fun. The competitive aspect should be downplayed.
When they get to be 12 and 13, then competition can assume more importance, because they’ve presumably got the fundamentals down pat, and this is the pool of kids that the middle schools and high schools will be drawing from. Still, you have to have a way to deal with the buttheads who think they’re Chip Kelly, though fines seem a bit drastic.
I don’t get it. If you don’t want blowouts, you make a rule that if the score differential ever gets above some point, it’s a win and no further score will be recorded (further unrecorded play optional). If you have such a rule, then the fine rule never comes into play, because it becomes by definition impossible to get a score differential that high. If you don’t have such a rule, why the heck not? As it is, all you’re doing is setting up really perverse incentives that don’t do anyone any good.
I agree, putting the egis on the coach to slow the kids down is just stupid.
Just zero out the scoreboard and let the kids keep playing.
I agree with almost all of this! A young grade schooler is too young to appreciate the competitive nature of sports. He’s also too young to truly be effective playing the sport, he’s just learning. But by Middle School, you have kids who have matured enough to see their futures in front of them, and need to be prepared for it. Getting you butt kicked in sports impresses upon a kid the work needed to succeed in life, and to improve what he needs to improve.
I see your point. I do. But I cannot see letting up on your opponent and stop trying to score as anything other than disrespect.
To be beaten is one thing. To be pitied by your opponent, or by rule, is insult to injury.
You are spot on- respecting an opponent is a very important part of any game and not teaching that skill results in just being known as an a$$ later in life. Additionally, I think that rules like these will also keep tensions in the stands down.
With regard to good sportsmanship, I was playing in a men’s indoor league soccer game (6 v 6) a month back and we’re a new team just getting used to the gameplay. We tend to be older and don’t have the speed of some of the younger teams. After going three goals down, you can add an extra player. Well being clearly outmatched, we were down 11-1 with 10 minutes to play and they are still running the breakaways at top speed and hammering the ball home, but then they decide to really up the ante- two bicycle kicks, a couple of behind the opposite leg shots, and various other self-congratulatory shots (without minimal passing and no attempt to slow down their game). Finally they put in someone’s girlfriend (she was pretty good) and just had her park 5 feet in front of our goal and just continually passed to her. We were just getting steamed with every additional insult and finally one of our defensemen just plowed her over before the pass could get there. The ref finally just called the game and recorded the score 2-1 in their favor. They were pissed! But they were just being jerks.
It’s a matter of scale, there’s a wide gulf between falling down and letting the Down Syndrome kid run into the end zone and going Cobra Kai “Sweep the Leg!” on your outmatched opponent.
In every sport there are strategic decisions the coach can make in a blowout that both indicate respect for the game and respect for the opponent.
In football, that means you focus on running plays on offense. You put in the 2nd and 3rd string players. On defense, you can stop blitzing and use a Prevent defensive package. These are all perfectly legitimate strategic choices that coaches use all the time for a variety of reasons, and they can be used without having to “let up” on your effort.
I’m not exactly a fan of this rule, it’s too black and white in a situation that’s pretty much all grey. In Football you can be up 21 points by the end of the first quarter, and now you have 3 quarters to avoid scoring 2 touchdowns. At that point, the best players on your team can’t even play at all anymore, which is unfair to them, and you practically have to give points to the opposition just to allow a semblance of normal game play.
The only problem I have with that rule is, you know that, while officially the final score is 35-0, the score as far as the kids are concerned will include the “uncounted” points.
I have heard the “you can’t prevent running up the score without telling third-string players not to score” excuse too many times. There are all sorts of ways to solve this “problem” - here’s one; if you score and you are ahead by more than 35 points, then instead of a kickoff, the other team starts with the ball at midfield.
Then again, did anybody ask how the kids feel about this? Maybe they don’t mind a 56-7 drubbing that much, if it was against a clearly better team. I remember a high school game where the score was something like 60-0 and the coach of the leading team was still rushing punts (he stopped when, because of a miscommunication, six players rushed a punt, which was blocked and returned for a touchdown), and I thought at the time, “Don’t rush the punt - if they punt, they’re not particularly happy about you running up the score, but if they fake a punt, then they’re still playing the game and you should do the same thing.”
Also, at least for the older kids, there’s another alternative; the rules allow that the game can be shortened, or even end early, if both coaches agree. Hopefully, the kids are old enough to know the difference between “quitting” and “protecting the players”.
I do not like the rule.
Ever play raquetball? You get better by playing guys who are better than you and getting your ass kicked. Granted, it’s not much fun for the better player but if he eases up on you, he does you a disservice.
In football, an ass-kicking can be what your team needs to spur them on to work harder and get better.
And a 35 point lead is not insurmountable. Difficult, but not impossible. You are always supposed to play like the other team still has a chance to beat you, because they do.
Now is the weaker team weaker because they are badly coached or just physically overmatched? Are team members chosen by coaches or assigned in a random draft? I have seen great size disparity in High School football, but in a youth league?
All that said, there are unwritten rules that coaches should know. When you have a big lead, you run the ball and try to run out the clock. You do not go big pass plays or trick plays. You do not go for it on 4th down if up by 4 or 5 scores.
All players should know about sportsmanship. Excessive celebration always makes you look like an ass, but especially against a weaker team. If a player violates this, it’s the coaches fault for no schooling them or taking them out of the game.
I don’t know about the league in the story, but in my son’s case, the Jr league is basically a feeder organization for the high schools. So, it is generally based on what high school you are zoned to go to geographically. In our case, there are tryouts, and the coaches can cut kids who they feel may be at risk (physically) or who they feel are not ready, for whatever reason. But, it is limited to the kids in the area, generally.
Keep in mind all coaches in these youth leagues are volunteers. So you have a combination of volunteer coaches, and whatever the community has at that time in terms of kids. Invevitably, there are going to be a mix of kids’ sizes and experience, and differing levels of coaching experience and organization as well.
No problem. It’s just that I have been in discussions where people literally feel that way. They are not the people that I want to be around or to have anything to do with coaching youth sports.
It’s not just racquetball. In any sport you get better by competing against those that are better than you as long as it isn’t a mismatch. An amateur boxer getting knocked out by a pro with the first punch only teaches him to never box (maybe a good thing but you get my point). The beauty of competition is a good match. I would rather see two evenly matched pee wee hockey teams battle it out than to watch a mismatch among pros.
I always told my kids that losing wasn’t failure, it is a lesson on what it takes to win. “Did you learn something today? Now let’s go over it. Here’s what you have to learn to do better in order to win and you had better want to win or go do something else and don’t waste everyone’s time and money.” (Unmotivated kids in ice hockey, due to the nature of the sport, are one of the biggest wastes of time and money).
Your comments on unwritten rules and sportsmanship are spot on. It’s apparent from the behavior of too many athletes that those lessons didn’t get learned at the youth level. Basketball is the worst with football next in line.
The unwritten rules certainly exist with the best coaches at the college and pro levels. Those guys know that what goes around comes around.
People hate on Nick Saban because they resent his success and yea, Nick looks out for Nick first. Still, the guy can coach, at least at the college level. In the 2011 Citrus Bowl his talent loaded, underachieving team was having their way with Michigan State’s less talented, overachieving team. Nick had every reason to run up the score but he pulled in the reigns. He was visibly upset when a 3rd string running back blew through the middle for a 62 yard score against a gassed defense late in the game. I can hardly blame the kid for wanting to score in a bowl game but that wasn’t Saban’s intent. There was a lot of bad blood when Saban left MSU but he wasn’t going to use the game to settle any past scores with the MSU fans that hated him.
To sum up, in following the thread, I think most of us think the fine and suspensions are an overreach. There are better ways to address the matter. A lot have been presented. It sounds like the people that came up with that solution are a bunch of people that know little about sports, competition, sportsmanship and the unwritten rules of athletic competition.
There was never been a thirty-five point comeback in the NFL. There has been one thirty-five point comeback in the 103 year history of the NCAA. Now I don’t know the stats for youth football but I have to figure they’re not much better.
When a team has a thirty five point lead, you might as well call the game because statistically speaking there’s a better chance the players will be attacked by wild animals then there is of the trailing team winning.
This is the solution I’ll agree with, similar to the 10-run rule in Little League. Give the losing team one more possession and if they don’t close the gap, end the game. You can’t put your second- or third-stringers in and tell them, “Don’t try. Take the handoff and fall down.” Better just to end the game.
The Houston Oilers blew a 32 point lead in 1992. What is really bad about that loss is that they did it in the playoffs and in overtime. Worst blown lead in NFL history and they did it when it really counted.
I know. I was at that game.
Best. Game. Ever.
That’s a horrible life lesson. Life is not a competition. Life has many, many points where you are not trying to be the best. In fact, trying to be the best in some situations marks you as a jerk.
Plus, it’s a horrible way to live life, thinking you’ve constantly got to strive for something you’ll never be. It’s a lot better to know your limitations and which ones you can’t really do anything about. If you constantly compete with everything, you won’t have time to focus on your strengths.
If we treated life like a competition, there would be no room for mercy or compassion. There would be no room for social nets. There would be no room for helping the disabled live a normal life. If life were a competition, people in wheelchairs would just be out of luck. Pure competition would mean survival of the fittest–and people who need wheelchairs by definition are not the fittest.
As for this specific topic: I don’t mind the fines. The problem is whether they are being directed to the right people. A blowout is a failure of whoever matched the teams together in the first place. The teams should be matched against their own kind. Or, better yet, since these types of teams are not so geographically based, the teams should have been designed to match up better in the first place.
Neither team is benefited by a blowout. You cannot try your best when you have no hope–whether that hope is of winning or of losing. Sure, it might teach some lessons about compassion and humility, but are life lessons really the realm of a sport? Aren’t sports just staged competitions we design so that people can have fun?
And even if we do want to teach life lessons in sports, does it need to happen over and over again, which is surely the case with an especially bad or good team? At the expense of enjoyment for both the players and the spectators?
Your mom never let you win at board games, as a kid, huh?