50 points and banned.

[stig]

I don't usually post on sports but I heard this on the radio this morning on the drive in to work and thought that I would post it hear because I am sure that there will be people here who will have some strong oppinions on this and it should spark a good discussion. This is in Connecticut.

"(WTNH, May 24, 2006 6:00 PM) _ It will be a whole new ball game come this fall when high school football kicks off.

Coaches and players will need to keep an eye on the score so that blow-out games don't get out of control.

This new rule came about after at least one high school coach went 90-to-zero in one game.

by News Channel 8's Tina Detelj
In his first year taking over the reins at his alma mater New London High, Coach Jack Cochran brought what had been a struggling team to the state championships.

He wins big. Too big for the CIAC which governs high school sports. Starting next year any high school football coach who wins a game by more than fifty points will be disqualified from coaching for bad sportsmanship.

Jack Cochran, New London High coach, says,"I think the CIAC means well. I think they're trying to do something right but I think they're going about it in definitely the wrong way."

Coach Cochran himself has been accused of running up the score - winning four of last year's games by more than fifty points but he says he is not alone.

Cochran says last season thirty other coaches would have been suspended under this rule. He says the problem is not with the coaches who win - but with the programs which do not.

Cochran says,"It's basically because you have some programs that are doing what they're supposed to do. Putting in the time. Working out. Working on weights conditioning. Doing the passing leagues and some aren't and I think that's where the CIAC needs to get involved."

Sam Jones plays football, basketball and baseball for New London High. He and other players say the new rule is bad for the game...

Jones says,"You can't stop yourself from scoring points. Coach Cochran just had good teams.

...And bad for the players.

Jones says,"I think it takes away from the player stats and also takes away from the younger kids playing."

Jose Dominguez, New London High Sophomore, says,"It's all down to practice at the end. You practice hard, you score a lot of points."

"Would you tell your players don't score because we're at 49 points ahead
now," asks Tina Detelj.

Cochran says,"Never in a million years. No. No I would never tell them to slow down, fall down. It's not what I believe in.""







If there is not steroid use involved and nothing illegal going on then I can't see this ban being justified IMHO.

[LeafHog]

Instead of punishing the coaches for blow out victories they should institute some kind of "mercy rule" to end the game when a blow out is inevitible. We have a local HS football team the mercy ruled 11 out of 12 opponents this year

How bad does that suck? No fourth quarter because you're so far behind its pointless. Still better than getting your ass handed to you for another 15 minutes.

[ky toker]

My freshman football team would have won State because every team we played smoked our butts. We sucked major A$$!

Unfair to the coaches and players. I don't believe in trying to humiliate another team, but you have to run plays and the other team is expected to stop you.

I agree with the "mercy" blowout rule.

If you don't want to lose, work harder and it will eventually pay off. Maybe not while you're playing football, but maybe when you're on a cruise with your wife and some how find yourself being forced overboard.

[ResIpsa]

Originally Posted by ky toker

Unfair to the coaches and players. I don't believe in trying to humiliate another team, but you have to run plays and the other team is expected to stop you.

I agree with the "mercy" blowout rule.

I'm not saying I agree with this new rule. But there are ways to run plays without embarassing an opponent and running up the score. It's done all the time even in the pros. Look at a team like the Colts. The games where they are blowing out other teams they have taken out James, Harrison, Manning and the other big guns and played the scrubs. At the end of the game you take a knee on the 5 instead of trying to score. That is all this coach has to do. When he claims he can't control the score it is a bunch of in my opinion.

[RGD]

As mentioned the scores can be controlled by the coach if he really wants to. You have second and third string members that normally get very little playing time - put them in. Dress out a few JV is need be. It can be done.

Ron

[stig]

Wouldn't switching the team to a tougher conference for the upcoming season so that they would play better teams be an option? It just seems ridiculous to me to suspend a coach for being too good. Football is a contact sport and IMHO a sport of battle and the nature of any sport in it's simplest form is to beat your aponent. If the coach is that good then the other coaches should be looking for ways to beat him on the field, that is the point of the game. Don't get me wrong, I understand that there are options here like the ever popular "Everybody get's to play" rule and if things are that far ahead then yeah, why not go ahead and suit up the waterboy for a few plays. The problem that I see with this is that everyone is looking for the easy way out here and that easy way is to ban a coach for being to good instead of expecting others to step up to the plate and try harder to win and I think that this is doing more harm than good. You can't win all the time, in fact most of us will fail misserably at many things that we attempt to do durring our lives but and it should be an inspiration for us to try harder the next time but instead some people find it easier to lower the bar. Some games you will win, some you will loose and some you will loose by a great margin but that is all part of life and makes us who we are. They may win, they may loose but just let them play.

Half of the problem is the governing body itself, since they are the ones that decide which teams will be in which areas, regions, divisions (whatever the local designation). Our children's high school area has a couple of teams that are in area groupings that are so overclassed by other schools inthe area, that they almost always lose. Our coach will put in second and third string players after the half, with a reasonable (25-30) point lead. The second and third strings also often score at will. Whose to blame here??? Since we have to play all teams that are in our area grouping, what should the coach do? Start with third string? Throw the game and lose on purpose to satisify someone elses feelings of inadequacy? This has to be the second most assinine sports rule I've heard. I follows closely the rules instituted in many schools that do not allow score keeping, so everyone will be winners. It's a good thing we don't have competition in the arena of life. No use teaching them that winning is good, losing is bad, cause there is not a chance that knowledge will help them in life.

The football team at the high school I attended usually got their hats handed to them while I was in school. Somehow, I still grew up without a loss of self esteem because of what happened in a high school football game several decades ago!!

[Marathon]

I'm wondering if this could potentially handicap good kids trying for scholarships at this school who only get to play half of each game, and, as a result, might not have as much opportunity to display their talents for big college scouts.

Just a thought.

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by RGD

As mentioned the scores can be controlled by the coach if he really wants to. You have second and third string members that normally get very little playing time - put them in. Dress out a few JV is need be. It can be done.

Ron

I've played baseball as an all star catcher for championship teams and winless teams. I HATED mercy rules because it denied playing time.

For the top dog in a blowout... put in your scrubs and JV players until the score differential is cut in half. I'd gladly hand over my "tools of ignorance" (friendly term for a catcher's gear) to a younger player if I was in a blowout in either direction. I want my team to improve even after I'm gone and getting the other players some game time is good.

For the bottom dog in a blowout, don't accept a mercy walk-off.

Now that I'm in my 40's, I can tell the players who were a-holes as kids because their egos are too caught up in whether they play for winners.

It's like the fishing aphorism. The worst day playing baseball is better than a day not playing baseball. If you don't feel that way, you disgrace and dishonor the game.

If you're playing for a dominant team against that season's sad sack, demonstrate your character by turning lemons into lemonade. Find a way.

Go see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swbhC...son%20McElwain

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFX56...son%20McElwain

and keep your political commentary to yourself.

How tragic to have a mercy rule that would deny the opportunity to have a transcendant moment on a ballfield that would improve the character of the top dogs, the bottom dogs and EVERYONE who watches the game.

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by Marathon

I'm wondering if this could potentially handicap good kids trying for scholarships at this school who only get to play half of each game, and, as a result, might not have as much opportunity to display their talents for big college scouts.

Just a thought.

Any scout that doesn't judge the games, in context, isn't worthy of being paid for his scouting services. Do you think a Derek Jeter or other natural leader would have been adversely affected by being pulled early from 10% of his games if he was the MVP playing for a championship team?

The scout SHOULD be fired for not making the case for character. If a player whined about his stats, I'm not sure I'd want that player as much.

If the player was of solid character and a legitimate contender for breaking a school or league record, I could argue the case for leaving that player in and still filling the field around him with JV players.

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by ky toker

My freshman football team would have won State because every team we played smoked our butts. We sucked major A$$!

Unfair to the coaches and players. I don't believe in trying to humiliate another team, but you have to run plays and the other team is expected to stop you.

I agree with the "mercy" blowout rule.

If you don't want to lose, work harder and it will eventually pay off. Maybe not while you're playing football, but maybe when you're on a cruise with your wife and some how find yourself being forced overboard.

I went to a Division I high school in NJ, the division for the smallest high schools. There simply isn't the talent pool, except in an unusual year, to create a squad that can compete against bigger schools. In a regional league of nearby high schools, you simply have to play schools that are different sizes against each other.

If you look at the video clips I posted in an earlier post, I'd almost want to have that video shown to anyone who wanted to play for a school team and to exclude any player who thinks the guy shouldn't have played.

What do you do when you're the top dog in a blowout? If you're already playing your JV players, let your players play positions they wanted to try.

I was an all star catcher in Babe Ruth league for a team that went 4-12. In a game against the eventual league champions, people were talking mercy rule and I asked my coach if I could try pitching. This wasn't easy since the co-coach was the father of the current pitcher, who pitched so slowly that with a runner on first, I could call for a pitchout and the runner would be on second before I could even throw the ball. The head coach said fine. I walked the first batter as the replaced pitcher from my own team jeered me. I then proceded to strike out the 2-3-4-5-6 batters in a row, hit a bases-loaded triple in my next at bat. We lost the game 18-9 in the end, but it was a moral victory. I was one of three 15-year-olds who were in their last years in Babe Ruth baseball, but every player who came back the next year benefitted from not giving up.

I eventually moved to the pitching rotation for the rest of the year, going 2-1. The lesson is you don't give up and you take a bad situation as an opportunity to experiment.

Thomas Edison went through hundreds if not thousands of filaments before discovering what would work in a lightbulb. He didn't see those as failures but as learning opportunities.

Col. Sanders was rejected 1000 times in requests for a backer for his chicken recipe... and the rest is history.

Blowout rule lovers don't do anyone any good.

[Marathon]

Originally Posted by Aaron

Any scout that doesn't judge the games, in context, isn't worthy of being paid for his scouting services. Do you think a Derek Jeter or other natural leader would have been adversely affected by being pulled early from 10% of his games if he was the MVP playing for a championship team?

The scout SHOULD be fired for not making the case for character. If a player whined about his stats, I'm not sure I'd want that player as much.

If the player was of solid character and a legitimate contender for breaking a school or league record, I could argue the case for leaving that player in and still filling the field around him with JV players.

What if you have more than one quality player? Who do you let stay in - the record breaking QB or the record breaking RB? 'Cause if you leave them both in, you're probably going to continue scoring.

And this guy won by more than 50 in four games - that's more than 10%. How about if you're the parent of a child that has serious potential, but only gets to play the first half (or even less) of a third of his games? I agree, a quality scout will see the potential, but I honestly believe the kid's stock would drop because of limited playing time.

And I'm not convinced there's much scouting for character - if there were, pro sports might not be populated by the A$$hats we're currently burdened with.

Originally Posted by Marathon

And I'm not convinced there's much scouting for character - if there were, pro sports might not be populated by the A$$hats we're currently burdened with.

Isn't that the sad truth of the day!!

[pistol]

I might agree with a rule like this for Pop Warner, but honestly, what is this teaching kids about competition? If somebody is spanking you later in life, it's ok because you are going to be bailed out by some kind of a mercy rule? I think high schoolers are old enough to start experience "real life" instead of being coddled... It really sends the wrong message to the winning team- don't play to the best of your abilities the entire game because someone might get their feelings hurt. If you don't want to lose by 50 points and get your feelings hurt, then you'd better stay later, practice cleaner, lift harder and start playing better! To me, I hated losing, losing wasn't (and still isn't) ok, and I used to hate it when people would say, "you did your best." I thought it was crap, and it was motivation to constantly get better. If my son was out there getting pounded on the football field because other kids worked harder to get to where they were at, I'd pull him aside after the game and say, "that sucked huh? What are you going to do better?" I definetly wouldn't blame the other team for playing to their abilities the entire game... I think the younger generations coming up are weak because competition isn't valued like it used to be. Too many kids are allowed to quit when things get hard instead of being forced to work their own way thru the issues. Eh, whatever though, I think I learned more about myself on athletic fields than in any classroom.

[rumballs]

i thought the title was about CS. Then after reading this - good thing CS doesn't have this type of rule, or else Klugs would be banned for his RG, icehog for his post whoring, etc etc.