WRITTEN RULE NOT NEEDED
Most high school football coaches know when teams are running up the score
It is easy to have a serious conversation about high school football in Texas. If anything, we take it too seriously.
However, I was certain that if I tried to talk to high school coaches about a requirement to justify winning a game by too big of a margin, I would get more jokes than discussion.
Surprisingly, that wasn’t the case.
“I don’t think it’s asinine for someone to ask: “Why were you able to win by that many points?’ ” Waltrip football coach Wayne Wheeler said. “There is an unwritten rule about running up the score. We know it when we see it.”
The question is, should said rule need to be written?
Wheeler says that is unnecessary. (Full disclosure, Wheeler is my sister’s son, so obviously he has been taught well.)
As ludicrous as it sounds, Nassau County, New York, actually has a committee that meets with coaches to administer its blowout rule for high school football games.
Simply, if a team wins a game by more than 42 points (the rule was originally set at 40), the head coach must explain why the wide margin should be acceptable, or face disciplinary action.
Last week, Robert Shaver was the first coach suspended under the rule, after his Plainedge Red Devils scored a fourth-quarter touchdown to rout the South
Side Cyclones 61-13
The committee wasn’t satisfied with his answer for why his starters were still playing in the fourth quarter of the lopsided game.
In the same league, Clarke High School coach Tim O’Malley was not suspended after his team, which entered the season finale with one loss, topped the standard last Saturday against a winless squad.
O’Malley explained his starters came out of the game midway through the season quarter, his team threw the ball just once the entire game, and a running clock was employed throughout the fourth quarter.
“You don’t want to see anyone get embarrassed,” O’Malley told Newsday. “You hope both teams line up and do the right thing in these scenarios. My feeling is it takes three groups to manage a lopsided score scenario — the winning team, the losing team and the officials.”
Phrases such as “lopsided score scenarios” and “lopsided score committees,” are sure to trigger some, but this isn’t from the “everybody gets a trophy” debate. (And don’t get me started on how wrong most Baby Boomers are on that subject.)
The rule is working.
According to Newsday, there have been only five games in the Nassau County league this season with a margin-of-victory of more than 42 points, which is more than an 80 percent decrease in such routs from the average season prior to the rule’s implementation.
Maybe a 42-point win isn’t too much. But 50, 55?
I find it interesting how many believe there is no such thing as too big of a margin of victory, as if there is a lesson to be learned from losing games by 70 points that can’t be gleaned from losing them by 60 or 50.
We’re not talking about the NFL, where players are paid to play, or semi-pro college football. It’s high school. Humiliation is not an effective teaching device.
Supporting football teams winning games by any margin they can isn’t much different than being in favor of hallway bullying. You want the weak to be punished as some wort of sick instructional tool?
“These are kids out there playing,” Wheeler said. “At the end of the day, what are you teaching them? There is no lesson in getting beat that bad. Teaching your team not to give up has little to do with the score.
“There are some teams that can go out and play the best they can possibly play — line up exactly right each play, put their hands in the right spot every time, make all of the proper adjustments — and none of it will matter, because they’re just not as good as the other team.”
Wheeler has been on both sides of the situation. A couple years ago, when Waltrip went unbeaten in the regular season with one of the best seasons in school history, his offensive starters didn’t see much thirdquarter action, let alone fourthquarter play.
Then there was a playoff game against Stratford in 2014, when Rakeem Boyd rushed for more than 100 yards and a couple touchdowns as the Spartans took a 27-0 lead in the first quarter.
Stratford eventually won 48-0, but it could have been much worse.
“It wasn’t their fault that we couldn’t stop him, his backup or his backup’s backup,” Wheeler said.
In evidence that Shaver, the suspended Nassau Country coach, was flaunting the rules, the three weeks before his suspension, his team win by exactly 42 points. Last week, when he wasn’t on the sideline, his team won 36-0.
To keep the score under the 42-point threshold, it took intentional delay of the game penalties and once even punted on first down.
That indeed kept the score from being more lopsided, but it was also silly.
The idea isn’t that teams can’t lose by a wide margin or that the best team shouldn’t play football. Little is gained when a superior team goes out of its way to crush an opponent.
Basketball teams shouldn’t purposely miss shots, and baseball teams shouldn’t strike out to move the game along.
If you are that much better than the other team, good for you. That’s a great time for your backups to play more than usual, execute the game plan and enjoy.
Written or unwritten, high school sports should operate under such rules.