coachKidsSports.com

Someone who is willing to step forward and help is much more courageous than someone who is merely fulfilling the role. - Margaret J. Wheatley

Friday I wrote about Silent Saturday, the effort by some youth leagues to silence parents and coaches for a game.  I wrote that the intention was good but it doesn't tackle the root of the problem - lost perspective.

This week the focus shifts from youth sports to the high schools with three articles in the nation's papers "mercy" rules.  Those are attempts to limit or, in one case, penalize lopsided scores.

Sunday's Chicago Tribune has an article by the High School columnist, Barry Tempkin, comparing the administrative responses to a blowout in Connecticut and an overzealous father in Pennsylvania.

We offer for your consideration a football coach who showed good sportsmanship but was almost penalized under a rule aimed at preventing bad sportsmanship and a football dad who gives a whole new meaning to the term "quarterback sneak."

The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference passed a rule suspending a coach if his team wins by more than 50 points.  Many other states have "mercy" rules, but they generally require a running clock in football and basketball or other efforts to speed the conclusion of play.  Penalizing the coach may seem like it's attacking the problem, but it attacks the problem from the wrong end.

He got in trouble for defeating Bridgeport Bassick 56-0 on Sept. 15. According to the New York Times, Central substituted liberally by the second quarter, when the score swelled to 49-0, and the team stopped passing by the third quarter, when a third-string running back scored a touchdown.

At that point about all Cadelina could do to obey the rule was let Bassick score. But to tell your players to miss tackles or stop playing hard makes a mockery of the game and humiliates opposing players more than a 56-point loss.

Gregg Sarra, from New York's Newsday, has a similar take on the same situation. 

So if the third-string linebacker intercepts a pass and his team is up by 45, he should forget about taking it to the house and get out of bounds for fear of having his coach suspended?

Sarra goes on to recommend the rule adopted this year in Northern Virginia, a running clock in the second half if the point differential reaches 35.  The running clock rule seems to be the way mercy is administered in most states.  A Google News search for "running clock rule" returns articles from a dozen different states.  The rules aren't uniform, but the intention is the same, get the game over with and limit the humiliation.

But what if the losing team doesn't want mercy?  What if they want their moment in the sun, even if it's currently giving them 3rd degree burns?  That is the question asked by some Virginia high school coaches in Preston Williams' article in the Washington Post. 

What's more demoralizing for a high school football player: a Friday night shellacking or being bailed out by a rule that helps prevent the score from becoming even more lopsided?

One coach cited in Williams' article made the argument that the running clock limits the opportunities his team has to test themselves against other teams.  He wants to use that time to work with his younger players and get them experience.

W.T. Woodson Coach Trey Taylor asked an official whether he had the option of not invoking the mercy rule in his team's 43-0 season-opening loss to Centreville. He wanted his players, particularly his young quarterbacks, to get varsity experience against the Wildcats' substitutes. His thinking: Woodson's starters, and Centreville's subs, don't work year-round to play beat-the-clock on Friday nights. They work to test themselves against players from other schools.

"To not give coaches an option, to me, is crazy," Taylor said.

I'm not sure I would want to be on the business end of a 50 point beating, but I can understand the coach's point.  Especially with football, there are precious few opportunities to play all out.  Anything that eliminates those chances hurts your team.  Like "Silent Saturday", these rules are implemented to because some coaches forget their priorities and think if 50-0 is good, 60-0 is better.   Those coaches only last as long as they have better talent coming to their team, because they aren't developing their players for the long term.  Playing the third string may mean the score ends up 50-14, but next week or next year one of those players might be the difference in a 21-20 game.  Or maybe that third stringer gets the only playing time of his career and he now has a story to tell.  As the Positive Coaching Alliance puts it, it's time we all started honoring the game.  Remember that the game is bigger than any one coach or player and the game goes on after this game ends.