Mercy rule needed for HS football.

[JohninVT]

I disagree.  You have to know when to quit, when you're outclassed.  It's just a game. 

It's not the Spartans holding off the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae.

You don’t teach kids how to quit.  You teach them how to succeed.  Hard work, toughness, not giving up no matter the odds....that’s what you teach them regardless of whether it’s in field hockey or calculus.  You also teach them how to win gracefully and with class as well as how to lose with dignity.  Many leagues have mercy rules.  Not one kid on the field after a 100-0 game ever learned anything.  They do with a mercy rule.  They learn that they can play as hard as they can and still fall short but the lesson is devoid of the humiliation of a 100-0 score.  It’s really ok to lose.  It’s really NOT ok to have your dignity stripped from you in the process.  That’s not something any kid should suffer.

[rocker59]

You don’t teach kids how to quit.  You teach them how to succeed.  Hard work, toughness, not giving up no matter the odds....that’s what you teach them regardless of whether it’s in field hockey or calculus.  You also teach them how to win gracefully and with class as well as how to lose with dignity.  Many leagues have mercy rules.  Not one kid on the field after a 100-0 game ever learned anything.  They do with a mercy rule.  They learn that they can play as hard as they can and still fall short but the lesson is devoid of the humiliation of a 100-0 score.  It’s really ok to lose.  It’s really NOT ok to have your dignity stripped from you in the process.  That’s not something any kid should suffer.

Remembering that IT's JUST A GAME, there is no dishonor in surrender if you've given it your best.  It's just a waste to continue on, taking the kind of beating that was in the Original Post.

I guess we can agree to disagree on this.

[Tom]

 "Mercy rules are fine, but in their absence, the losing coach should be willing to step up and fold his losing hand." 

Unfortunately, most high school coaches have little coaching experience outside of their own high school playing experience and are lucky to have any post secondary training.  They don't know when to "throw in the towel".  A mercy ruling would take it out of their hands and have it decided by league rules. 

I'm pretty sure the Athletic Director, Tommy Correia had a long discussion with the head coach.  Coming from the background of an Assistant Athletic Director, Coach and referee, there will be some changes whether it's from the Athletic Department at school or through the local league.

A lopsided win like that will influence the kids not to turn out for that sport.  They cannot change divisions once the season has started.

[Lannis]

It's not the Spartans holding off the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae.

On the other hand, 10 years after the victory at Waterloo, Wellington was at a cricket match at his alma mater of Eton, and said "The battle of Waterloo was won here" which went into history as "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton".

So  some analogy with the training of young Spartans .... ?

Lannis

[Kev m]

I have an English degree, and I curse like an old English sailor.

[Kev m]

I was hoping to bring a level of levity to the conversation.

[Knuckle Dragger]

I don't see why a losing side should prematurely walk off from any sort of competition.  Losing is every bit a part of a game as is victory.  Sticking it out in the face of insurmountable odds and humiliating defeat is an essential part of character building.

I once coached a girls' football team of 8-10 year olds participating in an under 14 girls' league.  Regular spectacular defeats were very much the order of the day.  Scorelines of 17-nil were commonplace.  Admittedly, a 114-nil scoreline is pretty extreme, but it's also character-building for both victors & vanquished.  One of the undoubted beauties of"the beautiful game" of football is that the better side doesn't always win:  with such normally low scorelines, a "nil-all" score is not at all uncommon, or even on occasion a weaker side gets an unlikely lucky victorious break.  Which is why Football is the world's premier (in a participatory, economic and following/viewing sense) sporting platform, by an extremely large margin.  It's also safer and more athletically sound for kids' participation too.

So different to the cruder, less refined and ultimately far less involving high scores of such parochial codes as Australian Rules Marngrook "football" or American Super-Bowling Gridiron "handball" competitions, where opposing sides tend to be far less likely to have any sort of fortuitous intervention of lady luck.  They're nevertheless pretty funny to watch, 'though.  One is a kind of aerial ballet where tall men jump on each other's shoulders to catch a ball, and the other where two teams "dressed" in Motocross gear basically stand around for 2 or 3 hours, with a mere 15 minutes or so of TOTAL actual gameplay without any actual ball kicking being involved at all!  One is a jumping, running, kicking game of endurance, whilst the other is a chance to break all the rules of decency in Rugger:  forward passes, no scrums, interminable breaks and interruptions to play.

So it is also in life:  Australians have assisted their USA military colleagues to lose almost every single armed conflict they've been collectively involved with since 1945.  Pretty convincingly humiliating defeats too:  Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.   Only Kuwait & Grenada (USA alone) seem to be the notable exceptions.  It's through being so comprehensively thrashed in our youthful sporting endeavours that makes us collectively such "good sports" at losing wars. 

Success in defeat is every bit as important a lesson to learn as is humility & grace in victory.  In my own youth I was only ever in one (very minor) championship winning team.  In this particular case it was U-14 Hockey.  I also once won an age-specific intraschool cross country race too.  All other individual & collective sporting endeavours - swimming, tennis, weightlifting, rowing, cricket, marngrook, union rules, miscellaneous athletics et. al. were more commonly met with defeat than victory.

[oldbike54]

 Seems we have gone off the rails here , anyone not understand why this thread is gonna need some serious pruning ?

 Dusty

[oldbike54]

 OK fellas , stop with the personal attacks , if you have an issue with another board member take it to the PM system .

 Leave your politics off the board also , we all know the rules .

 Dusty

[Tom]

Follow-up to the blow out score from this game.  The league changes "mercy" rule guidelines mid-season.  This is unusual since all changes are done during the summer with time for discussion.