I’m sorry we beat you

Sorry you feel that way 😊

The league or whoever scheduled this mismatch game is at fault. As a former coach I can tell you it’s impossible to tell football players, especially kids who usually don’t play a lot but get the chance because of a blowout, to not score on offense or dominate the opponent on defense. In a lot of sports you can slow the offense down and just hold the ball - but not football. Short of just taking a knee on every offensive snap, kids are going to try to score every time.
Maybe they should have a mercy rule like in little league baseball - like if a team’s losing by more than 50 points at the end of the 3rd quarter the game’s over.

What should the winning team have done differently? Intentionally throw an interception then step aside and let them run it in for a touchdown? Or maybe they should have walked off the field and let the other guys win by forfeit. Yeah, that would do wonders for the losing team's self esteem.

Per the article there is a mercy rule and the losing coach did not invoke it. Mismatched games are no fun for anyone. There aren’t good solutions once you’re in the middle of the game. Keep playing hard or pull back. Doesn’t matter, someone will say you should’ve done it differently.

Whatever happened to good sportsmanship? The score was a fucking disgrace, but then again the winning team probably stopped at a kindergarten to beat the shit out of some kids after the game. Fair is fair .....

I would think it would be up to the officials to "call the game" after the 3rd quarter. You can't tell the kids to stop playing hard. But the Refs should have stopped it after 3 quarters. It should not be a coaches decision.

Good point McNulty - it helps to read the article lol

Upon further review- the winning Inglewood coach, La’Bell Rotisserie Jones (something like that) refused to allow a running clock which is a “mercy rule” and would have made the game shorter. He’s officially a giant creep asshole. Fuck him.

^^ that is horrible. Running clock would have helped somewhat.

The worst part is the kids on the losing team gets frustrated, and potential for a fight or injury greatly increased. Some of these kids are 14 and 15 year olds, I know for one my judgement wasn’t state of the art back then and I doubt most of theirs are either.

Remember when the US womens soccer team won a game 13-0? That would be 91-0 if every goal was worth 7 points.

The article also said the D1 bound QB threw 13 touchdowns. That’s 78 points, not counting conversions or any rushing touchdowns. Perhaps they could’ve put the second string in a bit sooner. No, you can’t and shouldn’t expect the backups to let up. But did they even put the bench kids in the game?

I don't see this as a big deal. Sporting matches should be between comparable opponents. I don't know the reason for the extreme score disparity, but there should not be any harm intended in sporting matches. I think the guy just wanted to convey that.

SJG

Soccer is a bad comparison because the international game differs very much from the American one (which is mostly youth sports), including the way sportsmanship is handled. In the international game, respecting your opponent is playing hard for 90 minutes. Putting in all your bench players is a huge sign of disrespect. Stopping players from shooting is a huge sign of disrespect that is also bad optically. If one team is up 5-0 and stops playing forward the game is unwatchable as it becomes keepaway and the weaker team will never get the ball. Americans generally don’t understand international soccer or try to fit it in with American culture and it doesn’t really work.

Americans: soccer is boring. There’s no scoring and all games are 1-0 or 0-0.

After a goal is scored and there’s an elaborate goal celebration.

Also Americans: that is disgusting. Act like you’ve been there before.

To me, this seems simple, a team should be able to forfeit if they don't want to keep playing when it seems they are badly outmatched. I don't think forfeiting would make them pansies. If the point of this complicated rule, that the winners apologized for breaking, is that the losers would be too butthurt by having to acknowledge they are outmatched, then yes, that's coddling. If the losers gave up successively fewer points in each quarter, it was a valuable game, they were learning.

The winning team should never apologize for playing their hardest right up until the end. The adults in charge should apologize for the outcome for a couple of reasons.

First, these two teams clearly should not be competing against each other because they are on vastly different levels. It happens in college as well with what some people call "body bag games" where you have elite teams with an endless budget (Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson, etc) playing little schools that sometimes are much more than a neighborhood community college. These types of games serve 2 purposes in college, they allow the big school to pad their record while giving their backup players some playing time and they usually result in a nice payday for the smaller team. As a fan these college games suck because at best they are a waste of time and at worst someone gets seriously injured. At least with college games they are adults playing and not some 14 year old freshman and there is no need to subject kids to these games.

Secondly, there needs to be a mercy rule in place and used in these situations for the benefit of the kids. Sure, kids will learn life isn't always fair and we aren't always equally matched by playing in this type of game but they also could have learned that if the game was called early in the 3rd quarter when it was 50-0. Calling it early would also teach the kids about mercy rather than just greed and ruthlessness. The coach that failed to have the mercy rule used should be embarrassed but the rule should have been automatic so it wasn't left up to some coaches ego.

I have no problem with blowout games between adults whether it is in college, pro sports or some recreational softball league but their is no need for this with kids.

The most lop sided game ever in the history of college football was Ga Tech verse Cumberland...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_Cumbe…

John Heisman (yes the guy the trophy is named for) was pissed at Cumberland and ran this score up

I remember being in Montreal growing up for a large youth hockey tournament. The geniuses who put the tournament rules together made the tie-breaker from advancing from the group round "goals for" instead of "goals against" or any other category for that matter. One of the teams in my brother's team's bracket was obviously put in the wrong division and were completely overmatched. Unfortunately, after another team in the pool beat them by 20 goals, my brother's team had to beat them by 21 or more in case they ended up tied at the end of pool play with the first and had to have the tiebreaker. Everyone coaches, players, spectators felt awful afterwards.