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Today's bizarre high school football score

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Chef2, Sep 20, 2014.

  1. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    I'm in favor of the running clock, and not just because that's when my kids is most likely to get into a game. His team went to the state finals last year, but their conference has a fair number of teams that are not so good. If there wasn't a running clock, all these kids who have been pummeled by my son's starting teammates will not get the full force of the subs. For my son, it would be nice if he got more time on the field than a running clock would allow, but for the health of the other team, it's good the game ends as soon as possible.
     
  2. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Oh, bullshit on that. If I were the opposing coach, I would call time out and have the press box announce that they had officially offered to end the game, the offer had been declined, and then run the starters back in and ring up another few scores.

    This is why mercy rules must be utterly NON-optional: you hit a certain point margin and the mercy rule is on. Nobody has to ask and nobody gets to decline.
     
  3. Spartan Squad

    Spartan Squad Well-Known Member

    Around here, 11-man gets a running clock in the fourth quarter if both coaches agree to it, but 8-man gets a runner when one team is up 35 in the fourth quarter. I used to love the rule for 8-man in So Cal where a team up by 35 after halftime automatically won. That way two teams who had no business playing each other could call it quits after two quarters instead of having to play the whole thing out and potentially getting kids on both sides hurt (had one game I covered when the visiting team came in with nine players and the officials put a stop to it when three or four of their kids got hurt. The home team even went down to 6-on-6, but at some point it was just too dangerous).
     
  4. Morris816

    Morris816 Member

    Norwich is one of the football teams I cover. The Norwich coach told me his kids missed too many tackles, and in eight-man, just one missed tackle can lead to a long gain.

    The senior running back on Fairfield rushed for 429 yards on 32 carries for a 13.4 yards per carry average. The quarterback threw just five passes the entire game.

    Also, I'm pretty sure I remember the six-man game in New Mexico that Songbird mentioned... I didn't cover it, but I do remember one of the teams was Melrose, which blew out every team almost every team it faced.
     
  5. fossywriter8

    fossywriter8 Well-Known Member

    My JV football team won a game 2-0 when I was a sophomore.
     
  6. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    I have a question for y'all with experience covering 8-man and 11-man high school football - Is there an attendance difference? I mean, I imagine 11-man gets more people overall, because 11-man probably persists in all of the traditional football power states. But for schools with 8-man football, is it still radically more popular than all of the other fall sports, like how 11-man football usually is?
     
  7. Spartan Squad

    Spartan Squad Well-Known Member

    It depends on where you are. In Cali, the places with 8-man teams are typically very small schools—somewhere around 150 to 300 enrollment. As a result, the number of parents, friends and classmates who attend is down. And because everyone who plays football will usually play basketball and baseball, attendance across the sports are about the same.

    As an example about 8-man vs 11-man popularity, one town in So Cal had declining enrollment as the town dramatically shrank. At some point, the school basically said the team had to go to 8-man because playing 11 man was just getting kids needlessly hurt. The town about rioted. There was nothing in this desert community except a mining plant and the high school, so football was a big deal. The school eventually won and the attendance was never more than 100 people in the stands.

    I can imagine other towns and schools where that isn't the case, but that is my anecdotal experience.
     
  8. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    I went to a tiny high school (22 in my class) and played 8-man. Pretty much the whole town went to the football games. For homecoming and playoff games people would go in the morning and leave a vehicle parked with a view of the field because you could count on the bleachers filling up.

    But it was about the same for basketball. We were actually more of a basketball school and were probably more likely to have a lot of alumni who moved away come back for a big basketball game. Volleyball, etc. mostly just played in front of parents and a few friends.
     
  9. Mystery Meat II

    Mystery Meat II Well-Known Member

    Holy grail: Football score where the losing team scores 1 point, non-forfeit, non-Canadian.
     
  10. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    If people really wanted to make football safer they'd seriously consider widening the field and/or putting fewer players out there. Playing 8-man football for six years, there just wasn't the same kind of collisions, at least not close to as frequently. And sometimes, because of the size of the schools, you'd have a 6-2, 220-lb senior with decent speed who'd go on to play college ball on the field with a pipsqueak freshman who'd barely hit puberty.

    Occasionally in middle school we'd play 6-man games because the other school didn't have enough kids to play 8-man, but play on the 8-man field. Or a few times we played 8-man on an 11-man field. There were hardly any tackles. You might chase somebody down and drag and shove him out of bounds, but collisions were at a minimum.
     
  11. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Agreed. The 8-man game here is mainly played by smaller, faith-based schools, or schools just too small to support 11-man football. Was probably the best thing that happened to the football program at the lone Christian school in our area, with enrollment declining due to the economy, dropping down to 8-man, since they just couldn't compete. They remained in the same league for all other sports. Student bodies and parents/support groups tend to be more closer knit than at the public schools, so, while Podunk Bible Academy vs. Springfield Adventist may not pack 'em in like, say Springfield vs. Shelbyville, there's some interest.
     
  12. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    That happened in 1989 here. Two local teams were playing, the score was 3-0 and the leading team scored a TD to make it 9-0 with the extra point pending. The kick was blocked and returned the distance by the trailing team.

    It was a new rule back then and returned PATs were only worth 1 point, so the final score went into the books as 9-1.
     
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