Winning coach in 91-0 rout catching heat from both sides

I lobby for the Kansas 8-man mercy rule to be implemented everywhere: If at any point at halftime or later the margin reaches 45, game over. G'night.

 

A caveat on pulling the starters. Some states -- I don't know if Florida falls into this category -- have a limit on how much a kid can play. In my state, it's five quarters per week. So if they played four quarters in a JV game on Thursday, they can only play one in the varsity game on Friday. If that's the case, then the coach kind of has his hands tied on who he puts in the game.

 

How many schools allow people to play JV and Varsity in the same week? I'm assuming we're talking about very small schools.

 

True, though in this case the losing coach has not been the problem.

 

i'm pretty sure there is a limit in fla., maybe six quarters...not sure

 

Works especially well when you're covering a game and back in the office by 8:45.

I don't mind mercy rules, but I don't really like the ones that end the game automatically. I prefer the running clock. I know Kansas used to have an 11-man mercy rule for a running clock (not sure any more) and the second half took 30 minutes to play. Beautiful.

 

That's absolutely fucking ridiculous too.

 

One thing I don't like about mercy rules is that they take away from the winning team's ability to develop depth. Football's unique in that it's a sport where you practice an entire week for 2 1/2 hours of live action. There's not a lot of time to get younger kids game experience.

Even when you're up by 45, the losing team will keep its starters in quite often, so it's a great opportunity to get your young kids some live action, get a feel for what it's like to get out there under the lights.

The main beat I cover is a high school football team that's won at least seven games the last 15 years. One of the reasons the coach has had so much success is that he does a great job of getting his young kids spot work here and there, so when it comes time for them to be a starter, they already have game experience.

Literally, this coach has had teams that returned one starter on offense and one starter on defense, and he still produced a nine-win season -- because the new guys weren't exactly new.

One year, he had a really talented freshman team and when their season was over, he dressed them with the varsity for the last three games. The first game they dressed they were winning 53-0 late, so he inserted the entire freshman team (something I had not seen before and something I've not seen since), and the other team still had its starters in. The freshman promptly forced a turnover, then the offense marched about 70 yards for a touchdown.

When those freshmen became seniors, they had one of the best seasons in school history.

 

Hazelwood-Courtland was a badass rivalry to witness back in the day.

 

Knew what you meant, just providing an example of one I witnessed.

And Male used to do that to the smaller Louisville public schools on the regular. Not to the tune of 49-0 after one quarter, but it used to absolutely kick the shit out of some teams back in the day.

 

My uncle graduated from high school in 1968. He was an outstanding basketball player on a good, but not great team. Him and the other guard did all the scoring. One of the opposing teams in the conference was so bad, that their coach called my uncle's coach and asked him not to dress the starters. He did this for both games. And the coach agreed! And they still handily won both games, that's how bad the other team was. But my uncle ended up 13 points shy of 1,000, back when 1,000 points was actually a big deal. They played 15-game regular seasons then, so he played in only 13 that year.

And back when it happened, no one raised a stink about it, not the players who sat, and not their parents. Different time, for sure.

 

91-0 makes the 81-3 game one of our teams had a couple of weeks ago seem not so bad. That game was 60-0 at halftime and the coach told the starters they would get one series in the third quarter, then the backups would play the rest of the way. A sophomore returned a punt for a touchdown, so the starting offense didn't get a series until late in the third quarter. That possession started at the opponents' 15-yard line.