Worst game you have covered?

I covered an over-35 basketball game as part of a local club's 3-3 basketball tournament. They whined more than any other group in the place, and I thought one of them was going to attack the tournament director during an argument. On top of that, they all sucked at basketball.

 

A 0-0 tie in men's World Cup soccer.

 

A girls private school basketball game. I think the final was something like 45-41 in overtime. The teams combined for, IIRC, 85 turnovers and 80 free throws. Our local team ended up playing 4-on-5 in overtime because the rest of its players (there were only seven or eight on the roster) had fouled out. The other team had six eligible players at the end, but was only a foul or two away from it being 4-on-4.

It was a trainwreck of epic proportions, but in a weird way it was enjoyable and made for a good story. Game like that, everyone knows how bad it was and they tend to have some fun with it. It allows you to cut loose a little and share the pain, as it were.

 

Starman, just warning you, the little girl in my avatar will jam a sharp crayon through your eye if you ever disrespect Mary Poppins again.

 

Saw plenty of lousy D3 hoops earlier in my career, in some pretty strange gyms in the upper Midwest. The strangest/worst? A men's game in an old quonset hut gym, when a dog went on the court and wouldn't leave. Kept snarling at the visiting team and snapping at their players. Little kid went out on the court and retrieved it eventually.

 

Any JV game where officials are calling touch fouls in the final quarter of a blowout and we're already late for the varsity tip.

Any high school basketball game played in the first month of the season.

Any high school baseball/softball game before it gets warm.

Every track, swimming and tennis meet.

 

72-0 game on a tight deadline, on Saturday night with the SE on vacation. It was fail-filled on so many levels.

 

Had one of these games the other night as the JV coach. We lost 58-9. I have a very, very young team with a lot of kids who are still just learning to play, and this dude is calling EVERYTHING. I finished the game with five available players.

As the whistle-happy official runs by, I just calmly ask him to do everyone in the gym a favor and put that whistle away and we can all get this mess overwith. He wouldn't even make eye contact, and called another touch foul about three seconds later. I just tossed my hands in the air and laughed.

Thankfully, nobody was covering that game, or I would've apologized for the official.

 

No doubt "Chimney Soot" out of the 64 pack

 

I covered a prep game once where the teams were just good enough to play defense, but not good enough to play offense. A lot of unathletic, unskilled kids. I don't even think either team got into the red zone until the second half. It was a lot of 1-yard runs, 2-yard completions, and 16-yard punts.

There was one real offensive play, a simple slant caught and run in 30 or 40 yards for an unbelievably slow touchdown. And I will never, ever forget -- the kicker's extra point attempt was right down the middle, unblocked...and SHORT. Six-nothing final.

 

I once sat through a high school basketball game that ended 72-7. The losing team (from a smaller classification) went scoreless in the second half.

I still remember a column lead I wrote less than a week later advocating for something akin to the 10-run rule: "If Thursday's game between (insert team names) had been a boxing match, they would have stopped it... at the weigh in."