You won by what - 100-2? How dare you! We may cancel your season!

I think they're mostly looking at what that school is doing -- especially with the coach also having his players in AAU ball off on the side, so this is an elite team masquerading as a random collection of eighth-graders -- and the board is realizing they aren't playing the same game with the same set of rules and circumstances as the other schools. There is a high school football team in Massachusetts that is having similar difficulty filling its schedule, because old rivals have gotten tired of the one school turning itself into a football factory and still wanting to compete against the teams who just want to give their students an athletic outlet.

I wish more schools would stand up to this bullshit from the travel clubs and the programs that recruit, honestly.

 

Breslin's column was on that kid.

The fact this is middle school makes it even more absurd to call for any penalties, against either team. Middle schools have been home to horrific mismatches for a hundred years. When my high school had a great team in the mid 90s, those kids had been on a 9th grade team that scored the first 66 points of a game and won 66-2. When I was in 8th grade, our horrific 7th grade team lost the first game of a doubleheader 42-1. The one somehow was worse than being shut out.

 

One more time ... at some point, the onus is on the bad team to get better.

If that is not going to happen, then don't schedule teams like that.

 

There is no amount of practice time that is going to bridge the gap between younger and first-time players and a team that has grown up together and plays in elite club tournaments outside of school.

The fact that even the championship game was a 40-point blowout is an indication that one school has outgrown the traditions of the regional rivalry.

 

It just still boggles the mind that there's a sensibility in some parts that allows a team, or its fans, or its parents, to say, "You beat my team too badly in this sporting event. For this, you must pay."

 

And it boggles my mind that there are parents and coaches who think so much of sports that they will game the system to create such advantages for themselves, then seek out inferior competition so they can beat their chests about it.

 

Fair enough. Two ways of looking at it. Neither's particularly wrong, in my mind.

 

Depends. At the schoolboy level, there's absolutely an obligation to pull the starters and stop pressing defensively when a game like this starts to get out of hand, at least in my opinion. If a coach refuses to do that, he's fair game for retribution.

However, sounds like this coach DID try to call off the dogs less than two minutes into the game, so I don't see this one being on him or his team. The more relevant question is why such an absurd mismatch was scheduled and played in the first place.

 

It's freaking middle school! And like Stoney said, why was such a mismatch even scheduled, unless they're in the same league?

We've got a high school team similar to the winning one in our coverage area. They're so far ahead of the rest of their league foes, it's ridiculous. They do all the things the winning team in this one did: Call off the press, slow down the offense (I keep waiting for them to throw five passes each possession, then run the picket fence at them). We look forward to the one or two nonconference games they'll schedule during league season, usually against a state power, and the playoffs, just to see them really play!

 

I won't link to my own blog, but I will say that I called the superintendent at Pikeville. The rumors are untrue. He said he and the board did an investigation (which sounds a little more intense than what happened) to make sure nothing untoward happened in the blowout. And so satisfied, they decided nothing needed to be done. So nobody's dropping anything.

The coach had told ScoutsFocus (the source of the Yahoo blog) that there were "rumors" something might happen, but the superintendent said nothing ever was going to happen.

 

Pull the starters and pull off the press 1:48 into the game? Tell your team to quit playing defense in the 2nd half?

More than enough.


And yes, somebody needs to get on the ass of the losing coach and more specifically AD/principal, and ask them what the hell they were doing playing a team like this anyway.

I've coached junior high basketball. There are plenty of mediocre/bad teams around. If you're just looking for a game, find one of them and play them.

Hell, dig up three other awful teams, and throw together your own "Everybody Gets A Ribbon" tournament. We have some high schools around here who do that -- they dig up three other teams who all went 1-19 the year before and have their own tourney with consolation games, etc etc.

 

They were playing "a team like this" because it was a county tournament, and also because Pikeville is in deepest eastern Kentucky. It's not like Pikeville has a lot of similarly sized competition in its home area, or even close to it.

There are many reasons, noble and ignoble, the coach got his players on the AAU circuit, but one reason may be to find competition.