I believe this is my first-ever Sports guestblog. :) I like sports OK (favorite: baseball; Go Sawx! :), just not enough to Post about them. / But perhaps I make certain exceptions. :) Like when a story is Controversial in a way that has a Politics & Public Policy Crossover Potential. :> Like this one (note that The Courant puts it in “Connecticut News”, not the Sports section):
Expect New London High School football coach Jack Cochran to operate next season as he always has, and if that means his team wins by 50 points or more, so be it. And expect Cochran to be suspended for doing so.
In what some are referring to as the “Cochran rule,” the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference football committee passed a score management policy to be instituted next season. The rule says if a team wins by 50 or more points, the coach is suspended for the next game.
Although many have accused Cochran of running up scores, he doesn’t see it that way. And he doesn’t like this rule. On that point, he has company.
“It won’t change anything with how I prepare for a game,” Cochran said. “Where it’s going to run into problems is when you’ve got your second team in or you’ve got your freshmen in; what do you tell them? One coach is saying he’s just going to have his guys take a knee. I would never do that. I would never tell a kid to run out of bounds instead of scoring.
“I will probably have to take a suspension next year. If it comes down to letting a freshman or a [junior varsity] player score at the varsity level or me being suspended, I’m not going to stop that kid from doing that. I cherish the sport too much and believe in it too much to tell some kid he can’t play the game the right way.”
The rule, passed in April, says if a team wins by 50 points or more it will be called an unsportsmanlike act. Under the CIAC’s disqualification rule, the coach will be suspended for the next game. The football committee is made up of coaches and school administrators, all formerly involved in coaching.
“Our football committee has been discussing this topic for two or three years and they’ve been studying policies,” said CIAC Assistant Executive Director Tony Mosa. “It certainly didn’t just come about after last year. We certainly have been having a lot of criticism regarding what appeared to be a high number of high scores.”
…Of the 659 games reported to the CIAC last year, there were 27 in which teams won by at least 50 points. Cochran’s New London team won four games by 55 or more, including a 90-0 victory over Griswold.
…Northwest Catholic-West Hartford coach Mike Tyler said he was surprised by the decision to implement the rule and says many coaches have the same feeling.
…”Regarding telling kids to just fall on balls and don’t pick it up, you’ve got kids that are in there that don’t get to get in often, and it’s their chance to shine a little bit,” Tyler said. “How do you tell that kid not to pick it up and run? I don’t know if I could tell a kid that, but if I was going to get suspended in the next game it would be different.”
Cochran sees the rule as another hindrance in helping kids in the state to move on with their football careers at higher levels.
“You look at all the other states, we’re one of the weakest when it comes to football,” Cochran said. “It’s simply because of the restrictions put on us for coaching time. Until that changes, it’s a disservice to every kid that plays football in this state. At the end of the day, they’re competing against kids from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Florida to move on and it’s not a level playing field. This is just another restriction that’s going to hinder football in this state.”
Read the whole thing ~ including a sidebar giving (hi Brendan :) the Excruciating particulars of last season’s 27 Unsportsmanlike blowouts. :>
All competing Competition Regulationists, Competitive Laissez Faire-ers (Laissez Faireaux? / Non :) , and Incompetent Connecticut Bashers are invited to Comment away: have your Sport with it. :)
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Categories: Sports, Connecticut & Newington
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May 25th, 2006 at 4:42:06 pm
How retarded.
May 25th, 2006 at 4:55:58 pm
And teachers of any students who score 1500 or more on their SATs shall be replaced by substitutes one week per month, right?
May 25th, 2006 at 4:58:06 pm
For once I agree with Joe Mama. I’d prefer coaches don’t intentionally drive up the score (put in reserves, etc) but as a former player, damn you can’t just sit on your butt and not try your hardest, what kind of lesson is that to teach?
May 25th, 2006 at 5:01:25 pm
This is truly idiotic. If other teams don’t like it, play better. The only thing more unsportsman-like than running up a score on a hapless opponent is passing some stupid rule against it.
May 25th, 2006 at 5:15:30 pm
Back Again… I couldn’t resist.
This has made the front page on ESPN.com
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/news/story?id=2457707
May 25th, 2006 at 5:43:56 pm
Well, good, people are commencing to Bitch / my work here is Done :)
“…I’d prefer coaches don’t intentionally drive up the score (put in reserves, etc) (put in reserves, etc)…”
David K, per the Courant article (I haven’t read the ESPN one yet) apparently one of the objections from CT coaches of very Strong teams is that when they put in Their reserves ~ who don’t get much playing time usually ~ they Don’t want to tell them to Hold Back; but if they DON’T hold back they’ll Wallop the hapless opponent’s First String almost as badly as the Powerhouse guys they are Replacing. IOW they portray the new rule as a Deterrent to deployment of The Bench.
But Yeah: seems to me this Problem (which I Can see Can be one; there’s no Necessity for humiliating Overkill Annihilation of the poor kids from Podunk) is amenable to Informal amelioration, without a Score-capping Rule.
May 25th, 2006 at 6:33:01 pm
What do you really expect?
After all, it’s sports in Conn. Don’t they produce about two college athletes every decade? When we listen to the pro games, there aren’t a lot of players coming from here.
Let them live the dream in high school -roll that score up!
May 25th, 2006 at 6:44:59 pm
I’ve volunteered keeping stats with my local high school’s football team for about 16 years now and have been on both ends of some lopsided scores. Very few of them have seemed to be cases of “running up the score.” When bench players come into the game and continue to dominate the other team there is nothing more a coach can do.
This rule is a bad way to implement the “mercy rule” in football. If they really want to do this then they should call the game if a team is up by 42 points anytime in the fourth quarter. It works well for baseball and softball even if it doesn’t sound right for a timed game like football.
May 25th, 2006 at 6:55:26 pm
I agree with everyone who has said this is stupid.
If teams like New London are routinely beating up on teams like Griswold by scores like 90-0 year after year, the problem isn’t coaching — it’s scheduling. If administrators are really concerned about this, they should force the teams to change their schedules to create more legitimate competition, realigning conferences if necessary. A 90-0 game does very little good for anybody on either side. But the previous commenters are correct, it is not prima facie evidence of “running up the score.” More often than not, one team is just that much better than the other team. Their second string is that much better… their third string is that much better. The problem, again, is imbalanced schedules, not evil coaches.
Also, ScottF is right: if you’re going to institute a mercy rule, institute a mercy rule.
May 25th, 2006 at 9:59:28 pm
Ah, you guys said it all.
May 25th, 2006 at 10:04:14 pm
As an alumna of a high school football powerhouse, I have attended games and cheered for my team on several occasions when they not only scored over 50 points but also Skunked the opposition. In a state like Connecticut, with so many towns and teams, a transfer to another league might be considered; but limiting coaches’ Coaching, on point-spreads, causes the game to leave the realm of Sport. / Let the kids Play.
May 25th, 2006 at 11:10:26 pm
[…] CT to suspend HSfootballcoaches who win by over 49 pointsExpect New London High Schoolfootballcoach Jack Cochran to operate next season as he always has, and if that means his team wins by 50 points or more, so be it. And expect Cochran to be suspended for doing so.… […]
May 26th, 2006 at 3:53:49 am
I played HS football in Pensacola Florida back in 1988 and I remember we were going to face the Pine Forest Eagles that Friday night and we had the best week of practice ever. Pine Forest at the time was the #1 HS football team in the country, according to USA TODAY, and they completely rolled us! I believe the score was like 63-0. I never looked up at the score board and thought to myself, “they are trying to embarras us, at our homecoming no less.”
They were better than us and that is all there was to it, size speed and skill. Let the kids play and everything will iron it self out but I do not want a team to be up 50-0 and still passing the ball.
May 26th, 2006 at 6:30:22 am
Although the rule is just plain dumb, there is a sportsmanship issue. Should a team be throwing long passes when they are up by that much? No. But if I have my 3rd stringers in the game, up by 49, and they still manage to put one in the end zone, why is this the coach’s fault? In the real world, you get your ass kicked by people all the time … Losing is a learning experience. Trust me.
May 26th, 2006 at 6:58:25 am
“Losing is a learning experience. Trust me.”
Hee hee. We do, Josh, we Do. :) And of course you’re right, and we can All so testify in one way or another.
May 26th, 2006 at 7:19:40 am
Ayn Rand is turning over in her grave.
May 26th, 2006 at 7:25:21 am
Solomon Brothers former Chairman John Gutfreund used to say, “Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.”
That works in all aspects of life & sports for the young and old alike.
May 26th, 2006 at 9:16:19 am
Kay, actually for many years now Ayn Rand has been busy expounding to Lucifer the Objective proof that neither he, not the Other guy, Exist. ;>
May 26th, 2006 at 9:47:26 am
I played on high school teams for the Western Illinois University High School in the late 1960s that regularly beat other high schools by more than 50 points. I was one of the captains. We had second and third stringers playing most of the second half yet by then, the other team was so demoralized that it didn’t matter, they had already given up. The second/third stringers took little pride, and received little credit, for scoring against such weak teams, and as captain, I took little pride as well. In fact, I rarely talk to anyone about it anymore. The self-esteem of the other players took an incredible beating; they thought of themselves as losers and quitters. And I know from talking to some of them recently that they still remember it to this day, in more detail than I do. Yes, I know, some people believe that self-esteem is the new PC of education but so be it. Certainly coaches realize the importance of developing self-esteem, and also know it is not right to strip it from others. They ended up disbanding our conference and their was a lot of bitterness among the administrators of the various conference schools that overlapped into other matters; very unfortunate. Yet I totally agree that you cannot tell the second/third stringers to not try. And is not the coaches fault if he/she exhibits no intention to run up the score; punishing the coach will not solve the problem. Why not just call the game once one team gets ahead by 50 by the fourth quarter? No one really wants to play then anyway. Or if a team wins more than two games by more than 50 points in a given season, force them to move up to the next level of competition which is where they belong anyway.
May 26th, 2006 at 2:09:40 pm
John - you almost got it … “The self-esteem of the other players took an incredible beating; they thought of themselves as losers and quitters. “ - the proposed punishment/suspension of the coach comes real close to mandating that the losing team might as well be quitters ! And that is a Bad Thing !
I haven’t played much competitive team sports myself, apart from racing ((mostly small) sailboats) … and I’ve seen the really good coaches also tend to to be the ones who will freely offer their experience and advice to the less skilled/gifted/practiced coaches of the less skilled/gifted/practiced teams … if the losing coach can manage to accept such advice, his (her?) team can benefit greatly from being able to compete against a much stronger team by finishing the game determined to better their own performance rather than by only measuring their own self-worth by whether or not they can beat the significantly-better team …
The best coaches I have known don’t tend to coach for competition against the other team - they tend to coach for competition against the prior times at competition … and a team which keep improving against its own prior efforts tends to be a team which overtakes its competitor teams …
Possibly silly question - is that philosophy not seen much in the US ?
May 26th, 2006 at 4:40:41 pm
Self-esteem is all well and good when it’s based on something real. But one of the realities in a sport is that there are winners and losers at the end of every competition, and one of the things that you’re supposed to learn through sports is how to lose graciously. If you’re really that much worse than the other competitors, you shouldn’t be basing your self-esteem on your athletic prowess in the first place.
Back before I had figured out that my asthma would only allow me to run for about 15 minutes at a time, I foolishly joined a cross country team for a season. To be blunt, I was remarkably bad at it–not quite the last finisher in any of the meets, but never that from the very end. Yet I got the same brightly colored ribbons for participating as the actually good runners got for their top few place finishes, in the relentless push to instill self-esteem in all regardless of whether they had accomplished anything particularly worthwhile. Even at the time that struck me as ridiculous. Those who ran fast did a better job than those of us who merely showed up and managed to eventually cross the finish line, and they should have gotten the recognition for it. Getting a ribbon in cross country didn’t serve to make me feel any better about myself; if anything, it worked to the contrary, as it made me realize that my ribbons from things at which I was actually good were just as meaningless. I never begrudged those faster runners blowing past me, in the same way I didn’t get annoyed that my compelled entries into the art shows were never picked for displays of the best work, or when my high school tennis team got slaughtered by team in our league where each of the players had private coaches and most were planning to play at the college level. You compete, you do your best, and if you lose that just means that you weren’t as good as the others on that particular day.
Maybe if people are heavily demoralized for being blown out it’s a sign that their perception about their skills is at fault, not the actions of their competitors. Losing a really close match is, in most ways, much more agonizing than being blown out of the water, as in the former you can have the endless “if only we/I had done this one thing differently…” thoughts. Let the kids play the game. If you want to enact mercy rules, either end the game when the score reaches a certain degree of lopsidedness, or institute some rule like “no starters allowed while you’re up by X”. Don’t punish the coach when the second and third stringers pound on the weak opponents when it may well be their one time to get off the bench and into the game.
May 27th, 2006 at 9:44:24 am
Mike, the winners are also supposed to win graciously, which is the issue we are discussing. Sporting activities are one of the best, if not the best, avenues for developing self-esteem, fortunately for both men and women these days, boys and girls. It is very real. Perennially slaughtering the competition does not develop self-esteem for the winners or the losers. How can a good coach not see that? And is a kid not supposed to play a sport because he or she is not that good at it yet? One puts their self-esteem on the line every time he competes, athletically or otherwise; that includes novices and players who know they are not that good.
Also, football is different than other sports such as cross country because, for better or worse, it is how we as Americans identify ourselves. Our teams are emblematic of who we are. It is a team sport. It is a militaristic game. We want to win. Everyone’s self-esteem, or whatever you want to call it, is on the line; not just the players and coaches but the fans, parents, administrators. That’s the rub. How can we control the unbridled enthusiasm to win, to win big? We can’t and we shouldn’t. So call the game when one team has clearly won by the start of the fourth quarter, and if it becomes a common matter, force that team to play other teams that can compete with it.
Alasdair, I don’t think that the philosophy you espouse, which I agree is best, is that common in America. We tend to win at all cost, each game is black or white; its not how you play the game, or how you improved on the past performance, but how you performed that game. Part of our instant gratification society.
May 27th, 2006 at 1:58:52 pm
John, in no way did I say that you shouldn’t compete if you aren’t good. I said that you shouldn’t be basing your self-esteem on your athletic abilities if you’re not good at the sport(s) you play. There’s a difference. For the past several years I’ve been on at least one rec team at all times. I’m actually good at two of the sports we’ve played; I am horrible at the third. That alone doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be playing that third sport, just that I shouldn’t be basing my self-worth on my inability to play Ultimate Frisbee well. The decision on whether or not I should be on the team should be based on a) whether I enjoy it and b) whether the others on the team want me there or not. If the others were skilled people who wanted to do well and thus instituted try-outs and cut people who weren’t of a given level, that would be fine. But if I either make it through the cuts, or if there are none, the decision on whether I should be on the team comes down to whether I’m enjoying it enough for it to be worth the time, and my skill level only comes into play in that I’m more likely to enjoy doing something if I’m not horrible at it.
And if parents and administrators and whatnot are basing their own self-esteem on the team’s abilities, to me that indicates that the parents and administrators and whatnot have severely messed up priorities. Being upset about the performance of a team of which you actually are a part is one thing; being upset by the performance of a team to which you don’t contribute seems, well, crazy to me, especially if you think it reflects on you personally. When my high school football team lost basically every game that wasn’t against our cross-town rival, the major impact it had on me was that I felt bad for a few of my friends who were on the team, followed by the boredom it inflicted while I was in the Marching Band. I didn’t feel like a loser because my school had a bad football team, any more than I felt like a winner because my school had a champion softball team. I did care about the results of the tennis team, but I was *on* that team, and therefore my own abilities were directly contributing to those results. I’ve never understood that aspect of being a fan; I think that’s one of the biggest hurdles to me ever being considered a sports fan.
May 29th, 2006 at 10:52:43 am
Belatedly, hi John. :) “We’re loyal to you, Western High…” ;>
In a May 27 Hartford Courant letter to the editor, Brian Mazzone writes ~
May 30th, 2006 at 6:09:20 am
WOW! To think that anyone from Newington even cares about high school football is a shock to me. But I guess it is more a question of ethics and public policy. Playing for Newington and getting my butt kicked every game was certainly a learning experience. I’m coaching for East Hartford now and we compete against two of the top ten powerhouses. We got our butts kicked by them despite being a pretty good team. Southington did not like the things happening during our game against them, so they put their starting QB (Yale-bound Kelleher) back in for the fourth quarter so that they could score another touchdown in the air. What did our kids learn from this? That they want to work hard enough to beat that team the next time they face them. I didn’t like the actions of the opposing coaches, but a rule like this does nothing. The head coach gets suspended for a game? Big deal! Jack Cochran would probably enjoy that suspension. He’d probably watch the news and see that his kids responded by putting another lopsided score up in his absence. And more power to him for it…Ayn Rand would rest in peace then. Perhaps she would be amused; I certainly would be.