you should know more than most. in hockey this is grounds for a line brawl. and it would be well deserved.

Link

High school player takes a kickoff and runs past everyone and takes a knee at the 5 yard line.

I just cannot understand how any reasonable person thinks this is better than just scoring. If you have to obviously and unnaturally try that hard not to score it just brings more attention to the inability of the other team.

Thank you. Someone gets it. Doing this makes it clear that the other team is a joke and that the winning team needs to roll over and die to show mercy. At least there's some dignity involved, and the conclusion of the play is "natural", if the kid just scores. Also, again, back to my point about high school sports lacking life relevancy. The people in this game are not going to be affected down the road by the winning margin being X+7 as opposed to X.

the kid downing the ball at the 5 to me, is worse than scoring. Though i dont think he should be running double reverses, things like INT's and kick returns are ok.

Sards, they are wrong because they accomplish nothing but to embarras the other team, and in middle school football for example, the ranges of talent is so wide and cannot be helped that its wrong. Now, i dont think the patriots should throw bombs at the buzzer either, but at least they are playing against other professionals.

I look at this as someone who has played and coached their entire life. I think sports do more than get u in shape or provide fun, but also teach life lessons. i think to take my best player and try to score on the games last play while the opponent is trying to get 16 seconds of PT for his worse scrubs is unethical as a coach, and any coach worth his salt will tell you the same thing. what are you proving?

At halftime we had a few players who were ready to go and/or take out the worst of the violators. Decent chance it could have gotten ugly just based on the principle of those pricks showing us up like that. I was the captain of the team and was trying to convince a couple of our top players not to get violent to get an ejection because that would mean at least a 1 game suspension for them and our next opponent was a winnable game for us.

This game was over...let those guys be pricks about it. We had class even if we sucked AND we had future games to deal with.

A couple hard slide-tackles later and our coach made the correct decision to yank one of them from the game just to cool him out...and I can't remember if the other one either cut out the cheap-play stuff or if he was pulled by the coach.

Not trying to play your best insults the other team more than taking it easy on them. Put in your subs, let them play their hardest. Anything else would be disrespectful.

Article about a high school player who refused to score a TD and took a knee just shy of the goal-line to end the game. My personal take on this is that it's a nice attempt to be classy but just seems a bit silly/over-the-top to me.

If I was on the losing team I would not begrudge the guy scoring a TD to end the game on a legitimate kickoff return F he did it without rubbing it in with post-score celebration nonsense, etc. Similar to in soccer I don't expect a player with the ball right on top of the goal to turn away and refuse to score.

http://arkansasvarsity.rivals.com/co...asp?CID=992976

Yes, there's a bit of an argument to be made there for the teams that throw in 4-pass rules or whatever in hoops or soccer or hockey.

But trying to pile-on the score in football when there's 1:00 left and you're up 40-0 already probably isn't appropriate. most teams will NOT continue to play their hardest and try to get it in the end-zone in such a spot. But there are incidents where the winning team did indeed keep trying to score.

I mean, if you're up 40-0 and sprinting up to the line with the clock ticking away with 7 seconds left so that you can spike the ball and stop the clock just so you can get your FG unit on then you are REALLY rubbing it in and that actually IS more insulting.

The same can be said in basketball when you have the ball with 20 seconds remaining and are up by 15. Most teams dribble the clock out supposedly as a sign of classiness or respect. Most teams do not continue to play hard and try to score again.

There are exceptions I think in high school or college when there's some scrub getting garbage time especially if he's never scored in his whole career or something. Otherwise, most teams stop playing and stop trying and commence with the post-game handshakes and "good game" acknowledgments.

There's a difference between scoring and "running up the score". Leading 34-0 at the half and winning by 42-0 isn't running up the score. Winning by 91 is.

Running up the score is just part of the game. Slowing up and softplaying a team because you feel sorry for beating them so badly is more insulting imo.

You should be looking to score as much as possible in any sport you are playing

it is never ok to not try to run up the score. like BB said "if you dont want us to score, stop us"

Since this is 2+2, it's time for a poker analogy. For those of you who are against running up the score, imagine you are playing live poker with a fish who clearly can't afford to be playing in the game. Do you softplay him? Agree to check it down after the flop? Value bet small and never bluff?

There was a thread a while back where someone posted a story about a college baseball game he was involved in where the leading team was up by so much that they started intentionally trying to get out just to get the game over with.

The trailing team made a comeback and won.

I think it was pncyff that posted this, I'll give search a shot.

It's also possible my memory is way off here.

This is a terrible analogy. The value of a dollar does not change as you accumulate more of them, the first one I take off of a fish still spends the same as the 100th one I take from him (marginal utility, blah blah blah, who cares, it's close enough). In sports though, the object is to win the game, so as you get further and further ahead of your opponent, adding more points to your margin does nothing to increase your chances of winning. I don't really care about running up the score, I like to see backups get more playing time in blowouts for injury and experience reasons and that's about it, but relating it to poker is nonsensical.

I found it from a previous time this topic was discussed. pnycff mentions it in post #61...his team was losing 11-0 in the ninth, the opposing team intentionally made outs, then his team scored 12 in the bottom of the ninth.

I even made a comment about it a few posts later saying this should be referenced whenever people complain about running up the score.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/46...0/#post6609016

Actually that reminds me of my own story from when I was a kid (middle school age), we were up 15 runs on a team, then they scored 17 runs. In the bottom of the last inning, we tied it up and I came to bat with two outs and bases loaded. I think it was bases loaded, it might have been runners on 2nd and 3rd. Anyway, I hit a ball slightly over the head of the second baseman into rightfield and my teammates swarmed me at 1st base.

It's probably the athletic highlight of my life.

I don't recall our coaches or anyone else on the team even bringing up the thought of taking it easy when we were up by so much. It's probably because we knew we were fully capable of losing a 15 run lead.

******ed analogy, even though I am in favor of running up the score. In those situations the "game" is still in doubt and you can lose.

In college football and basketball the people who do the polls usually just see the scores only, and sometimes less than that. In the minds of the pollsters imo there is a big difference in winning by some huge number as opposed to 20 or so. Since the polls and to a lesser extent computers decide who goes to bowls/the tournament, the score should be run up in every game in these sports. The exception might be that you want to avoid looking like an *******/obvious when doing so.

I once played on a pee-wee team that lost by 58 in a football league with the 50 point rule. After one team went down 50, they would give the other team the ball on the 20 yard line over and over until they scored, bringing the margin under 50. Down 52 we fumbled and the other team ran it back for a touchdown. I wasn't particularly crushed over this and our team really wasn't either, but we were like 13. Younger kids might be worse.