it’s good to win, just don’t win by a lot

[BigStewMan]

we won a game 56-7.  It was 35-0 at halftime and the coach just started letting players play different positions.  I played nose tackle the second half.

we had slaughtered everyone in our league, so someone set up exhibition games with undefeated teams from a different city -- we destroyed them, then they bussed a team in from another county -- still no contest.   One guy on our team was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys; but blew out a knee in pre-season and was cut. That was a fun two years.  One Mom wrote a Letter to the Editor complaining about our team -- she said that we “hit too hard.”  Two years and lost only one game. There was no mercy rule back in the day.

 

The coach of a New York high school football program was suspended for one game for allegedly allowing his team to run up the score on a fellow undefeated opponent last week.

Plainedge High School coach Rob Shaver was suspended under Nassau County’s “lopsided scores policy,” the New York Post reported Thursday. His team defeated South Side High School 61-13 last Friday. Shaver decided to keep his best players in the game despite being up 35 points in the fourth quarter.

Shaver told Newsday his explanation to the committee who decides whether he should be suspended was shot down. The policy prohibits teams from winning games by more than 42 points.

“They thought it was a mismanaged game, which my opinion is, that isn’t the rule,” he told the newspaper. “It should be: You ran up the score on purpose. That’s what the intent of the rule is for.”

Shaver added: “What made me the most upset, to be honest is, listen, if the South Side coach complained and said, ‘This guy definitely ran up the score on us,’ well, then they should investigate. Because that’s the intent of the rule. The spirit of the rule is to prevent better teams from running up on lesser programs and sportsmanship and dignity and all that stuff. I get it. That didn’t happen.”

South Side coach Phil Onesto told Newsday he had no problem with the score.

“I had no issue with how the game went,” he said. “I had spoken to coach Shaver, I told him I had no issues.”

[JBCODD]

Many of the softball league I've played in, both in and out of the service, had a "Ten run Rule". If after five innings a team was up by more than ten runs, the game was over. This was less about mercy and more about time. Games were allotted one hour to complete, and new games started on the hour.

[oldtimer]

And the third inning was the beer inning...