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Post by coachdoug on Aug 28, 2011 21:47:06 GMT -6
This past weekend our team won 53-22 and was up 53-14 at one point. We could have easily won 100-0 if we chose to. There was quite a bit of tension on the sideline, though, as some of our coaches thought we should take our foot off the pedal (as early as mid-1st quarter when we had a 23-0 lead) and others didn't want to let up at all. I understand both points of view - on the one hand, you certainly don't need or want to embarass or humiliate your opponent. Running up the score is unsportsmanlike, and really isn't the lesson we want to be teaching our kids. Certainly there are ways to keep the score reasonable (e.g. wholesale substituting, playing players out of position, etc) without telling your players to let up.
On the other hand, you don't want to send the message to your players that they don't have to work as hard or try as hard just because they are up by a few TDs. Also, if you have plans of playing for a championship, you want to keep your players focused and sharp, and you certainly don't want to get in the habit of getting sloppy against inferior competition. And, of course, if you are constantly pulling your starters out in the 2nd or 3rd quarter, how are they ever going to learn how to play a complete game or finish a game strong against the better competition they'll see in the playoffs or regionals?
Those of you who know me already know how I feel about this subject, but I wanted to present it as fairly and balanced as possible for discussion. Please share how you feel about this subject, and for those of you that feel it is your responsibility to keep to the score down, exactly how do you go about doing so?
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Post by hsrose on Aug 28, 2011 22:09:07 GMT -6
RE: Sportsmanship and what you are teaching players
How about the message you send when a D1 level team, 2000+ students, walks out of a 4-team scrimmage after playing team 1 (us, D2, 30 min), and 12 min of team 2. Never played team 3. Shook hands, walked off the field, packed up, and left. This happened in our scrimmage last Friday night. They had all kinds of excuses apparently, but they just left. Lots of people in the stands wondering what the heck happened.
Never seen that before.
Running up the score is like porn - I can't really describe it, it depends on the situation, but I know it when I see it. There are a lot of factors in that, but I agree, running it up is not good for anyone - how about teaching that its' ok to beat up on those weaker than us?
I'm not really trying to comment on your situation, but your comments on what you are teaching the players brought me to thinking about what that coach did when he left the scrimmage. We can't compete so we quit? When it gets tough, pack it in? Maybe he's doing the when times get tough, pull back, reassess, and then go forward? How is he going to get full effort from the players when he pulled the plug? Granted, the other teams were powerful, but we played them (smallest enrollment of the 4) and held our own.
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Post by coachschro on Aug 28, 2011 23:22:42 GMT -6
My opinion is if you are that far ahead and can beat them as bad as you want to then once your up 4 or 5 touchdowns the starters come out and basically don't go back in. As far as playing 4 quarters for later in the year, playing 4 quarters in a game one day a week doesn't get you in shape. I also am not a fan of saying, hey we had to leave our studs in to beat you by 50 so later in the year we can win a youth championship. You have a great opportunity to play your backups and we all know how often star youth players all the time aren't even out for high school sports and kids who sat on the bench matured and are now studs...jmo
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Post by coachdoug on Aug 28, 2011 23:34:06 GMT -6
A couple of caveats - only 18 players suited up for the game, so there was no way to sit all the starters. Also, the argument for playing 4 quarters really has nothing to do with being physically in shape, but rather being mentally prepared to stay focused and sharp for four full quarters. I'm not saying if I agree or disagree with either side at this point, I just want to make sure the points and counter-points are described and addressed accurately.
BTW, I am only an assistant on this team, and I've been given very little authority by the HC, so even though I'm part of this team, I'm mostly reporting what happened as an objective observer - I was not involved in any of the decisions about when and whom to substitute, what plays to call, etc, although I did offer my opinion when asked.
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Post by coachbrek on Aug 29, 2011 7:12:54 GMT -6
I have been in situations especially on the first game of the year when we have played teams who were not ready for their first game.
Our league mandates that we change the backfield with a three touchdown lead.
Well at the beginning of the year we may only have four plays installed and the first and second backfields can execute them pretty well. Typically power, counter, trap sweep,
A few times we could literally score on every play , and I have found myself in a very uncomfortable position.
One game we started taking a knee in the fourth quarter, and the opposing coach blew a gasket on me.
I hate those situations, I have gotten to know some of the opposing coaches quite well in the last 10 years great guys who really care about the kids. I am getting soft in my old age I guess, when I was a younger coach it never bothered me one bit.
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Post by jrk5150 on Aug 29, 2011 9:43:00 GMT -6
That's one reason I like running DW and having the wedge. Always something to run in blowout games that you can't be accused of running up the score. And it's a legit play to work on.
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Post by mahonz on Aug 29, 2011 10:42:20 GMT -6
Doug
I never really understood why the theme becomes... when so far ahead it now becomes that coaching staffs problem.
The reality is…the losing team needs to start coaching somebody.
I have been on both ends of these type games. Up big…there are ways to back off and respect the game. Down big….you deserve it.
Kids are kids. Coaching is everything. The fact that you didnt win 100-0 shows that your staff respects the game. 53-22....thats a reasonable drubbing. You probably had a few "accidential" scores along the way. Oh well.
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Post by coachbrek on Aug 29, 2011 10:59:36 GMT -6
That's one reason I like running DW and having the wedge. Always something to run in blowout games that you can't be accused of running up the score. And it's a legit play to work on. I do not like running wedge in a blow out, if we are playing a weak team the wedge is more likley to score than anythign else. If we keep it between the tackles with our second team there is not much else we can do. |
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Post by jrk5150 on Aug 29, 2011 12:25:04 GMT -6
I get the point, but wedge is the one play I'm sure we can keep between the tackles.
The problem with running power is that although it's between the tackles, with the toss and a back up RB, it can easily either get outside the tackles, or be interpreted as a sweep.
If we score on wedge, then we score on wedge. Easy letter to write (if we win by 32+ points, we have to write a letter). By that time, I probably have linemen running the ball, and it's not really a problem to say we ran it right up the back of the C with a lineman who has never carried the ball and he scored.
Just saying, it's a play we always need to work on, and can't be interpreted as anything but running it up the middle. No trickery, etc.
My priority isn't necessarily not to score, it's to not get in trouble scoring, while not toning down the O too much. Wedge accomplishes both.
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Post by coachschro on Aug 31, 2011 20:42:25 GMT -6
Doug I never really understood why the theme becomes... when so far ahead it now becomes that coaching staffs problem. The reality is…the losing team needs to start coaching somebody. I have been on both ends of these type games. Up big…there are ways to back off and respect the game. Down big….you deserve it. Kids are kids. Coaching is everything. The fact that you didnt win 100-0 shows that your staff respects the game. 53-22....thats a reasonable drubbing. You probably had a few "accidential" scores along the way. Oh well. Just because the score is lopsided doesn't mean the losing team isn't well coached. In youth football more so then any other level in my opinion their can be a huge gap in talent between two teams. If your team is by far superior then some of the resposibility of keeping the score under control falls on you. I have no problem with 53-23, that is different then destroying a bunch of kids 79-0...jmo |
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Post by mahonz on Sept 1, 2011 15:54:00 GMT -6
Doug I never really understood why the theme becomes... when so far ahead it now becomes that coaching staffs problem. The reality is…the losing team needs to start coaching somebody. I have been on both ends of these type games. Up big…there are ways to back off and respect the game. Down big….you deserve it. Kids are kids. Coaching is everything. The fact that you didnt win 100-0 shows that your staff respects the game. 53-22....thats a reasonable drubbing. You probably had a few "accidential" scores along the way. Oh well. Just because the score is lopsided doesn't mean the losing team isn't well coached. In youth football more so then any other level in my opinion their can be a huge gap in talent between two teams. If your team is by far superior then some of the resposibility of keeping the score under control falls on you. I have no problem with 53-23, that is different then destroying a bunch of kids 79-0...jmo S Always an interesting debate. Just my take on the subject. The last pounding one of my teams took was a 55-0 beat down. I deserved it and will never forget it. We beat that same team a few years later because I pulled my head outta the sand…eventually. The last beat down one of my teams dished out was a 76-6 slaughter that forced the BOD to drag me in for a meeting. They watched the first half film I brought and quickly sent me home in good standing. 8 year olds recovering fumbles inside their opponents 10 yard line…me calling time out and aligning 8 year olds up to kick a FG on first down with zero practice reps….snapper obviously fumbles the snap….so the kicker picks it up and runs for a TD. Had they executed the FG properly they would have missed it by a country mile…at least that was the plan. Plus they had three attempts that day with every one of them resulted in us scoring a TD....which was not the plan.  I was thinking about putting that play into the offense after that game. It’s coaching. That team played their LB’rs in three point stances….and they did score without any help from us. They earned it so they had talent. |
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Post by bigshel on Sept 7, 2011 19:08:52 GMT -6
In our league, we have a 28+ point blowout rule. The clock runs and only stops for injuries; the team that's ahead cannot pass or run outside the tackles, and cannot blitz when on defense. We use this opportunity to give our 2nd and 3rd tier players some game experience; we stick to our base play (iso) between the tackles. If we find that our 2nd and 3rd teamers are moving the ball too easily, we punt (regardless of the down) and play defense the rest of the game (with 2nd and 3rd tiers). If they turn it over, we punt on 1st down and play more defense. If those 2nd and 3rd tier players score on defense, well then we just have to write a letter explaining what we did to try to avoid the lopsided score. By the end of the season, doing this has significantly closed the talent gap between starters and 2nd and 3rd tier players just in time for playoffs, regionals, and if we're lucky, nationals.
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Post by 19delta on Sept 7, 2011 21:14:03 GMT -6
Just took it up the a$$ 52-6 tonight and that is an 8th grade game with only 8 minute quarters. Score was 30-0 at halftime and the other team had only run about 10 plays total.
Tonight was a coach-killer for me. Last week, we were down 42-0 at halftime. I actually stopped that game because I was afraid that one of our kids was going to be seriously injured. I'm going to put in the last 5 weeks of the season but after that, I'm hanging it up.
Where I am currently at...I can't fix it. It is beyond my coaching ability to get this turned around. I'm done.
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Post by mahonz on Sept 9, 2011 10:22:20 GMT -6
Just took it up the a$$ 52-6 tonight and that is an 8th grade game with only 8 minute quarters. Score was 30-0 at halftime and the other team had only run about 10 plays total. Tonight was a coach-killer for me. Last week, we were down 42-0 at halftime. I actually stopped that game because I was afraid that one of our kids was going to be seriously injured. I'm going to put in the last 5 weeks of the season but after that, I'm hanging it up. Where I am currently at...I can't fix it. It is beyond my coaching ability to get this turned around. I'm done. ooof  What if you started coaching the entry level Super Smurfs. Then they are all at least blanks sheets of paper. |
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Post by mountainman on Sept 18, 2011 9:27:24 GMT -6
This may sound stupid, but 53-22 is only a 31 point victory. That is a 4-5 touchdown differential depending on PAT's missed or made. If we kept score like baseball or soccer, that is a four to five point victory. I routinely see little league baseball and AYSO games with much higher point differentials and no one seems to get too upset about it. 35-0 in football just sounds a lot worse than 5-0 in baseball or soccer.
I don't really know what my point is other than football seems to have this "mystique" that if you win by 30+ points then it is the winning coaches job to keep the score down and be "sportsmanlike". Funny that this rules doesn't apply across the board to all sports.
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Post by utchuckd on Sept 18, 2011 10:53:13 GMT -6
I got accused of running up the score yesterday. We went up 36-6 and hit the mercy rule running clock roughly 6-7 minutes to go in the 4th quarter. They got the ensuing kickoff and hit a couple once in a lifetime catches, plus a couple penalties on us and scored to make it 36-12 with a couple minutes to go, no running clock now. They onside kick and we recover, run 3 straight plays off tackle, the last of which goes 30 yds for a TD. During the post game handshake one of their coaches is all 'thanks for running up the score, that'll come back to get you someday, that's real classy'.
Hmm, so you can chuck it down the field, try an onside kick, but I should've taken a knee?
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Post by bobgoodman on Sept 18, 2011 11:26:25 GMT -6
This may sound stupid, but 53-22 is only a 31 point victory. That is a 4-5 touchdown differential depending on PAT's missed or made. If we kept score like baseball or soccer, that is a four to five point victory. I routinely see little league baseball and AYSO games with much higher point differentials and no one seems to get too upset about it. 35-0 in football just sounds a lot worse than 5-0 in baseball or soccer. I don't really know what my point is other than football seems to have this "mystique" that if you win by 30+ points then it is the winning coaches job to keep the score down and be "sportsmanlike". Funny that this rules doesn't apply across the board to all sports. I disagree with your way of comparing the scores. The reason is the way you score in football vs. the other sports. In baseball a game decided by 5 runs may have seemed pretty close, just because of a few breaks that allowed one team to score those extra runs and the other team not to have. It's also possible for a 5 run decision to have been a more lopsided game. However, if you scale the score for the amount of scoring typical in baseball compared to football, you should actually be comparing 5 TDs to maybe as much as 10 runs in baseball. The comparison with soccer goals is more apt to be like 1-1 with touchdowns, and at higher levels of play even fewer goals. However, the way scores in football tend to develop, a 5 TD lead is likely to indicate a greater degree of domination by one team over another than even a scaled score in baseball or soccer. Once in a while you do see fluke TDs in football that make a final score seem more lopsided than the play of the game actually was, but not as often as that happens in baseball or even soccer. In basketball and soccer it's not unheard of to string a bunch of scores together quickly; in baseball, a high scoring rally is one of the most common patterns; in football that's such a rare event that it's noteworthy. In football you're likely to put in your scrubs earlier than in baseball or soccer, because the lead in football is more secure. Plus, the rules of baseball make it impossible to put the starters back in. So when you see a score of 35-0 in football, you know it's likely that the last quarter or even half (sometimes more) of the game was played by the winning team's 2nd string. |
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Post by 19delta on Sept 18, 2011 12:17:34 GMT -6
During the post game handshake one of their coaches is all 'thanks for running up the score, that'll come back to get you someday, that's real classy'. Hmm, so you can chuck it down the field, try an onside kick, but I should've taken a knee? Guys like that are a$$holes. I guess you were supposed to go over to their sideline and coach their players as well as your own. If you don't like the other team scoring on you, stop them! |
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Post by coachd5085 on Sept 18, 2011 12:25:30 GMT -6
I got accused of running up the score yesterday. They onside kick and we recover, run 3 straight plays off tackle, the last of which goes 30 yds for a TD. Who was running the ball for you, and how many times had he scored previously? Not saying you did anything wrong, but I can also see a frustrated and embarrassed coach feeling the score was run up if that last carry was the kids 4th score of the day. If it was a back up who did his job and the line blocked well... the coach can stfu. |
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Post by utchuckd on Sept 18, 2011 13:59:18 GMT -6
Who was running the ball for you, and how many times had he scored previously? Not saying you did anything wrong, but I can also see a frustrated and embarrassed coach feeling the score was run up if that last carry was the kids 4th score of the day. If it was a back up who did his job and the line blocked well... the coach can stfu. Yeah that's the only thing I could come up with. It was my starting TB, who had a couple of TDs on the day already. I prolly should've subbed but we only had 16 kids there and my regular backup was gone. Guess I figured since they're the #2 team in the league they could make a tackle if I just line up and run it off tackle, no jet motion/fake or anything. |
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Post by spurred on Sept 24, 2011 20:34:09 GMT -6
had a bad game today... 40 to 12....threw three pick 6's. Got upset when they moved their starting qb to tb and ran with him ( they ran sweeps with him at qb) I told the ref I didn't care if they rotated their backfield 2's and scored but keeping the ball in their playmaker's hands was chicken poop and if they were going to do that we would just walk off the field.
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Post by coachschro on Sept 26, 2011 21:52:14 GMT -6
had a bad game today... 40 to 12....threw three pick 6's. Got upset when they moved their starting qb to tb and ran with him ( they ran sweeps with him at qb) I told the ref I didn't care if they rotated their backfield 2's and scored but keeping the ball in their playmaker's hands was chicken poop and if they were going to do that we would just walk off the field. That is unforunate... We were ahead 27-0 2 minutes into the second quarter and didn't score again. All our 6th grade linemen carried the ball... |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2012 7:53:16 GMT -6
I'm digging up an old thread here, but for the first time in ten years of coaching, I may be coaching junior high ball next year so I've been browsing the youth forum more the last couple weeks than I ever have before!
I totally agree with the quote about not being able to define running up the score but knowing it when you see it. At the varsity level, I've been on the wrong end of an 84-8 game and I can honestly say the other team didn't "run up the score" in an unsportsmanlike way. By comparison, I lost a game 42-14 once and the other team was definitely trying to tack one on at the end, even going no-huddle when they aren't a no-huddle team.
I personally don't let the other team's reaction bother me. If you gave the number 2's and 3's quality reps, ran only base plays, managed the clock as best you could, etc., you have nothing to worry about. If you are on the receiving end of being ran up on, unfortunately you still can't worry about it too much other than hoping you'll be in position to beat that same coaching staff at some point.
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