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Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz
Did you even read the article?
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Originally Posted by fredr123
It's pretty much the conclusion I jumped to without having read the article. Can you prove it isn't not exactly what they are not doing?
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In all seriousness, I went back and read the article. Interesting story.
I was being facetious, making a subtle reference to
Gregg Easterbrook and his rants about sportsmanship in football (and simultaneous admonishing of the New England Patriots). In his most recent Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, he had this to say about the Smith Center High School:
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When 72-0 Is Not Running Up the Score: Last Tuesday, TMQ lauded coach Roger Barta of Smith Center High School in rural Kansas. In a little-school classification game, multiple turnovers returned for touchdowns allowed Smith Center to take a 72-0 first-quarter lead against an overmatched opponent, then Barta instructed his players to spend the rest of the game deliberately running out of bounds to avoid more scoring. How many coaches would have shown such sportsmanship? Many would have used the opportunity to play for 100 points and make the national news. The football gods smiled on Smith Center, and the school did make the national news -- first an ESPN.com story, then, on Friday, The New York Times ran a Page One piece about the little school and its humble coach, who said, "We aren't proud" of the 72-0 quarter because it embarrassed an opponent. Little-school football as played in rural areas is a mixed bag; some of Smith Center's opponents are so small they can barely field a team and really belong in the eight- or six-player versions of the sport designed for farm towns. But at least this season we have an example of a team setting a scoring record -- 72-0 is believed to be the highest-margin quarter ever -- without displaying poor sportsmanship.
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On the surface, it seems admirable. Coach Barta took the high road... eventually. But what took him so long to order his team to lay down like that? Why did he wait until the score was 72-0? Maybe after the first 4 or even 5 touchdowns in the first quarter you could call off the dogs. Allowing the score to get so out of hand before doing the "right thing", in my opinion at least, makes Barta less of a saint than some (cough Easterbrook cough) would have us believe.
On a completely different note, how much fun do you think it would be to be at all associated with that game? If you were a starter for Coach Barta, you probably got a pretty early start on your math homework. Sucks to practice hard and look forward all week to a game that you only end up playing in for one quarter. If you're his second or third stringers, how much fun would it be to run out of bounds every time you made a play? If you're the opposition, how much fun is it to be down more than 10 majors before half time?
