Bad sports, good sports: When are kids too old for mercy rules?
When kids are young and are playing sports, it is natural for adults to want to protect them from being embarrassed. If playing sports is not fun for a kid right from the beginning, there is little chance that he or she will grow up wanting to play. Organized sports for young children have developed ways to protect the participants from the harsh realities that will eventually hit them when they get older, as far as losing and not being good enough. Games are played without keeping score, rules are changed so that everyone gets equal playing time, and everyone gets a medal at the end. I am okay with these things as long as they are restricted to games involving only the youngest children. In recent years, I have seen many examples of situations where leagues are doing this with children that are too old for it, though. Kids need to learn to lose and to lose gracefully. If they never lose, how will they handle situations in life that they will certainly encounter where they are not being protected from disappointment? At some point, talent wins out, and that needs to be allowed to happen. I don’t know exactly where the line should be, but I firmly believe that high school sports should not be affected by thinking that should be reserved for young children. It seems that some schools in Arkansas disagree with me, though.
Last week, Bald Knob High (yes, you read that correctly) was playing Harrisburg High in football. Bald Knob quarterback Cordell Crisp was well on his way to breaking the Arkansas state record for touchdowns in a game (10) with eight touchdown passes in less than three quarters. What stopped him? Did Harrisburg’s defense suddenly stiffen and hold Crisp below the record? No. Some kind of state mercy rule involving a 2nd half lead of 35 points kicked in and Bald Knob pulled all of its starters out of the game. There was no scoring for the remainder of the game, and the game ended with a 70-34 score. Now I am not one that advocates running up the score and embarrassing your opponent, but when records are involved, doesn’t it make the whole thing rather fraudulent if rules like this are going to prevent the breaking of those records? Apparently, the only way Crisp could have set the record would have been if Harrisburg could have managed a few more touchdowns. So Bald Knob’s defense would have had to lay down, basically, to facilitate the quarterback’s run for the record.
High school kids are still kids. I understand that. Those kids aren’t on the team by luck, though. They have tried out and been good enough to make the team. At that point, the game should be played with the real rules. Who benefits from this kind of mercy rule? The kids? I say no. Sometimes you are not good enough. That’s life. The only ones who benefit from it are the parents who feel better about themselves because they protected their children from the world. I would suggest that if they want to protect them this way, don’t let them play high school football.
Bad sports, continued:
2) In the offseason, the New Jersey Devils signed forward Ilya Kovalchuk to a contract so absurd (17 years, $102 million) that the NHL ruled it invalid. Kovalchuk is a talented player, but judging by this penalty shot attempt on Wednesday night against the Buffalo Sabres, the Devils might have over-estimated his abilities. That’s embarrassing.
3) Three football players from Southern Miss were shot at a nightclub early Sunday morning during an altercation. Martez Smith, Tim Green, and Deddrick Jones are all in fair condition and expected to recover.
4) Cleveland Browns linebacker Marcus Benard collapsed in the locker room on Thursday before practice. Amazingly, he ended up playing on Sunday against the New York Jets.
Good sports:
1) Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves had a pretty amazing game on Friday against the New York Knicks. Love scored 31 points and pulled down 31 rebounds in the game, becoming the first player to have a 30-30 game in the NBA since Moses Malone in 1982.
2) Speaking of amazing basketball feats, the Indiana Pacers did something pretty stupendous on Tuesday night in the third quarter of their game against the Denver Nuggets. They shot 20 for 21 in the quarter, scoring an incredible 55 points. The only shot they missed was the last one they took in the quarter. No team had scored more in a single quarter since the Phoenix Suns scored 57 in a quarter back in 1990.
3) Any chance you saw the end of the Jacksonville Jaguars game against the Houston Texans on Sunday? That last play was something you don’t see very often.
4) About to lose his PGA Tour card, Robert Garrigus came up huge on Sunday. Not only did he do well enough to move back into the top 125 of the rankings, he actually won the Children’s Miracle Network Classic at Disney on Sunday. He started the final round 4 strokes down, but played well enough to be in position to win when leader Roland Thatcher came apart late.
Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday.
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My gut response is that mercy rules are not needed about the time that athletes respect one another enough not to run up the score and embarrass one another. But it may be true that we cannot trust people to ever outgrow that type of behavior (see the Pats running up the score on the Redskins, October 28, 2007).
Single-game records aren’t as important as season or career records, imho. I do appreciate your point, but I’m just not inherently opposed to mercy rules even up into high school. There’s no guarantee of even the hint of parity at that level, and school athletics are supposed to encourage sportsmanship. If it has to be artificially enforced, well… at that age, what isn’t?
Jason – thanks for reading. I am all for sportsmanship, but sportsmanship can not be dictated. If the coach had made the decision to rest the QB entirely on his own, I have no complaint. It is having a rule that says he had to do it that bothers me.
Mercy rules can even be counterproductive for younger kids. Soccer rules in our league dictate that if a team wins by more than six goals, that team is fined. So when teams go up 5-0, coaches order players to play keep away or they yell repeatedly to their kids not to score. No one wants to lose 15-0, but the mercy rule is unnecessary: almost every coach I have ever encountered is too ethical to let things get that out of hand. Young players would much rather lose 8-0 or 9-0 than be bitterly embarrassed by keep away or suffering through watching their opponent deliberately try not to score.