“Us punish little boys playing football for scoring touchdowns!”
Combine political correctness, the thoughts of Chairman Mao, incompetent administrators, kids and football, and this is the disgusting mess you get.
The Gwinnett Football League, a children’s sports program, allegedly fined one of its teams $500 and suspended its coach after an 8-year-old playing for the Lawrenceville Black Knights intercepted a pass and ran it back for a touchdown. In a normal sports league, run by sane people, where victory and achievement are appreciated, encouraged and celebrated rather than being stifled to allow losers to preserve their self-esteem when what they need is to be motivated to play better, the child would have had a joyful, memorable childhood experience. Not in the Gwinnett Football League, however. The young player was to learn that his failure to realize that taking advantage of his opponent’s poor play was considered bad sportsmanship in this Bizarro World* league —cruel, unkind, psychically scarring—and would result in his team being fined and his coach being suspended. You see, the touchdown constituted an infraction of league rules, because the GFL has a so-called “mercy rule” that prohibits a team from throttling a weaker squad by more than 33 points.
The parents of the child protested that their son had no idea he should do. Miss the throw intentionally? Run it back the wrong way for an opposition touchdown? Beg the other team to forgive him? The parents of the rest of the team’s players insisted that the fine and suspension were far too severe….for, you know, playing football in a football game. Being fined and penalized for breaching an appallingly misconceived rule that nobody with the brains of an egret thought through? Yes, I think that’s a reasonable cause for complaint.
Hilariously, the president of the league, who must have risen to his place in life after his planned career as pin setter didn’t pan out, told the media that news reports about the reason the team was fined were false. Erik Richards said the team was fined because it made a “mockery of the game” in other respects besides running up the score: laying on the ground, running off the field and mocking the other players. He explained that the penalty for violating the mercy rule is “only” $100.
What the league needs is a fine for incompetent and irresponsible oversight of a kids football league:
1. It is silly, embarrassing and dangerous to have any sporting event continue with one team not allowed to score. Football is called a competition for a reason. If you are going to have a mercy rule–and I think they are a terrible policy, always: kids sports are about learning to lose as much as anything else—then you end the game at that point. You don’t keep playing. Of course you don’t keep playing.No wonder the players on the team misbehaved. What are they supposed to do? Lying down on the field seems perfectly reasonable if the idiots who run your league are going to fine you for doing what you are on the field to do: score.
2. People who don’t understand the basics of football should not run football leagues, even those played by puppies or fleas. A touchdown is 6 points. If there is a 33 point mercy rule and a team has a 32 point lead, either a) invoke the rule at 28, the point at which any touchdown will exceed 33 or b) make it clear that the rule will be triggered by the next score, whether it is 6, 3, or 2 points (it is impossible to score one point by itself in football), or c) give the referees discretion to device when the rule should apply. A rule that a team is supposed to keep playing competitively with a 32 point lead but is acting in an unsportsmanlike manner once it scores more than a single additional point when any score will be more than a single point is so dumb it hurts my brain to think about it.
3. The Knights made a mockery of the game? How is it possible to make a mockery of a football game mocking itself with a rule requiring a team to keep playing when it will be fined for scoring a touchdown? The idiotic mercy rule and its application make a mockery of not only the game, but sports, competition, America, common sense, fairness, justice and the cosmos.
* If you are not a D.C. Comics fan or Jerry Seinfeld, you may not know that “Bizarro World” was a strange, cube-shaped planet featured occasionally in Superman stories. The occupants were appalling stupid flawed clones of Superman and Lois Lane, who did the opposite of what makes sense in every situation.
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Pointer The Blaze
Facts: CBS46
Ethics Alarms 
Chilling to think I don’t live too far from idiots who punish kids for playing a game the way they are supposed to play it. But hey, aren’t we also not to use our military advantages when battling the bad guys because they do not have the technology that we do? I’ll have to add this to my Not-Well-Thought-Out-Plans book.
It fits.
Sometimes in these types of scenarios (clueless school/sports administrators refusing to use common sense or bothering to think) the local outcry forces the officials in question to back off or even change the whole policy. Let’s hope so in this case.
Does the head of this football league also work in the public school system? We haven’t started punishing people for being good at sports yet, but we treat people who try to achieve academically like this. Remember the Middle Schools in Ipwsich, Massachussetts and East Greenwhich, R.I.canceled their academic awards because it wasn’t fair to the ones who didn’t get one? Those were cancelled because the teachers and principals thought it wasn’t fair that some people get better grades than others and they definitely shouldn’t be recognized for it. Imagine what it is like to be a high-achieving student in one of those ‘school’ districts.
This occurred to me as well. The choice for the president’s previous occupation was pin-setter in a bowling alley or public school administrator. I decided to be kind and give him the benefit of the doubt…
Back when I was in public school, I would have loved a mercy rule. In math.
I caught that story earlier, Jack. This boy had just experienced a high point in his young life… only to have it thrown back in his teeth. His crime? He was alert, diligent and competitive, which is what athletics are supposed to develop. Nor was their any question of poor sportsmanship on his part. That lies squarely on the lap of the politically correct moron who ruined this moment for him. I can only hope that his parents will bring him to understand that he was entirely without fault in this idiotic episode. Young men like him are the future of this nation. When we repress them in such a manner, we only serve to throw that future to the winds.
Stunning really to read the ignorance of the article and the moronic responses from a bunch of people you can tell have never had kids play in a very well run youth sports program like the GFL. Each year the GFL plays over 1,000 regular season games and typically fields over 200 football and cheerleading squads! The player and cheerleading participants range in age from 6 year old to 8th grade. I was a trainer in the GFL every year my son played from 6 years old until he entered high school. We made it to the GFL championship twice with really good coaches who taught good sportsmanship and fair play along with the fundamentals of the game. There were times that we had kids who made the same type of play and took a knee before they scored because even they understood the need for the rule. You have classless individuals coaching who do not understand good sportsmanship in youth sports (similar to this author and the morons responding), that given the opportunity would continue to score without mercy until the score was 180 to nothing. Now stop and think about how every kid and every parent and every coach on the opposing team would feel in that scenario. Then you understand the need for the rule. If you go out on any given Saturday and watch the dozens of GFL youth games from 6 to 13 it is clearly apparent that not every team at every age from the different parks around the county have the same talent pool of coaches and/or players. The rules that the GFL have put in place have been developed to level the playing field, instill good sportsmanship and fair play, provide a feeder program to the individual high schools, and make youth sports enjoyable for everyone involved. I think the GFL does an excellent job of doing all those things.
Nothing in your comment rebuts the fact that a rule that lets this happen the way it happened is incompetent and foolish. The first half is irrelevant, and “How would you feel?” is a rationalization. If kids aren’t prepared to handle losing, they shouldn’t play sports. Not everything is that simple. This is.
I wasn’t really trying to rebut the rule because the need for the rule is so solidly grounded in teaching kids how to win with class, good sportsmanship and fair play. I was just trying to point out how incompetent and foolish the author of the article is.
The rule is, of course, poorly constructed, badly reasoned, anti-competitive politically correct crap, as what happened in this instance proved. Either explain why it wasn’t a fiasco, or admit the rule was absurd. Funny, kids learned good sportsmanship long before any Little Red Book devotee conceived of silly “mercy” rules—life doesn’t have one, by the way—and before organized sports rackets like your league took all of the fun out of kids’ sports.
No, no further explanation or admission is necessary because it becomes glaringly apparent every time you post that you have never participated in competitive sports at any level, have never coached at any level, and have never had children in youth sports at any level. It is obvious because you don’t really have any idea what is meant by fair play and good sportsmanship since you can not tell the difference between those admirable qualities and the need for kids in sports to learn them and anti-competitive politically correct crap. There is a big difference.
Everything you say is obvious happens to be 100% untrue in my case. Nice work, Sherlock.
I’ll give you an Ethics Alarms mercy rule, just to be nice, because your assertion is so silly and counter-factual that shredding your arguments–whatever they are— would be unkind. To be clear, IF there is going to be a mercy rule, it mandates ending the contest the second the limit is reached or inevitably exceeded with the next score. I personally think it’s a bad policy, but at least this would be a bad policy competently administered. Or empower officials end runaway games at their discretion.
You still haven’t explained how making kids keep playing half-assed and prevented from trying to score furthers any sports objective at all, other than consoling parents. Your next post on the this topic without a substantive argument—you haven’t offered one yet, you know, just the standard “I know better” dodge—gets you banned.
The need goes so much deeper and does not make kids keep playing half-assed. Instead of threatening to ban someone because you are ignorantly arrogant when they disagree with your half baked idea you should go out to any park in Gwinnett County on Saturday mornings in the fall and catch some games. There is a rule that each kid must play a minimum number of plays; they have a draft at each park so that associations can not stack teams to gain an overwhelming advantage; the league is considered an instructional league and a feeder program for the high schools; the mercy rule is designed to keep the coaches from running up the scores; it also acts as a catalyst to force coaches to play the kids that normally wouldn’t get playing time once the score is out of reach. All of this is designed to keep the type of COACHES who have the same kill, kill, kill, mentality in youth sports that you profess from running up the scores and embarrassing weaker opponents who are trying to learn the game. Without rules like this there are coaches who would recruit kids from all over the county and abroad, stack the team, only play the best kids, pound their opponent senseless every game just to win a plastic trophy at the end of the season for the bragging rights. Not about the kids, not about teaching, not about good sportsmanship and class, just win at all cost. I for one am glad my son had the opportunity to learn to play, and learn to win, and learn to lose, and learn good sportsmanship in a league like the GFL and thank God he didn’t have to play in a league where you were in charge.
None of those objectives, which are find and worthy, are furthered by the rule under discussion. I just listed various ways sane leagues handle the same issues.
I threatened to ban you because repeated comments consisting of no substance are lightly tolerated here, and many never make it to print. This comment was substantive, and advances the “ball” so to speak. Thank you.
Of course, that is a grotesque and dishonest characterization of what a youth sports league run ethically, rationally and competently would be.
You can justify almost anything if you spin it right and you are cheerful about it. Some of the UNC professors giving out grades for ‘paper classes’ said they did it because the students were overwhelmed with college and they wanted to take the load off them some to help them succeed. By lightening the load, the students could focus on fewer classes and not end up on academic probation or losing their scholarships. It sounds almost noble when you say it that way.
My nephew plays in this league. I am a photographer, and went to one of his games to shoot the kids playing. Like I do on a normal basis, I went to the sideline and began shooting. I was confronted and told if I didn’t “get behind the fence” a considerable distance away, the fine to the team was $1000. This league apparently survives on fines.
The key here is “get behind the fence” in other words get off the field. The rule is no parents and/or non-players allowed on the field during the game. But I agree with you. Let’s get rid of the rule. Then we can go to games with the field lined five parents deep with cameras all the way around, right up to the sideline, trying to get the best pictures or videos of little Johnny in his first football game. Of course the fees for little Johnny to play will have to go way up in order to cover the flood of law suits that follow as some stupid parent was too slow to get out of the way of the hurtling players scrambling to catch the errant pass and sues the league for the trauma of their broken leg.
Assumption of the risk.
First of all, these are 7 year olds. “Hurtling players” is a relative term. Secondly, I can get behind the rule… My complaint wasn’t the rule, it was the fact that I was basically threatened simply for being there. There were cheer moms who were SUPPOSED TO BE on the “game” side of the fence twisting awkwardly with their cameras to make sure they were behind the fence line.
Even if you want to completely invalidate my complaint… Which is perfectly OK with me…. The idea remains that this league is driven by fines… What is worse – scoring, or watching other players take a knee because they don’t even have to score anymore to beat you? A loss is a loss.
7 year old today, 6’0″ 250 in 6th grade like my son his last year of GFL. Rules designed for the safety of the players and the parents on the sidelines are not put in place to threaten. The fines are not to pad the pockets of the league but put in place because without them there would always be dome knucklehead standing on the sidelines in harms way taking pictures. The small amount of money that comes in from fines is insignificant to the amount of money it takes to run the league. Did you or your association incur the $1,000 fine, no. Will you be on the sideline any time soon in front of the fence, no. Rule worked, threat to you for incurring a fine worked. First time I have ever been on this site and I didn’t realize it was designed for those who believe in anarchy and no rules because they can’t understand their value.
LOL… You are right… I didn’t extrapolate taking pictures now into 5 years from now. I guess I need people like you to think for me all the time and tell me how safe I should be. The threat was just that… And made in a manner that I found not only aggressive but offensive.
This is an ethics site, sir. The discussion is based upon what the ethics are when a youth athletic organization fines its coaches and associations based upon the performance of the athletes. There are positives and negatives to such actions, and the people here want to explore those sides.
My observations of this season, while beginning with the story above, have not ended there. In my honest opinion the GFL is the least-well run athletic league I’ve encountered. If your experiences differed, that is actually a good thing because frankly that means your child most likely also had a positive athletic experience.
In the unlikely event that other readers are as unimaginative as Keith and those who run his Maoist football league, let me elaborate on some of the many ways youth leagues can deal with routs without using a rule as dumb as the one in this case, where an 8-year-old defensive player runs back an interception when the point limit hasn’t been reached, but since touchdown are six points is deemed responsible for his coach’s suspension because the limit is exceeded when it is reached:
1. The league, relying on ethics, which can be adjustable, rather than rules, which have little to do with ethics, but merely compliance, could give guidelines and training to coaches and parent regarding the options in a runaway.
2. Officials, when such a situation arises, pulls the coaches aside and reminds them of what to do, and steps in on intentional abuses,
3. Running up the score when the game is in hand is forbidden—that is, trick plays, aggressive play, plays designed to exploit the losing team’s weakness.
4. The preferred option once a rout has been declared is, in baseball or softball, to treat the game as official and as if it was halted by rain Game over.
5. The same applies in football.
6. In the alternative, coaches shall play only reserves and players out of position, or in positions they are not used to playing. This way useful experience is gleaned by the winning team, while making the teams performance less dominating. However, the players can continue to do their best.
7. In basketball, hockey, field hockey and soccer, the team that is ahead shall be instructed to play hard on defense, and not to attempt to score on offense, but to practice passing, positioning, team play and coordination right up to the moment when a shot would be normally called for.
8. No team should be punished for scoring when the ineptitude or mistakes of the losing team makes it unavoidable without creating a travesty.
9. Other options include loaning a player or player to the losing team to even the talent, to cease keeping score, declaring a time limit on the remainder of the game, and the winning team being handicapped, such as having to play with fewer players.
10. I am not equally pleased with these option, most of which I have seen used or participated in, but the worst of them makes mores sense that the stupid Keith is defending.
“…than the stupid *one* Keith is defending.”, I will presume…
Gonna play devils advocate with you for a moment.
There are two sides here both holding up the children’s feelings and fairness as their reason for their position and as the example of why the other side is wrong. “Oh this poor team of pee-wee players that were getting trounced – how do you think they felt” “Oh poor kid scoring his first touch down only to get fined and lose his coach”.
Both sides are playing the victim of the other. I’ve seen blog after blog pointing to “those liberal/communist/maoist/obama loving/leftist/pc/limp wristed/pansies forcing our kids to…” yada, yada, yada. And hear comments about overly macho/misogynistic, redneck, super competitive, aggressive, attention seeking righties… Both groups still putting the child (and the children’s parents) in a position of victimhood to the other group that they don’t like or to the rules they don’t agree with.
Just as much as the losing team’s kids and parents have to learn to deal with failure and loss. So too does the winning team have to learn to deal with rules in life that aren’t fair to them or that they don’t agree with. How many people get to go to work and like all the policies of where they work. How many people live in a state where they like all the laws and/or lawmakers. You learn how to either live with the rules or change the rules from the inside by staying involved or remove yourself from places you don’t like. Of course you’ll never perfectly solve all the problem and you’ll never be 100% clear of someone else’s rules you don’t like. That’s life. We shouldn’t be teaching kids that they are victims of it.
The reporting I’ve seen so far paints the picture of this “poor little kid” being robbed of his achievement. Equating his touchdown as the ONE and ONLY reason for the fine and suspension. What’s not being talked about is the league’s assertion that the winning team mocked the other team, laid down on the field and ran off the field and that those things were what warranted the heavy fine and suspension. Normally a mercy rule violation would warrant only a $100 fine, that would have been waved (and is being waved per some other reports), in the case of a defensive scoring such as what this kid did.
What you’re stating is how you would have done things, under assumptions based on what’s been reported. That information is naturally imperfect. You make some assertions about how you would have done things assuming that the league management may not have already done at least some of those things, but do you have anything tangible to suggest that’s true? Has anyone gotten comment from the coach, a copy of the league rule book, comments from the other team’s coach or parents, or testimony from any of the refs or other parties present.
The problem with some of the ideas with how to end play during a mercy ruling is that then you have the opposite group griping because their kids didn’t get play time that they paid for. These games are like practice and they need those hours, even when they’re getting trounced, to build up skills. Some of those kids on failing teams might end up being great players. Some might never play beyond that little stint, but still use what they learned later in life. So it’s a balancing act, but it shouldn’t hinge on who’s self-esteem we’re hurting or who the victim is at the end of the day. Competition is about striving together, winning is about going just beyond what your competitor could, and it should always be about punching up, not down. Coaches shouldn’t be pushing their kids to work at max capacity all the time, neither should other coaches be setting low expectations, it is competition.
I’ve been on the sidelines of pee-wee teams in basketball and soccer and heard passionate parents screaming at their children as if they were gladiators in battle. I’ve counseled parents while coaching basketball that they can’t yell at the kids, coaches, or refs (Upward Basketball). That these games are about teaching the basics and sportsmanship. Still I’ve seen 7 and 8 year old kids crying at the thought that they are going to let those parents down. I’ve seen some of these same kids walking off the field unhappy even after a win because they failed to do something their mom or dad told them to do. Some of them look so stressed out that they might stroke out. And some of the coaches are just as bad as the parents. Screaming at first year players as if they understand all the fundamentals and are in complete control of their bodies at 5-8 years old. And then when the parents get into fights with the coaches, each other, or the league management and shit talk in front of the kids. It just goes back to putting those kids as victims and not participants. We’re not teaching them teamwork, pride in their effort, strength during adversity, how to be calm under pressure, or how to work within an imperfect system… we’re teaching them to yell louder and hit harder than the other person and if that fails cry foul and if that doesn’t work ditch out. Which both sides are doing.
Great comment.
It still doesn’t excuse a stupid rule. The rule is stupid because it made it possible to go from not a mercy situation to a violation of a mercy situation without the necessary point where the rule is triggered. The result for the innocent player was unfair. Yes, life is unfair, and sports teaches that, but this doesn’t excuse incompetence and laziness by those pretending to care about kids. The kid will now learn that when you get screwed by an unjust rule in America, you fight.
You are laying out a false equivalence. One side is messing with the nature of the sport and sports itself based on lame and trendy self-esteem theories. The other side is simply seeking objective fairness. There is nothing unfair about losing a game badly because you stink. Kids crying because their parents are assholes, so we change the rules to protect them from disappointment and parental abuse and penalize the kids who just want to play the game as it was designed? Competition is about striving together, winning is about going just beyond what your competitor could, and it should always be about punching up, not down sound good, but what does it mean? It’s unsportsmanlike to defeat a lesser team? I learned more in various games where I was embarrassed than in the ones where I did the clobbering…didn’t you? Losing just isn’t the tragedy these rules make it out to be. You don’t need rules. You need coaches and parents who modelfairness and ethics. You can’t advance fairness and integrity with an unfair rule that distorts the game.
Football starts corrupting early, doesn’t it?
I’ll just say this. When I was in high school, it was an unwritten football rule that, when one team had pretty well wrapped up the game, they’d just put their second and third string guys out on the field. This served two purposes. First: It was a gesture of respect to a good opponent that you weren’t trying to humiliate them by deliberately running up the score. Second: It gave the “bench warmers” a chance to play and show their own potential. Afterwards- as was the custom then (in Texas)- both teams would line up, shake hands and often share a mid-field prayer together. This was true sportsmanship.
However, anyone who would even suggest that a team be BARRED from scoring after reaching a dominant position in the game would have been run out of town! Thinking quickly, capitalizing on an opportunity and seeing it through to a successful conclusion is a test of manhood. A young player in Georgia was denied this due to a foolish, politically correct concept; one which is utterly at odds with actual sportsmanship and the ends it exists for.
If the objective is to teach sportsmanlike conduct, stopping a team from scoring points (an extremely sportsmanlike action) doesn’t make sense one iota.
If, as Keith asserts, part of the problem is the winning teams non-competition behavior such as flopping or other nonsense, then, by all means, punish that.
But punishing a team for winning doesn’t punish unsportsmanlike conduct.
It seems the solutions posited here ultimately boil down to “give someone else a chance to play more” either in the form limiting the winning players from playing or expecting winning players to play shoddily. If we expect winning players to play shoddily, then we teach a really awful lesson to the winning players, and the losing players still know what’s happening, adding further disgrace.
No, no ethical solution requires the winning team to keep it’s individuals (when on the field) from performing their best…because performing their best and scoring points IS SPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT (which we are trying to teach, right?). Because in competition, within the rules and ethics of any competition, be it as simple as Go Fish to as complex as the Iraq Invasion, part of competition IS DOING EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO WIN, even if it means not giving the opposition a chance.
Now, if this is a learning-oriented league, teaching the drive to WIN doesn’t have to take a back seat to giving the losing team the thrill of a touchdown. Nope. All it means is lessons need to be taught WITHIN the team itself. If rules must be established to handicap winning teams, let them not govern ON FIELD actions of the sport itself…but rather such measures that perhaps compel star players to take a seat and let the 2nd stringers and 3rd stringers a chance to play (read as LEARN). Which in turn will hopefully field a team that the LOSING team can then handle on its own terms and also LEARN from.