Anyone that has ever been to a sporting event knows that there is the chance that it will be a lopsided affair.
I have personally been to many games of varying sports where you almost feel bad for the other side.
That being said, it is the duty of the coaching staff and the players to play as hard as they can until the very end. You never know when someone is going to come back. However, in today’s pat everyone on the head culture, you can actually get in trouble for being too good at something.
If you don’t know who John Heisman is, you’re probably familiar with the college football trophy that was named after him. In 1916, the famed coach, then at Georgia Tech, made a bit of history. Outraged over Cumberland College using professional players in a baseball game against Tech earlier that that year, the Yellow Jackets beat Cumberland 222-0.
“As a general rule, the only thing necessary for a touchdown was to give a Tech back the ball and holler, ‘Here he comes’ and ‘There he goes,’” the Atlanta Journal reported at the time.
Heisman is still remembered as one of football’s great innovators and legendary sportsmen despite one of his teams putting up a score total you’d ordinarily find on a hacked copy of Tecmo Super Bowl. In fact, the game has become part of Heisman’s celebrated lore.
These are different times, however, and a Long Island football coach has been suspended for running up the score when his team’s blowout was nowhere near Heisman-tastic.
According to the New York Post, Rob Shaver of Plainedge High School in New York was punished by Nassau County high school sports officials under their “lopsided scores policy.”
Shaver, head coach of the undefeated Red Devils, received a one-game banishment for keeping his starters in too long during a 61-13 victory on Oct. 25 over the similarly undefeated South Side Cyclones.
Under a Nassau County policy, if a team wins by more than 42 points, the coach must explain to a special committee why his team won by that many points.
Shaver went before the committee and gave his explanation, which apparently wasn’t good enough for them. Thus, the coach will be sitting out his team’s final regular-season game.