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Running Up The Score


Ronster23

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I read it and nothing that guy said contradicted what Buddy said. He's asking a coach to teach his team bad habits just so someone else won't feel bad. And he's trying to get legislation passed to control what others do and think, something I always dislike.

This guy screams some sort of smug moral superiority. He doesn't clearly defined what "running the score up" is. Jimmy Johnson was criticized for "running it up" on Notre Dame when he took his starters out and still ran the ball. But the backups wanted to play hard because they got a chance to play. Nothing wrong with that. A coach's job is to have his team ready to play, not to make sure the other team doesn't get their feelings hurt. 

Also there is a bit of gamesmanship in play. Guys like Kobe, Michael Jordon, etc. won a lot of their games before stepping on the court (read The Art of War by Sun Tzu). How? Every time they played, they never let up. Other teams HATED the days leading up to playing them because they knew they were in for it. If Kobe and others had just let up so that opponents felt better about getting beat, they wouldn't have been such dominating players for so long.

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9 minutes ago, Destry said:

What determines "running up the score"? Lets say a team is ahead 100 to 25 and is still in full court press with starters. Subs are  playing and not pressing but run when they get the ball. Which is considered worse? 

I mean if a teams strategy is to press they shouldn't stop. They need to work on conditioning and such .

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7 minutes ago, JohnnyFootball said:

I mean if a teams strategy is to press they shouldn't stop. They need to work on conditioning and such .

With all due respect, I can't buy that. Too much other practice time for that. If that is their strategy,they should do that nearly all practice every day. Just my opinion.

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Unless there are serious mitigating factors, I don't believe in "running up the score." 

I do believe teams should be allowed to forfeit and/or request a running clock. 

That said, I believe it's prudent for a coach to play "keepaway" and run out the clock, purely for tactical reasons. 

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27 minutes ago, AKA said:

Unless there are serious mitigating factors, I don't believe in "running up the score." 

I do believe teams should be allowed to forfeit and/or request a running clock. 

That said, I believe it's prudent for a coach to play "keepaway" and run out the clock, purely for tactical reasons. 

Preach!!! 

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14 hours ago, Destry said:

Someone explain to me why there is the 45 point rule in 6 man football. I am serious.

It's been in the Six-Man rule book since 1939 ... just a few years after the game was "invented" ... it's just part of its culture.

A few people I have heard discuss the history of it said that it was added because the number playing in the first years of the game started small and then grew ... it was a way to balance out between schools that were new to the game and schools that had been playing for some time.  And that kinda makes sense - if you were a "new" school playing your first game and you were playing a school that had been playing for some time - and the first game the newbie played, they got beat 180-0 ... what do you think would be the chances that the new school would be interested in continuing?  Anyway, that's kinda how if was explained to me long ago and far, far away.

I don't find an extreme number of folks complaining about ... although there has been a little talk as schools and distance between those schools has increased over the years - citing driving 3 hours and only playing a half as a downer ... most coaches I knew that coached that level were adept at staying just under the threshold so their "extra" kids could play.

Every so often over the decades, it would come up in eleven-man football talk  for Class B and Class A (now A and AA) for 40 points at differing suggested points in the second half.

But I haven't heard it mentioned since the mid-1980's ... and it was after that I observed the "gentlemen's agreement" (AKA running clock) being used more often.

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16 hours ago, MrBuddyGarrity said:

How about playing some defense so you wont get scored on. 😎

We don’t need a rule for this, at least not in Texas. Pretty much every coach I’ve seen is good at “keeping it from getting out of hand.” Case in point: 2018 week 11, 8-2 Joaquin vs. 1-9 Harleton. Joaquin had mismatches all over the field in their favor. Scored pretty much at will in the first half. Had Coach Lawson wanted to, he could have sat several starters and still put up another 40 in the second half. That didn’t happen. I think the final was like 58-14, and I didn’t hear any complaints. This same scenario happens all across the state, every week of the season. Leave it in the hands of the coaches. They know what they’re doing. 

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2 hours ago, trueblue82 said:

We don’t need a rule for this, at least not in Texas. Pretty much every coach I’ve seen is good at “keeping it from getting out of hand.” Case in point: 2018 week 11, 8-2 Joaquin vs. 1-9 Harleton. Joaquin had mismatches all over the field in their favor. Scored pretty much at will in the first half. Had Coach Lawson wanted to, he could have sat several starters and still put up another 40 in the second half. That didn’t happen. I think the final was like 58-14, and I didn’t hear any complaints. This same scenario happens all across the state, every week of the season. Leave it in the hands of the coaches. They know what they’re doing. 

Thanks for that ... I don't know many who abused it over the years ... the few who do usually end up getting it - somewhere, sometime ... Coach Karma keeps watch and keeps score, too. (There's even a wrong way NOT to run up the score).

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3 hours ago, Destry said:

Thanks dob. In coaching we are to work for all youth, with priority on the ones you coach, so shellacking the youth on the other team is just not in my book.

Interesting sidenote from watching over the years ... every once in a while I would hear or encounter a situation where a coach, who doesn't tend to run up the score, ran up the score.  Why?  In many cases, it was eventually determined that it was because the coach across the field had once run up the score on him ... in many of those situations, neither coach was at the same school they were at when it happened - sometimes several seasons before.  Oddly, neither sets of kids or schools were involved in the previous issue ... where and when does that end?  Sometimes our ego trumps our normal values and thought processes.  Somehow I don't think using your kids to settle a grudge appears anywhere in the Coaching Ethics Portfolio.

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I remember years ago, early in my coaching career, playing a team that we were vastly better than. The opposing coach refused our offer of running the clock in the 2nd half.  We tried every way possible to keep the score down. We ran our OL at running back, running the play clock down, punted on 2nd down and just running the same play right up the middle with our slowest kids possible. Unfortunately it still was not enough to not score a few more TD's.

The worst thing about it was we scored with just a minute left in the game when we punted the ball. The returner muffed the punt on about the 10 yard line and it rolled into the endzone. The kid just walked away from it and our player (kid that barely got to play) walked over and picked the ball up and handed it to the referee. The Ref stuck his arms up and signaled TD. The poor kid was horrified because he knew we were trying not to score again.

I've been on both ends of bad beatings and have never seen a team that maliciously tried to run up the score. I'm sure it happens but there are many ways to keep the score down while still allowing your kids to compete and have fun. 

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That's kinda what I'm saying...  it's one thing if one team is grossly outmatched. I don't see any problem with a coach "calling off the dogs" against a vastly inferior opponent. Your starters don't gain anything by pounding a weak opponent who's already thrown in the towel. Might as well put in your backups/underclassmen and get them some game reps. That's just good tactics in a sport like football, where freak injuries can and will occur in the most innocuous of circumstances. 

But... 

If you're evenly-matched against a district opponent (where a point differential impacts playoff seeding) or in the playoffs trying to build momentum toward State, I say you run the other team off the field. Too many times I've seen a team get out to a good lead, then call off the dogs...  only for the other team to come back and either make it a close defeat or a comeback win. 

No sir. If you get the advantage, you press the advantage until the final whistle. No such thing as "running up the score" in crucial games. Running up the score should be the goal, not something to be avoided. 

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11 minutes ago, Valhalla said:

In my experience it’s been more a problem in basketball than football. 

I remember when schools like White Oak and Tatum dropped down to 2A and would go and beat schools like Harleton and Union Grove 115 to 30 and press the whole game.

I remember having to play against Troup when they had Austin and Kincade. They were just running a very basic Flex offense, passing the ball three times before every shot, and still beating us by 100. Not sure what they could've done. 

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43 minutes ago, AKA said:

That's kinda what I'm saying...  it's one thing if one team is grossly outmatched. I don't see any problem with a coach "calling off the dogs" against a vastly inferior opponent. Your starters don't gain anything by pounding a weak opponent who's already thrown in the towel. Might as well put in your backups/underclassmen and get them some game reps. That's just good tactics in a sport like football, where freak injuries can and will occur in the most innocuous of circumstances. 

But... 

If you're evenly-matched against a district opponent (where a point differential impacts playoff seeding) or in the playoffs trying to build momentum toward State, I say you run the other team off the field. Too many times I've seen a team get out to a good lead, then call off the dogs...  only for the other team to come back and either make it a close defeat or a comeback win. 

No sir. If you get the advantage, you press the advantage until the final whistle. No such thing as "running up the score" in crucial games. Running up the score should be the goal, not something to be avoided. 

No argument here. The game I was referring to was a 94-0 score. We did not want to win that badly. I was also on the receiving end of 74-0 beating and I don't think they did anything wrong either.

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