Plus, if you go to the link, there's more to show that it's football. And there are no rules of the game that I recall that would allow anyone to stop play after a certain point-score.

According to the article, the winning team was taking it easy on them.

Basically the team was insulted that, yeah, they suck, but let them try.

There are a lot of instances of teams backing down and the other team scoring on them (not necessarily winning, but not completely and utterly demolished).

One instance in particular that makes me tear up are those criminal juvies who have a football team but whenever they had a game no one cheered for them (they didn't have a home game, for obvious reasons). So the opposing team's fans cheered for them.

Any "mercy" rule past the age of 6 or so is just a big middle finger to the opposing team....

I'm not sure about TX. But a lot of times the mercy rule just runs the clock faster

Because this team was 4A, the rule does not apply. However they did run continuous clock mercy and also disallowed the winning team from making certain plays (which is also part of Texas UIL's mercy rule.

Someone should have ended the game. Not that I think it should have been the exclusive role of Buchanan. But someone should have put an end to it.

These are high schoolers, for God's sake.

I was on a basketball team in the eighth grade and we lost 2-32. Our team comprised of every eighth grader in our school. It didn't harm us in any way. We were glad just to have a chance to play.

And kids can take it. It's the adults that freak out about it.

Couple that with inevitable naivety or ignorance of a young teenager and you have a recipe for psychic disaster.

...is going to damage them permanently. Life happens and people have to take the good with the bad.

for psychic disaster?

wow

I won two state titles between my gmen middle school and my full on gmen

There's probably more "emotional distress" from losing a close game than this.

The game is like the real world in many ways. Kids have to learn how to deal with it. Too many parents are worried about a sterile "everybody wins" environment. That's not what life is really like. I'm sure that some people would like their kids to walk around with helmets all day doing everything they can ensuring the child doesn't experience even a moment of adversity. This harms the kids more than getting blown out in a football game.

If you're around youth sports you know that the kids don't like it when the winning team stops playing. They feel patronized.

Most of the time the kids have a better understanding for the game than the adults.

Raising a child who never has to confront the fact that they might lose, even lose badly, at some point in their life until they're an adult.

And then, when they're off to college and realize the world can be a cold, harsh place at times, they entirely lose their fucking shit and end up on 5 types of anti-depressants to ensure they don't walk in front of a bus.

In life, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you don't get what you want. Sometimes it seems like everything around you is just crashing down and nothing wants to work like you planned. Better to learn how to properly deal with it when you're young and malleable.

Run some fun plays. Put in third string.

If he did all that, congrats to him. If he didn't, its a shame (and sucks to not be first string)

Let's stop treating kids like victims...

I mean, that will never happen in their professional lives...

You are kidding, right?

Cause I have news for you, if you think that is going to be the last time that life is going to hand those kids their ass, you are not very smart. This is what you call a teaching moment. Instead of whining about it being a bullying incident, teach those kids to laugh it off or praise them for keeping their heads up during an embarrassing incident or something.

Emotional distress....jesus.

It didn't emotionally damage me or my team-mates at all. It was hilarious, ultimately -- we knew we sucked, and after this we knew just how much. (It also was a great motivator to study harder. )

The guys on the other team were hoods from a rough part of town. One of them pulled a knife on one of my team-mates during the game (not so hilarious at the time!). They had a lot more emotional damage in their lives than we did.

It's as much of a learning experience as losing a close one

It is really bad for young people to be on a playing field or court getting the shit beat out of them by a superior team. Losing coaches can use lopsided losses as a motivational tool if they are thoughtful and smart, a tool that will help kids later in life.

by 61-7, 62-10, and 63-0. All three of those games would have ended early under your approach. In fact, two of them would have ended before halftime. That's unfair to everyone involved. Yes, it sucks to lose big. But those kids didn't quit. They didn't stop showing up just becuase they were overmatched. Why should a bunch of adults decide for them that they don't get to play.

At 79? 65? 52?. It's easy to say, in hindsight, that these two teams shouldn't be playing, but absent a formal rule in advance, there's no point to call the game that wouldn't have been completely arbitrary.

Losing is a part of competition. Ending the competition itself because a team is losing? Please.

"My competition is besting me they need to stop" Yeah let' see how far that get's you..

These kids are in HS their little egos are not going to be hurt..they knew they were going to get whupped. Not everyone get's a trophy


I was on a lousy basketball team back in HS 3-10..we knew we sucked. These kids are tougher than you think.

Been on the wrong side of the mercy rule. It was humiliating and motivated us to try harder.

but the game ended and it was over. The child will get more "bullying" for having their parents file complaint about the score than he ever did during the game.

It sounds like the team did make an effort not to run up the score. Personally, I think it's more embarrassing to have a team take a knee in the 3rd quarter than to win 91-0. Perhaps they might want to institute some sort of mercy rule. Without it, what's a team supposed to do when even the backups over-match an opponent by that much?

Also agree that at some point the game should have been called. It was 56-0 at that half. That might have been a good indication that someone should have stepped in and ended it. The Western Hills coach had the choice to forfeit the game and choose not to.

I'm sure in terms of rankings it probably would have pissed off the Aledo as they were undefeated and generally the more they run up the score the more likely they'll remain #1 ranked.

Someone in the comments said the mercy rule should be if the other team is up by 50 after three quarters the game should be stopped. I'd go one further and say either at half time or the beginning of the fourth quarter

Here are Aledo's games thus far this year:

Aledo 44, Highland Park 3

Aledo 56, Stephenville 14

Aledo 49, Prep Tech (Mexico) 0

Aledo 84, Arlington Heights 7

Aledo 77, South Hills 16

Aledo 84, Wyatt 7

Aledo 91, Western Hills 0

Yeah the closest one was the first game and that was by 41 points. They beat three other opponents by 70+ points.

Someone said that it is based on school size. If I remember correctly, Oregon does it the same way except we have only six levels instead of seven like Texas.

I don't pay attention to my hs team much anymore, but I just looked and if they win on Friday they will be in the playoffs.

It's not doing them any favors, either.

One of my papers is running a series on Non-Verbal Bullying. Oh my. Turns out allowing someone to sit alone at lunch is bullying. Not speaking to someone for any reason is bullying. There are others...but if everything is now bullying, eventually people are gonna put their hands over their ears.

In this case, it looks like Buchanan put the benchwarmers, the soccer team, the manager, the cheerleaders, the JV squad and some of the fans in the game, and his starting QB in the other team's uniform, and still managed to produce the final score of a Harlem Globetrotters game. I don't think it's bullying, but it does raise the question of whether Western Hills is in the right league.

4A (this school's division) is for schools with an enrollment of 990 to 2064

My son plays in a school that is 5A (2065 and up). Every year, they have to face Katy (number 1 in the state and Andy Dalton's alma mater). Every year they get their butts handed to them. It's just the breaks.

with the best team possible if you're in sports. the things people would do to get their baseballing sons in to certain public schools (bellaire) is pretty extreme.

Small school, was 3A when I was there. They were made to play 4A, then 5A, and now they're in 6A. Still competitive, though they no longer dominate. I would say that if this year isn't just an abberation, tjen the school should just be put in a more competitive division...better for all concerned. As to bullying, what a load of bullshit.

That parent should face reality - her son's team sucks.
Reminds me of a match I attended in Central Florida some years back where one of my nephews was playing. To be kind both teams were ordinary, but my sister had prepared me to watch her Michael Jordonesque son turn it on. Well I after the first half I had to go outside and just have laugh. When I returned I suggested that she and her husband face some truths and tell my nephew to pay serious attention to the academic side of matters education since he sucked big time at basketball.

Only his brother agreed with me - parents are really afraid of upsetting their darlings these days. Well I took him to his favorite restaurant a few days later and told him the truth. It took him a few years to understand that I did it out of love.

the situation worse. This makes a mockery of kids that are truly bullied - like the girl that recently killed herself.

Losing a football game isn't bullying. Whether you play football, baseball, Monopoly or Shoots and Ladders somebody wins and somebody loses.

Those backups bust their butts and get their heads handed to them all week long in practice by the A-team. Many are the younger kids on the team and are waiting for their turn. For many this is their opportunity to show the coach that they are an assert now and in the future. We are now asking people to dismiss opportunities giving to them?
The flip side is after the regular season is over , having to pull your starters so often, will the starters be in full game ready mode when the real completion of playoff football comes around.

Seriously, what is the point of this? Maybe the parent just wanted it looked into. Having a website to report bullying is a good thing. People ought to be able to use the website without fear that their reports are going to be publicized and mocked.

I have two related stories. When I was around 11, the coach of my traveling soccer team had us play a very good team of 14 year olds for us to get the feel of what a stronger and better team was like to give us some incentive to improve more.

He set expectations beforehand by telling us we would not win, and in all likelihood would lose by a lot (I think we lost 4-0 or 5-0) but we should stick to our strategy and pass well, etc.

You tend to improve more in sports when you get to play regularly against people who are better. So playing the #1 ranked team could have been a great opportunity for the kids depending on how it was presented and how it played out. The coach could have said, in all likelihood, you are playing against one or two or maybe more future NFL players. I think that would have made it seem pretty fun even in losing.

I also played tennis and made first singles on my H.S. tennis team in Long Island which is known for having good up and coming tennis players. I played several folks who were highly ranked amateur players and of course I did not win those matches but I got a couple of games off of each of them. They were good experiences and really helped me improve my game a lot. I'm smiling, thinking about the idea of being bullied by losing a sports match big. If that's true, I was certainly bullied. I once played the guy ranked, I think 5th or 6th in the amateurs on the east coast. I managed to win the first two games, but he won the rest of them. I lost 6-2, 6-0. He was irritated that he lost those two first games to me.

Why do thousands of students all over the country play soccer?

So they don't have to watch it.

Thankfully Aledo didn't just take a knee on every play, as that's just insulting. Line up and play. If you get beat, you get beat. They're in high school, they're not 5.

They already lost the game, badly. They know it. No need to throw more on top of that by a parent saying there was bullying going on, especially when things were done to try to mitigate the blowout. It's just going to embarrass that parent's kid more than anything.

That does not ever happen here in Mass.

Because he didn't offer to stop the game? It sounds like it was going to be a huge loss for the losing team before they ever set foot on the field, but they showed up to play anyway.

Out of the information we have, where was the bad sportsmanship by the winning coach?

There are ways around it. Put in the kids who never play, take the time to mess around with weird plays you've never done, work on things you aren't good at, etc. No need to completely beat the shit out of a lesser team. I can''t remember ever seeing more then a 60 point split here. And yes, I think it's bad sportsmanship on the part of the coach. If my guy did that, frankly, I would think less of him.

Do I think it's bullying... No. I just think it is bad form.

Aledo pulled their starters fairly early, the clock didn't stop after halftime, and they barely passed the ball. Nothing in the article about unfair play, no breaking of any rules, no taunting, etc.

It sounds like everyone pretty much knew what the situation was going to be right off the bat. When it was all over, the winning team didn't just stop playing, and the losing team stayed on the field, and hopefully kept trying. I don't see anything wrong either way.

Maybe the top team should go up a level or the bottom team down a level.

As a post above says. Maybe there's nothing that can be done about it. That school has beaten everyone they've played pretty handily.

I'd make sure all the back-ups play most of the game and try out new shots etc. Not bullying by a long shot but coach didn't handle this very gracefully.

just as anyone discussing this issue comes up with their own opinions.

Were you in the room? Do you have grand insights to share with us?

Did you read it?

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1819708-parent-files-bullying-complaint-after-sons-team-loses-91-0

the reporter has his opinion, and you have yours. It's clearly not bullying and frankly I don't know how the parents even came up with that.

What more would you like to discuss?

I first replied to your post because you said the coach of the winning team did not handle the game 'gracefully'.

The news story clearly states that he pulled his starters early, threw only ten passes the entire game, and the clock was never stopped in the second half. He put his reserves in the game. What should he have done instead? Should he have told his players to fumble, miss blocks, and miss tackles? That would have been more offensive to the losing team than what actually happened.

coaches can agree to end a game early. IMO, should have been exercised with this game.

Still doesn't raise to bullying as far as I'm concerned but could've been handled better.

exercized that right. It would be insulting for the winning coach to bring it up. Did you read that the losing coach did not have a problem with how the wunning coach handled the game?

you have your opinion, the reporter has his opinion, and both coaches I'm sure had their opinions.

And I have my opinion. It hasn't changed since you started harassing me and it's not going to change today.

The mercy rule was put into effect for that game. In Texas, if one team is leading by a huge margin, the continuous clock rule is put into effect whenever that team has the ball. If the score continues to climb, the lead team will not be allowed to run certain plays (like a downfield deep pass). I asked my son's coach about this (TX 5A high school coach), and--if either of the coaches had ended the game early--it would have been a forfeit by the team. What you are talking about is a rule for 6-man football. Because this is a 4A school (the 91-0 game), they do not play 6-man football, and the coach would have forfeited if the game ended early.

Again, I just wanted to state the rules for football here at the high school level.

"The University Interscholastic League, the governing body for high school sports in Texas, only has a mercy rule for six-man football that ends a game when one team gets ahead by 45 points by halftime or later. There is no mercy rule for 11-man football, though coaches can agree to end a game early, UIL spokeswoman Kate Hector said."

Kate Hector is with UIL (the body that governs this) but she didn't specify whether that would result in forfeit. If so I can see why the coaches would stay away from it.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/22/parent-accuses-texas-high-school-football-coach-bullying-after-1-0-blowout-game/

Katy-Aldine forfeited against us earlier this year.

Division 4A does not play 6-man football because the school is too big. It's 11-man. No mercy except for continuous clock and banning plays. (I'm also grateful that our district knows the rules--it got us that win without breaking a sweat! )

then I can see why they wouldn't go that route.

What really gets me going is that Katy has a great team (we get blasted by them every year and we're a good team) and Katy-Aldine is awful. Tell me there aren't some shenanigans going on there.

as harassment on my part, then maybe you should just not participate here. This entire site is about writing posts and people replying to those posts.

Should they have made no effort at all? As has been pointed out, Western Hills (the losing team) was clearly outmatched going into the game. They were winless, having been competitive in only one game (a 9-7 loss). They lost one other game 49-30. In their other four games, they had been outscored by an average of 55-6.

What was the opposing coach supposed to do? Not play his first or second string players at all? Tell them to fall down if they are running towards the end zone? Why should those kids be denied the opportunity to play? The winning coach did nothing wrong. And the losing coach did nothing wrong either. Should he have forfeited, thus denying those kids the chance to play? As I said, those kids knew in advance that they were going to lose and lose big.

I do agree that if this is a consistent pattern over the years -- with one team head and shoulders above the other teams, particularly if there is a signfiicant difference in the size of the schools and the pool of kids from which a team can be put together, then the league should be reorganized to make it more competitive.

should have actually filed against the Western Hills coach for child abuse as he should have forfeited the game at half time
so as to avoid further humiliation.

Just kidding. Filing a complaint like that diminishes the fight against actual bullying.

as a euphemism for: assault, stalking, stalking with malice, sexual assault, vandalism, battery, criminal harassment and several other felony level crimes.

Nothing in this story rises to that level. Not even close. Perhaps it is time to stop using the word "bullying" and start using the name of the actual crimes, assuming that one has been committed.

Texas, like Oklahoma, is just not rational when it comes to the subject of football.

It's a culture where everyone is a bloody victim whether they like it or not. School administrations are leading the way.

That kid whose mother made the complaint should be mortified.

Hurt feelings or even dealing with the basic stuff of life now equates to "bullying". As others have said this detracts from real kids who are actually getting the shit kicked out of them because we waste time and resources responding to morons like this.

... I hope so.

Though I am a cynical SOB so ...

Small town north of Sheboygan.

In fact, there were 79 in my graduating class.

And every year in football we played Kohler, and got our asses kicked.

Not 91-0, but still pretty bad.

I don't follow high school football anymore, so I don't know if Kohler still kicks Howards Grove's ass.
But I'd be willing to bet it still happens.

"Bullying?" Give me a break.

That's what the parents are asking for. Rather then talking with their children about the harsh realities of life occasionally sucking and whatnot--they take their passive aggressive peeves out on the opposing team. I mean, what, were they expecting these kids to suddenly stop playing the game? Quarterback lays down his gear and is all like, "Well, we drove through 3 hours of burning cow hair--but let's call it game at the first quarter." Yeah, that's feasible foresight for a teenager.

The kids are going to be okay. Every person should deal with at least one soul crushing defeat in their life. Utter destruction is necessary for young adults to develop themselves for international competitions. I'm sure at least one kid is going to walk away from this being like, "Well, shit happens in Texas, but I can still make the Olympics in Tokyo" or something out of the Mighty Ducks.

If you want to talk about the topic of bullying in sports, that's understandable, but we would have to reevaluate the whole premise of sports in relation to academics. But what Texas school board has time for that?

Like this college game.

Worst Football Loss Ever

1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech

Final Score: Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland 0

The 1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech football game was an American football game played on October 7, 1916, between the Georgia Tech Engineers and the Cumberland College Bulldogs at Grant Field (now known as Bobby Dodd Stadium) in Atlanta, Georgia. The game became the most lopsided in the history of college football, as Georgia Tech was victorious 222–0.

http://sportsinput.com/football-loss/

won last Saturday 63 -7. They didn't just pound the opposing team. The other team actually had a pretty good offense and the conference's leading rusher. They just couldn't finish a drive. They fumbled, threw interceptions, gave up long returns, and had a punt blocked for a TD. Their defense wasn't very good. None of the starters played the second half at all. The winning team stopped passing in the fourth quarter. The back up players played hard. What should the coach do? Ask his reserves to not play well? They could easily have scored a few more TDs but slowed down play without stopping the clock.

just accept the loss.

I hate bullying as much as anyone, but it looks like there was no bullying here - the losing team just sucked.

I wasn't inside anyone's mind so I don't want to attribute mean spiritedness.

It's clear the winning margin wasn't modest,

That kind of thing that can be humiliating...but how did the kids on the losing side actually feel?

I don't have a problem with parents trying to protect kids physically or mentally but

I'm not sure it was particularly gracious of the parent to make that complaint.

Handled the right way, at the mid-century 50th class reunion of the losing squad, this will just be one of those great stories about back in the day: "Man we got tromped! But our team went on to become loving parents, doting grandparents, and community leaders not to mention MDs, lawyers and assorted millionaires"

Perhaps the two schools are mismatched, i.e. should not be in the same league but a game is a game.

We cannot expect teams to go to play and not try to win or make errors and not give it their best because the other team's feelings may get hurt. As long as both teams are playing fairly, etc. then the contest is the contest.

If you start protecting kids in this way they will not be prepared for the real world. I appreciate the losing team felt humiliated but, absent some evidence to the contrary, this was not an incident of bullying. As noted maybe these schools should not be playing against each other in the same league or conference.

Division 4A is for schools with 990-to 2064 students. They typically play withing their school district and then the surrounding districts...with one game (at least for us in 5A) well outside the district. My son's team had their asses handed to them by the number 1 team in the state for 5A. It happens. Nothing should be changed...except perhaps the coach, if the team wants to win.

Maybe this report had no merit. Fine. Make that determination and move on. No one is injured by it. Bullying is a serious issue, and having a reporting system like this is a good thing. But true bullying victims are going to be afraid to use it if submissions are publicized and mocked. And I'll bet dollars to donuts that there is now plenty of discussion at the Fort Worth high school as to which parent submitted the form. I'll bet the kid of the parent who submitted it is now at greater risk for being bullied. Releasing the report was pointless and inappropriate.