Sportsmanship? Nah… it’s overrated.
A few weeks ago the Matewan High School football team intentionally ran up the score in a game over Burch High School, winning 64 to 0, so that their running back could set a record of 658 yards in a game. The Matewan coach, Yogi Kinder even had his team use a no-huddle offense through the second half so they would have more time to gain yards. As if that weren’t enough, Kinder choose not to return punts, letting them bounce back, so his tailback could get even more yards.
The coach’s actions and later attempts to justify his behavior are just despicable and represent some of the worst attributes in human nature.
Sadly this lack of sportsmanship isn’t limited to a few occurrences. I see it all the time playing hockey and friends that are competitively involved in other sports report the same thing.
I’ve seen and been in many games where one team is up a ridiculous amount (6 or more to 0) and the leading team is still going 100% trying to score more goals. I can count more than one case of a team leading by multiple goals with 15 seconds left and the winning team is still skating full speed end-to-end trying to get another goal.
Not only is it stupid, but it’s likely to lead to a situation where someone gets hurt. The losing team will often try to even the score with some more physical or “extra-curricular” play. Most times, the referee is equally disgusted with the offending team and “doesn’t see” anything, so the physical play can escalate.
My teams have strict rules against running up the score. Also, in the case that we have players that are too skilled for the division we don’t skate them. I want to win as much as anyone else, but to me a win is only meaningful if it’s a fair game.
Unfortunately though, neither of my teams have been winning that much, but that’s a topic for another post. :-)
Jason wrote:
I disagree with the hockey example. If the losing team starts playing rough, well then THEY are the ones guilty of bad sportsmanship, being sore losers.
I consider consistently playing your best to be a critical part of “sportsmanship”, even if your best happens to be much better than your opponent. Personally if I’m playing a game against a really tough opponent, and I’m getting destroyed in the scoring, I will feel insulted if the other player/team starts to go easy on me. Because then if/when I do score points, I don’t feel like I realy earened them — whereas if I still manage to score against a tough opponent, then I at least have something to feel good about. And if I don’t, well at least I tried, and maybe learned something. One of the best ways to improve your skills in any sport is to play against people who are better than you are, and who are actually playing that way.
Now if a player or team is clearly in the wrong division just because they want to show off or win, then I’ll agree that’s bad sportsmanship. But still, once the game is on, I expect nothing less than their full effort.
The football example is just the coach playing a stupid numbers game. Obviously the team wasn’t playing their best, if they were doing things like running when passing would have been a smarter play, and letting punts bounce back just to have more yards to cover. I hate all sports statistics, and this is only one reason why.
Posted on 08-Nov-06 at 7:00 pm | Permalink
Vijay wrote:
I think what determines sportmanship is dependent on the style of the sport being played. If end of the game is determine by one team scoring a certain number of points before the other team (tennis, ultimate frisbee), it is different than games where there is a fixed amount of time (football, hockey).
In tennis or a similar sport, if the clearly better team started playing easy by playing with their off-hand, I agree with you that this demonstrates lack of sportsmanship. By continuing to play hard, the game is decided quickly.
In a timed sport like football, it’s normal to relax and “run out the clock” when you’re leading by a bunch. If the winning team is continuing to go all-out when the outcome of the match has already been decided, instead of running out the clock, it’s poor form.
I agree that retaliation is poor sportmanship, but the team running up the score (in my mind) is generally much worse.
Posted on 09-Nov-06 at 4:29 pm | Permalink