By Dan Cleary

3/21/2008 - A Little "Mercy" for Football Teams

We have all been there. Anyone who has attended high school football games on a regular basis has seen a blowout, a game in which unless there was divine intervention, one team had no shot of winning before it even started.

Say you are at that game and the score is 35-0 in the third quarter and there looks like there is no end in sight. And you are wondering, man, I wish they could speed up this game before the winning team hangs up a 70-spot on the scoreboard. Now add in some inclement weather or a cold Friday night at Vernon and you have the recipe for a miserable evening that is not beneficial to the players, coaches and fans.

In the past, there has been a “gentlemen’s agreement” between the coaches and the game officials in such cases and the clock would move “faster” in the fourth quarter. That is one of the reasons why you hear before almost every game the following from the public address announcer, “And remember, the official clock is kept on the field.”

Well, if the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association has its way, there won’t be a need for that “gentlemen’s agreement” any more. Bob Baly, the assistant director for the NJSIAA, addressed the issue at this week’s athletic director’s convention in Atlantic City and proposed a running clock “mercy rule” for football for the upcoming season, according to published reports.

Under the new guidelines, in games with a score differential of 35 points or more in the second half, the clock would only stop for scores, timeouts (official or team), penalties, injuries and change of quarter. The NJSIAA executive committee is to vote on the proposal at its meeting April 2. If passed, the rule could go into effect for the 2008 season.

This is a great idea. I don’t’ know what it is lately, but it seems like the state is starting to get it. I have never been a big fan of the NJSIAA and some of its rulings, but it seems to me that ever since Steve Timko took over as executive director a few years ago, the NJSIAA has been more open to new ideas. I’m sure the fact that The Record of Hackensack took them behind the shed for an old-fashioned whipping a couple years ago in its expose on how it spends money, hasn’t hurt, either.

Regardless, it is a great move that should be approved and implemented right away. I’ve seen my fair share of games in my day and I have never seen a team, winning or losing, that benefited from a 50-0 pasting. Sure, the winners get to play all of their kids, which is nice, but that is what junior varsity is for. Under the new rule, you can still get your “Monday’s Kids” in the game, but it won’t be for as long because time will be a ticking.

I feel 35 points is just about right. I haven’t seen a high school team rally from a five-touchdown deficit in all my years. I have seen teams come back from 21 points, but I can’t ever recall a team down 35-0 in the second half rallying for a victory. And remember, if a team cuts into the 35-point deferential, the regular clock rules go back into effect, so the team that is rallying will have a chance to get back in the game without burning time.

If the state adopts the rule change, it would become the 35th state to do so, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the governing body of high school sports in the country. New York currently does not have a “mercy rule,” while Pennsylvania has had it for a few years. Each state has it own variation with the only major difference being the points differential. Some states have opted for 35 points, while some 45. Plus, there are several states that have both 11-man football and 8-and 6-man football. The rules differ for each. North Dakota has the lowest threshold at 30 points.

Now, the new rule won’t prevent blowouts, but it will ease the pain a little bit. Last season in the Sussex County Interscholastic League, the average final score in the 45 league games played was 28-9, which is a 19-point margin. Kittatinny, which stormed to its first-ever SCIL crown with a 9-0 mark, posted an average score of 30-8 with its highest output coming in a 45-6 win over Wallkill Valley on opening day.

Lenape Valley (7-2), which piled up a SCIL season-high 54 points in its 54-13 win over Newton, had an average game score of 26-9. The Pats also racked up 42 points against Hopatcong. This is not to say that Don Smolyn, one of the best coaches in the state and a Sussex County Hall-of-Famer, is running up the score. Far from it. The Pats, like the Cougars, had a lot of big-play weapons.

For example, on the surface, Lenape’s 30-0 win over Wallkill Valley looked like a blowout. But I covered that game and Wallkill was down just 3-0 at the half and had a chance to score in the second quarter if not for a brilliant goal line stand by Lenape. But that is what Lenape does, it has a quick-strike capability, albeit from its ground game, which goes against the grain when you think of quick-strike.

So by looking at the SCIL scores, it seems the new rule won’t go into effect in a lot of the games, and if it does, it wouldn’t be until the fourth quarter when the game is firmly in hand.

This rule has been a long time in coming. It has met resistance in the past because of the football mentality of “never surrender,” which is a great lesson to learn, but at what cost? It would be different if the game ended at a certain point, which would be ridiculous. Ending a game that is governed by a clock would be quitting, in my opinion. It makes sense in baseball and softball which has the 10-run rule after five innings. You can’t run out the clock in those sports and before the “mercy rule” was put in place, I witnessed some horrible final scores of 30-runs plus in softball, so that was a much-welcomed change.

In sports that utilize a clock, the game can be managed or policed by the coaches if they choose. In hoops, you can hold the ball or call off the press if you have a big lead. The losing team can do its part by not fouling and playing a zone, perhaps. In soccer and field hockey, you can just keep possession of the ball and not try to score if you have a large lead of four or five goals.

In soccer, knowing how to play ball possession with a lead is one of the characteristics of a great team. I know in field hockey, it is a little harder to do that, but the game is so low-scoring and fast that games usually never last more than an hour-and-half. I remember when Laura Morrow was tearing up the SCIL for Kittatinny in the mid-1990s, if the Cougars had a four-goal lead, then-Kittatinny coach Linda Crawn would put Morrow at sweeper and instruct her not to pass midfield. And if you played for Crawn, it was the wise move to listen to her.

But football is a different animal in so many ways. It has much more clock stoppage and the average high school game lasts around two-plus hours to begin with, so the new rule should shorten things a bit.

Like I stated before, the rule won’t prevent blowouts, per se, but it will ease the pain. It is just like removing a band-aid. It is going to hurt either way, so the faster the better.

That’s it for now, have a Happy Easter, and I’ll see you on the sidelines.