Ty Elliot

Sports Co-Editor

As a sports fan, there is nothing better than watching your favorite team beat up on the opposing team, especially if that opponent is a heated rival.  I love watching the team I root for win by a lop-sided 30-point dominating performance.  But with recent complaints and bad coaching ethics shown lately across numerous sports, it begs the question; when is enough, enough?
For most coaches, the thing they least worry about is when they should take out their star players if they were winning by a large margin.  But maybe coaches should worry more about this growing epidemic in sports.  In the old days, old fashion beat-downs were taken with a grain of salt, and were looked at as the better team won.  But today in sports, teams take it a sign of disrespect when teams run up the score when winning by a large margin.  Fans that pay the money to watch these events certainly want to see the best players play until the end.  With the economy affecting sports in numerous ways, should coaching ethics really be a main concern?
I have also seen some recent behavior by coaches that has me concerned.  In Connecticut, during a high school football game, Manchester High School had wristbands that contained the name and signal of offensive plays.  After a play, one player came up out of a pile and signaled to the sideline that he had lost his wristband.  It turns out that Southington High School, the opposing team, took the wristband and used it throughout the rest of the game to steal the other team’s plays.  Why play the game if you know what the opposing team is going to do?
In Texas, Covenent High School played Dallas Academy in a varsity girls basketball game.  Dallas Academy has eight varsity players and about 20 girls in the high school.   Dallas Academy is winless in its past four seasons.  Covenant had a 59-0 lead at halftime.  Covenant went on to defeat Dallas 100-0.  Dallas Academy felft as though Covenant was running up the score and was still shooting three point shots late in the fourth quarter. Covenant’s head coach was later fired.
So when is enough, enough?  Personally I want to see my team give the opposing team a beat-down.  Therefore I have no problem with teams leaving their best players in until the game is over.  There is no rule that says you have to take your star players out when you’re dominating the opponent.  And if one of those star players in the end gets injured as a result of continuing to play, then the coach made a critical mistake that could cost his or her team.  That is the risk coaches take and why coaches should take this problem more seriously because despite the fact that they want to play until the game is over, it can cost your team in the long run with a devastating injury in garbage time.  The only exception is the Covenant and Dallas Academy game.  If your team is winning that much, and your team hasn’t given the opponent a single point, then the coaches should take the responsibility to do the right thing and end the game.  It may look like a joke in the end, but coaches have to worry about the well being of their own players.  They are already embarrassed by the margin; you don’t want them to lose confidence.
Then the subject falls to cheating.  The stealing of the opponents’ playbook or anything that contains their plays is unacceptable.  Not only is it absurd, but it makes your team looks like a group of cheaters.  If your team has to cheat to win, then the coach obviously thinks his team isn’t good enough to win a clean and fair game.
With Lindsay Lohan in and out of rehab, why not have a coaching ethics seminar and rehab center?  At the seminar, coaches instead of learning how to quit their addiction to drugs and alcohol, they can learn how to show sportsmanship.