Running Up The Score: Good or Bad?
Also from today's edition of Best of the Web (last item) is a short recap of a story that has received a fair amount of attention in the American sports press lately, about a girls' basketball game that ended with a 100-0 score. Here are some background facts, aside from the score:
1. The losing team hasn't won a game in four years.
2. The winning team was a Christian school. (Not sure about the losing team.)
3. The winning school's administrators apologized afterwards for running up the score, though it was acknowledged by many that this was only so up to a point; that once they reached 100 points with about 4 minutes to play, they stopped trying to score. (Despite this, the losing team was praised, absurdly, for "limiting" the winning team to 12 points in the fourth quarter.) Going further still, they offered (maybe successfully) to forfeit the game.
4. The winning coach refused to apologize "for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity." He was fired the same day.
In some kids' sport leagues, there are "mercy" rules to speed or end blowouts when they reached the point of competitive absurdity, but apparently none existed here. So what should have happened here? Were the winners (Covenant School) supposed to pretend it was no longer an intrinsically competitive event? And should the coach have been fired for unapologetically running up the score (at least as far as he did)?
My view, which might not make everyone happy (though I suspect from comments on earlier posts that it will find a fair amount of agreement), is that the winners were justified and the coach shouldn't have been fired. Here are some considerations on their behalf:
1. The nature of sport is to compete, to do one's best and to strive for victory. One can do it with grace, with class, with honor and so on, but once one stops trying to achieve the sport or game's aims, one violates the nature of competition.
2. It's the losing team's (Dallas Academy's) job not to embarrass itself, not the opponent's. There's a sort of hypocrisy at play here. If they don't like the results they're getting, they should stop competing (at least against in a league where they're winless for 4 years). If the response is that they're in it for the joy and benefits of competing, then compete and live with the results!
3. If the score shouldn't be important to the winning side, why should the losing side care? Either it's irrelevant, in which case the winners shouldn't be criticized, or it does, in which case the winners still shouldn't be criticized - except for not running it up further.
4. If the winning team "calls off the dogs" (i.e. stops trying), then they're going to foster bad physical and psychological habits rather than good ones.
What about mercy and other such virtues, especially for a Christian school? I'm not sure I see the connection. Getting beat in a sport or game isn't like being beaten in real life (unless it's boxing or the like!); it's a voluntarily undertaken activity with no real damage done. And what's the threshold supposed to be? Is it "Christian" to win by 10 points, but not by 20? (In a chess game, should I refuse a resignation in under 15 moves, or stop capturing free pieces at a certain point?)
Another possible response: aren't there greater things than competition? Shouldn't they be taken into account? Sure, but what are the relevant things? The winners could offer to help the losers think about how to improve, could be encouraging and engage in other acts of kindness. But while it might have been a nice gesture to stop at 88-0 or 99-0, this doesn't strike me as something they ought to have done or that exhibits any special virtue. Let's suppose Covenant really went the extra mile in the last quarter and not only failed to score but played no defense, either. Suppose the game wound up 88-44. Wouldn't that be patronizing and a sort of lie, making it seem to the world and the Dallas players that they're better than they really are? If the Dallas supporters praised their team for "holding" Covenant to 12 points in the last quarter, when it was obvious that Covenant simply decided not to play offense the last four minutes, imagine the cloud castles they'd have constructed in the 88-44 scenario!
I think it's noble that the Dallas Academy girls have the competitive bravery to go out there and fight when their team is really out of its depth. But it's not noble for the Dallas supporters to praise them for their defense when the other team stopped trying, it's not noble for the winning school's administrators to apologize for the margin, and it's not only ignoble but hopefully illegal for them to fire the coach for not caving in on the matter. It's possible that I've exaggerated the case for 100 (or more) to nothing - there are a few points I think I've overstated. But it's nothing compared to Covenant's self-flagellation and their firing their coach.
But perhaps my gentle readers will disagree...
1. The losing team hasn't won a game in four years.
2. The winning team was a Christian school. (Not sure about the losing team.)
3. The winning school's administrators apologized afterwards for running up the score, though it was acknowledged by many that this was only so up to a point; that once they reached 100 points with about 4 minutes to play, they stopped trying to score. (Despite this, the losing team was praised, absurdly, for "limiting" the winning team to 12 points in the fourth quarter.) Going further still, they offered (maybe successfully) to forfeit the game.
4. The winning coach refused to apologize "for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity." He was fired the same day.
In some kids' sport leagues, there are "mercy" rules to speed or end blowouts when they reached the point of competitive absurdity, but apparently none existed here. So what should have happened here? Were the winners (Covenant School) supposed to pretend it was no longer an intrinsically competitive event? And should the coach have been fired for unapologetically running up the score (at least as far as he did)?
My view, which might not make everyone happy (though I suspect from comments on earlier posts that it will find a fair amount of agreement), is that the winners were justified and the coach shouldn't have been fired. Here are some considerations on their behalf:
1. The nature of sport is to compete, to do one's best and to strive for victory. One can do it with grace, with class, with honor and so on, but once one stops trying to achieve the sport or game's aims, one violates the nature of competition.
2. It's the losing team's (Dallas Academy's) job not to embarrass itself, not the opponent's. There's a sort of hypocrisy at play here. If they don't like the results they're getting, they should stop competing (at least against in a league where they're winless for 4 years). If the response is that they're in it for the joy and benefits of competing, then compete and live with the results!
3. If the score shouldn't be important to the winning side, why should the losing side care? Either it's irrelevant, in which case the winners shouldn't be criticized, or it does, in which case the winners still shouldn't be criticized - except for not running it up further.
4. If the winning team "calls off the dogs" (i.e. stops trying), then they're going to foster bad physical and psychological habits rather than good ones.
What about mercy and other such virtues, especially for a Christian school? I'm not sure I see the connection. Getting beat in a sport or game isn't like being beaten in real life (unless it's boxing or the like!); it's a voluntarily undertaken activity with no real damage done. And what's the threshold supposed to be? Is it "Christian" to win by 10 points, but not by 20? (In a chess game, should I refuse a resignation in under 15 moves, or stop capturing free pieces at a certain point?)
Another possible response: aren't there greater things than competition? Shouldn't they be taken into account? Sure, but what are the relevant things? The winners could offer to help the losers think about how to improve, could be encouraging and engage in other acts of kindness. But while it might have been a nice gesture to stop at 88-0 or 99-0, this doesn't strike me as something they ought to have done or that exhibits any special virtue. Let's suppose Covenant really went the extra mile in the last quarter and not only failed to score but played no defense, either. Suppose the game wound up 88-44. Wouldn't that be patronizing and a sort of lie, making it seem to the world and the Dallas players that they're better than they really are? If the Dallas supporters praised their team for "holding" Covenant to 12 points in the last quarter, when it was obvious that Covenant simply decided not to play offense the last four minutes, imagine the cloud castles they'd have constructed in the 88-44 scenario!
I think it's noble that the Dallas Academy girls have the competitive bravery to go out there and fight when their team is really out of its depth. But it's not noble for the Dallas supporters to praise them for their defense when the other team stopped trying, it's not noble for the winning school's administrators to apologize for the margin, and it's not only ignoble but hopefully illegal for them to fire the coach for not caving in on the matter. It's possible that I've exaggerated the case for 100 (or more) to nothing - there are a few points I think I've overstated. But it's nothing compared to Covenant's self-flagellation and their firing their coach.
But perhaps my gentle readers will disagree...
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Wednesday January 28, 2009 at 6:53pm
Still there was some point in critizing the Covenant coach and his team. One fact is that that Dallas team was not from a normal school, but from an institute for problem childs. So 100-0 had an element of humiliation of kids with less than average selfrespect.
Comparing with chess: when I played GM Khenkin my loss in less than 15 moves was normal. But what if GM Khenkin played a simul vs. 20 absolute beginners?
Still I think the apologies etc. of the Covenant way over the top. A sermon on modesty should have been enough, don't you think?
Since this is a chess blog, I think an (imperfect) analogy might be if I not only beat my opponent, but try to see if I can do so by queening all my pawns first (so I have 9 queens). It's imperfect because my opponent should by chess etiquette resign at some point, but in basketball there is generally no such option.
Since you are a fan of college football, I wonder what you think of the ethics of "running up the score" in a football game. If a team keeps their starters in and is throwing long passes down the field in an attempt to win, say, 50-0, is that unsportsmanlike?
If the team had stopped trying to score at 50 points, then that is just humiliating the other team even more. It sends a message of "your so bad we don't even need to try to win". It is a different level of humiliation to be losing against a team that is trying, and losing against a team that isn't even trying to win anymore.
As KevinL posted, I think their only fault was to stop trying at 100 points...and with four minutes left that isn't even a big deal anymore.
I had never heard of it until recently when I was coaching a Boy U11 Soccer Team. I am a transplant here so I wonder if this is uniquely American as the practice of giving trophies in youth league to all participants regardless of result.
But at what point does domination become humiliation? At what point does the assurance of winning utterly demonstrate that there is no competition present, and thus the normal rules of competition should no longer apply? Those who suggest running up a score is unsportsmanlike would suggest there is a point where one backs off a little. (And, so Wikipedia tells me, there are high school baskeball leagues that do employ mercy rules.) Accounts I read of this game suggest they backed off, putting in back-benchers and dropping full court press, only to come on stronger when 100 points was a possibility.
Addressing what you say in point number 2 about either compete or pull out: Dallas Academy is not competing anymore.
At any rate, my read of the stories is that there are large chunks of material left unknown here. I'd speculate that it was the coach's contradicting the administration that led to the firing as opposed to the blowout itself. And, in that sense, it's nice to see administration having control over athletics, as opposed to the normal run of vice-versa in American education.
For all the length of my post, though, I don't have all that strong an opinion about whether running up a score is sporting or unsportsmanlike. I don't care all that much about basketball - chess, hockey, and fishing are my main pursuits. None of them are particularly known for this type of problem. ;)
I think whoever is in charge of athletics at the Dallas Academy should be fired. Why would you want to play in a league were your team can't even compete? What does this do for your girls with 'special needs'?
It is hard to make an analogy with other sports. Basketball is unique in that the opportunity to score comes very quickly. It takes a very deliberate effort not to score. With that being said, they should definitely have mercy rules.
1. To get groups out of suboptimal situations where first movers suffer social stigma.
2. To keep people from wasting others' time in such situations.
Richard: I've got nothing against a mercy stoppage or speedup (there wasn't one available in this game), only against the winning team taking a dive in garbage time.
If there's something wrong with the matchup (a mismatch for isntance) something should've been done before the match, not after the fact. I've won football (which is wrongly named soccer as well) games with 46-0 when I was younger. The team in question was 16th out of 16 teams in competition with a total goal average of 13-289 after they'd finished 30 games that year.
What happened there? Well, the team was supposed to have been rated D/E, a combination of D and E youth (D and E being age categories) but it had been assigned to a D-1 competition and faced the 1st D-team of every major club in the region for a whole year, playing against older and better players..
And they fired a basketball trainer for winning 100-0. Is that even legal in the US? Here the trainer would probably have a very strong case in court..
We do not ask for mercy, even though we are humiliated.
Playoffs: our 3d game with this juggernaut. We are determined to play better. We do, and they fall apart. They are suddenly just kids, crying in frustration, their coach yelling at them for their weakness. We actually feel sorry for them.
But we run up the score anyway.
Why? Because we are competing. We weren't rude or crude. Just competitive.
A valuable lesson all around.
--dan
We were a mixed squad of boys and girls ages 12 and 13 and we faced a travelling all star team (all boys) aged 14-15. As goalie for the losing squad I faced 128 shots and stopped 96. I still remember my entire body was covered with hexagonal soccer ball imprints. After the game, the winning team actually carried me off the field.
This was the worst loss of my sporting career but one of the defining moments of my life.
I can't imagine the outcome would have been the same had the All Star squad stopped shooting.
As you know, in a recent tournament, Bent Larsen rejected a draw offer against the tournament leader being 0-8. Humiliating defeats does not have to affect your fighting spirit.
If you have a few minutes, and haven't already, have a look at this video:
http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4147
Whose coach would you fire, and why?
There's no evidence that the losing team felt psychologically "abused" by their poor results over the years. I don't really see what was "harmful" or "unsafe" about being the bottom team in a league, either. Should we mandate against teams losing? I don't see how it's "taking advantage of the weak", either, at least not in an objectionable sense. If I'm playing a weak chess opponent, of course I'm taking advantage by capitalizing on his mistakes! That isn't the sense in which we rightly decry, say, a person taking advantage of financial or other power to take away what is rightly someone else's. The weaker team doesn't have a "right" to score or not to be scored on, but only a right to try to score and not be scored on.
A final note on tone: crude language isn't welcomed on the site, so, since I'm the "league commissioner" here, I am going to be ban one of the "teams" now - two "games" is enough.
I agree that the coach shouldn't have been fired, but my impression from the source I cited was that he was fired for not joining in the self-flagellation party, not for the blowout itself. Also, you might be confused about the idea of a "mercy rule". That's a policy in place in Little League baseball and other youth sports to automatically stop a game when a lead reaches a certain margin. It doesn't have anything to do with how the winning team should act while the game is still going.