Holy Drama Mama Frankie! It was a valuable lesson to the other team to know what the rules are and to watch for the other team trying to catch you off guard.
Child abuse?! What a dork. We baby kids too much already.
Posted on 11/17/2010 4:31:12 PM PST by llevrok
By now, you may be among the millions of people who've seen on YouTube the trick football play pulled off by the Driscoll Middle School of Corpus Christi, Texas.
If you've been watching President Obama abroad or otherwise wasting your time, here's what happens: Driscoll breaks out of the huddle, and the quarterback lines up over the ball. From the sideline, the assistant coach calls out that Driscoll deserves a five-yard penalty.
At this point, the Driscoll center casually hands the ball over his shoulder to the quarterback. This is perfectly acceptable, even though we know that the center invariably delivers the ball through his legs.
The quarterback then takes the ball and starts to walk off five yards himself, as the opponents look on, confused. Then, clear of the opposition, the quarterback suddenly breaks into a run and dashes 67 yards for a touchdown.
The play is legal, and just about everybody who has seen it gets a real hoot out of it. In one online poll, 92.1 percent of those who voted said the play was genius.
Well, it isn't funny, and it isn't right.
Sure, athletes often employ gamesmanship, and I will now give you a lecture on situational ethics.
Remember this summer, when Derek Jeter, the all-American boy, idol of millions, faked getting hit by a pitch and his acting was so good he was awarded first base?
Well, Jeter is a grown-up, playing other grown-ups, in a game umpired by grown-ups. So are wide receivers who pretend to catch a pass that really hit the ground first, and basketball players who flop back as if they were fouled.
Just like the Driscoll Middle School quarterback, it is perfectly legal to act in a game. But the players who do that in the pros are not embarrassing the opposition. They're just trying to con the umpire. It's a benign bit of hustle that would've made for some good Aesop's Fables if old Aesop were around writing a sports blog nowadays.
But the Driscoll team didn't act instinctively to try to put one over on a ref. The middle schoolers didn't even come up with the ruse. Their coach dreamed up the play, and even participated in it, hollering from the sideline. The referees weren't victimized. In fact, they had to play along.
No, it was only the other team's kids who were embarrassed and belittled by a children's coach being a wise guy, a bully of sorts. It wasn't genius at all; rather, it was a form of child abuse. Sure, it was legal, but it wasn't fair.
Laugh at kids being outslicked by a grown-up, and you're cruel. That isn't sport.
What a stupid idiot pansy-@ss. He needs a slap upside his fool Lib head. Those middle-schoolers could stomp him.
“I will now give you a lecture on situational ethics. “
No you won’t. That’s where I stopped reading.
Heard it before: It’s fair that BSU won the 2007 Fiesta Bowl because Oklahoma fell for the Statue of Liberty play!
I bet that writer was always on the losing team.
Talk about gamesmanship and trickery, NPR practices it on a daily basis in their deceitful shellgame to hide the fact that they receive substantial government monies. DEFUND NPR.
Holy Drama Mama Frankie! It was a valuable lesson to the other team to know what the rules are and to watch for the other team trying to catch you off guard.
Child abuse?! What a dork. We baby kids too much already.
All field sports are ersatz war with rules governing them to prevent death to the participants. Any thing done within the rules is fair play. This was the design and execution of a tactical genious.
My dad says if you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t trying -and- the reason we beat the Japanese in the Pacific theater is because they didn’t know how to play football or cheat ....
Frank Deford, second-in-command of the high school chess team, tried out for football in eighth grade, was asked politely to leave. (I’m guessing, but I’m sure I’m close)
Any team falling for that one deserves to get scored on.
Doubt he ever played.
I bet he got beat up at school a lot.
Frank, you’re just a big wienie.
ping
LOL my exact thought - never picked eh Francis
LOL my exact thought - never picked eh Francis
LOL my exact thought - never picked eh Francis
I coached kids in football for 15 years....up through Freshmen. Every play is meant to deceive and I believe, in this case, the Ref’s were made aware of the fact that a trick play was going to take place. I have run many trick plays and the kids love them. The name of the game is to win. I would tell my kids that and I told the parents that if I didn’t intend to win, I wouldn’t put my kids on the field.
Some trick plays will really throw the other team and catch them off guard. With those plays, I wouldn’t let the team run them until they had two touch downs more than the other team or if we really needed to score. The coaches on the other team would, some times, yell out “Watch out for those phony trick plays”. Those were the type of coaches I loved to play against because they couldn’t coach their kids to play the game.
Let me add one thing here. I loved all my kids and it was their team, not mine. I ran 40 kids with one assistant coach. All kids played, some more than others. I’ve had them go on to High School, College and Pro Teams. It was the best time of my life.
Let the kids play the game. As long as they go by the rules, they will never forget.
This is the comment I sent to Frank at NPR:
It isn’t our fault that Frank DeFord was always the last one picked for football for childhood football games. The stupidity of your objection to Driscoll Middle School’s
football team’s play is really telling about your lack of knowledge of sport and Americans. Sorry, Frank. Your commentary has a large BITE ME from the American sports-fans-at-large written all over it. You liberals really need
to get in touch with America and Americans.
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