Life is fair in Connecticut - or - Crippling children through emotional handouts

In an attempt to teach their young people that life is always fair and that they should never be subjected to adversity in life, The football committee of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, the state board that governs high school sports, has adopted a "score management" policy to keep teams from winning by more than 50 points. (http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/news/story?id=2457707)

The new rule threatens to suspend coaches who win games by what the state considers to be too wide a margin. At fist I just assumed that Connecticut football had simply been handed over to the T-ball mothers. As it turns out, there are actually coaches who welcome this policy. Football committee chairman and chief mangina Leroy Williams defends the insanity saying, "When you get someone down, you don't have to kick them. The key thing to remember is, it's about the quality of the game. It's about teaching kids right from wrong. It's about the game of life and that's how we had to look about it."

The game of life? Life isn’t like that. Life doesn’t take it easy on you if you are under qualified out of your league or getting your ass kicked. Life doesn’t care about your feelings either. This whole fiasco is the result of a bunch of adults who would rather cripple kids by lying to them about reality than get embarrassed by their colleagues. What a bunch of assholes. I also love the statement “…it’s about the quality of the game…” Putting in backups and telling tem not to try too hard is not adding to the quality of the game. If anything all it does is increase the risk of getting injured.

In football’s earlier days, blowouts of more than 100 points were not unheard of. There used to be a mentality in this country that the greatest disrespect you could show to an opponent was to take it easy on them. Treating another team like your kid brother because you feel sorry for them was much more humiliating than a 70-0 final score. There is no shame in losing to someone who is better than you. It is possible to lose and still feel good about your effort. When I played peewee soccer in first grade they used to tell us that it didn’t matter who won or lost, but how we played the game. Maybe had I grown up in Connecticut they would have told me that my self worth was directly related of the outcome of the game, and that if I was going to get my ass handed to me, and least the midgets and girls will be out in the second half so I can give them a taste of their own medicine! (hopefully)