I’m with you. The winning coach displayed cruelty bordering on psychopathology. Before flaming idiots jump in . . . armed combat is the ultimate contest. You are allowed to kill your opponent in war. But. You are not allowed by any convention of civilized people to mutilate bodies, dismember pieces of corpses for war trophies. Running a full-court press to get over 100 points is the basketball equivalent. There’s no practice value in it. It’s perverse.
And so are the people applauding it. And blaming the demoralized victims. Sheesh.
There are a lot of huge blow outs. When your team gets ahead you play your bench. If your bench is still killing them, maybe you play four man?
The biggest problem; what is the purpose of a scholastic sports team? If it merely to pound opponents into the ground, maybe you need to rethink your program. The reality is, most teams will never make the finals let alone have a winning season. Furthermore, most players will never play organized ball after high school (the odds of getting a college scholarship are low). With that in mind, what is the purpose of the program? It probably should be something more than to teach athletics; sportsmanship, ethics, how to live a meaningful life. If that is the goal of the program, then you need to question lop sided scores but also recognize that they do happen. In other words, your mission statement in school athletics needs to be ore than win.
This team probably hadn’t thought their purpose out. Most teams don’t.
Years ago, Southern Illinois University, who nearly always has marginal teams finally won a game. The coach noted they did the right thing and took the opposing QB out early (read permanent, career ending knee injury). If that was the right thing to do to win, why not simply knee cap him before the game?
These programs need to be better than that. That said, I do not think there should have been a suspension or any sort of legislation with regards to this story.