I enjoy Roger Grossman’s columns. The recent Mercy Rule column was thought-provoking, too.
This week’s topic was the mercy rule, and its necessity considering the increasing disparity in high school football scores statewide. A deeper dive shows these blowouts are more pervasive in the smaller enrollment class levels.
These are the same schools that have the greater challenge of having enough leftover bodies for junior varsity, freshman and C-team games. Larger schools, on the other hand, have 25-45 seniors.
Most of those kids are non-starters. The mercy rule impairs the coaches’ efforts to give those non-starting seniors their reps/minutes in the fourth quarter while racing against the mercy rule’s running clock. There’s a simple solution. Classes 1A-4A, the mercy rule is automatic. Classes 5A and 6A will have no mercy rule.
