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Originally Posted by w_sohl
...but if it continued in the third qtr. EVERY little thing that team did would get flagged, I wouldn't hear requests for TOs and my white hat would probably be winding the clock every chance he gets.
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I understand that mentality, and confess that when I see a coach doing what I would consider "running up the score", I get irritated. So I understand your motivation.
But I think you're asking for more headache than it's worth, and you're overstepping your bounds when you start becoming the arbiter of this sort of thing.
True story from my 1st year:
Two teams playing early in the season, call them Blue and White. Blue was up big quickly, mostly because of their defense. Defense had scored a couple of times, and set up most of the offense's scoring with turnovers, big sacks, etc. Game was something like 42-0 as we near halftime and they are still trying their darndest to get every point on the board, and i believe they did score once again right before halftime.
WH spends the entire halftime grumbling about his lack of sportsmanship, he should know better, etc, and instructs us to call the ticky-tack stuff - holding away from the play, the slightest little wiggle on the line, etc, even saying something like, "If you seem them break another one off, I'm SURE there was holding behind that play." And remember, I (and the other linesman) were rookies, so we do as we're told.
Turns out, however, that several of the members of the defense on Blue had to leave for some sort of school function (I don't remember if it was a dance, a concert, play, show, whatever, and I'm not sure I ever knew for sure). Anyway, we start calling the ticky tack stuff and probably thwart a drive. Everything close is in-bounds - trying to "Save White some pain" and get the game overwith. Lo and behold White scores. Again, we run a little clock and cause Blue some grief. White scores again and again. It's near the end of the 3rd quarter before WH calls us together and tells us to call things more normally.
White lost this game by less than a TD, and it bothers me to this day that my "veteran" leadership on that day caused me to do what I know now was probably wrong. We possibly cost the White team players quite a memory.