No...one outright ends the game.

Agreeing to end a game prematurely and forefeiting a game are two different animals.

Only one will have consequences.

The traditional 6-man rule was that a 40+ pt. difference at or after halftime was a TKO. Game over. Isn't that one of the possibilities advocated by someone upthread?

Then what about failure to play within two minutes after being ordered to do so by the referee, which accomplishes the same thing? Does that one have consequences or not?

Put it this way, anytime a team is forfeiting a game, for whatever reason, more likely than not, there will be consequences.

But what if an asteroid strikes at the 50?

We now know the definition of "intentionally obtuse."

That carries a 5-yard penalty and a loss of down.

Even in a blow out?

Keep the flag in your pocket, Ref!
:)

This may come as a shock to you, Robert, but there's a great deal of money involved in HS football in some areas. Coaches are paid well (some as much as six figures), and football receipts help fund the non-revenue sports.

Any coach in our state who forfeits a game will have a bunch of 'splainin' to do.

Hence the "more likely than not" rather than "always"

What I meant was that they're not playing for stakes. AFAIK neither the coaches nor anybody else puts up a stake to be taken by the winner. They may well have bets on the side, but that's not their chief source of remuneration.

When the coach throws in the towel in boxing, the only concern is whether they're paid off to throw the fight, and usually it's evident they're not. I would've thought the same to apply to football. If it's obvious which team has won, with or without a point spread, what's the concern? As I wrote above, the only concern I can see would be from players who didn't get into the game or didn't get as much playing time as they wished.

So I have to ask, what is anyone's motiv'n for ending the game early -- or in some manner that would be considered "early" relative to some standard? Are the officials, the players, and their coaches working at cross purposes, or wouldn't they all have at least approximately the same motiv'ns? The only motiv'n that seems to be a good one is fear of injury -- physical, not psychic, injury. Is there evidence that lopsided games produce more than their share, playing time-wise, of injuries?

Not just fear of injury, but actual injuries and attrition. Had a C team start with about 16 players. By the 3rd quarter he was down to 11. They were getting slaughtered, and rather than risk worse, we agreed to a 1 minute fourth quarter (avoided the forfeit that way) and the winning team downed the ball to end it.

One other time a game was a blowout and we got lightning. Instead of waiting half an hour and trying to continue, the losing coach agreed to just end it.

The only other time I remember ending a game early or officially shortening it (rather than just running the clock) involved a life-flight helicopter and something like a minute or three left on the clock.

Note that none of these were varsity.

Wow, so it really is that different that a technicality and a charade like that would be used to avoid a forfeit on the record?! I wonder why it's so different from boxing -- or wrestling, where they forfeit weight classes all the time.