Does Boxing Need a Blowout Rule?

 This wouldn’t be so bad if they just gave the coach a heads up and said, hey, why not put some of the second stringers in there.  But somebody felt they had to punish this coach for doing what everyone wants to do -  win.  But apparently, there are those special people who think that winning should  be secondary to a primary goal of protecting kids from hurt feelings.

It’s absolutely insane that a  Long Island high school football coach was suspended for running up the score on his team’s tough rival.  It’s not only insane, it’s stupid.  Don’t you think that world champion soccer teams have hurt feelings when they’ve lost by only one point?  This is something that happens frequently.  Do you suppose their feelings would be less bruised if they lost by three points?

  I would go so far as to say this Texas football win suspension does a great deal of harm.    It’s even rather elitist if you ask me.  It’s a   a sports contest.   There will be a winner and a loser. The loser doesn’t ever feel as good as the winner.  Ask your kid: “How did the game go?”  You will never hear him say: “Great!  We almost won!”  And then you’d have to think it was maybe some high school sports commission foisting that illusion upon the kids because he told the winning coach to lay down on points. 

The whole spirit of sports is that you  rise up from your failures and do better next time.  You build and rebuild.  You take the blows and keep coming.  It’s not the scoreboard but your spirit that stays alive like 

the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae.  They were big losers but we remember them in eternity, don’t we? 

And then as a final thought, I couldn’t help but think how it would be if a blowout rule were applied to boxing.  Your guy is winning handily so, in accordance with the blowout rule, you tell him to pull his punches, bounce around the ring a bit, don’t touch the other guy.  And then suddenly the losing fighter launches a lucky big right hand and knocks your guy lights out. 

Whose feelings are saved then? The ‘winner’ lives with self-delusion, not knowing that his victory was fixed.  The ‘loser’ is forever pissed off, bitter, and betrayed in a fight in which he/she was the superior contestant.

Listen, the boxing world is full of fighters with losses on their records but who come roaring back and win titles.  Losing is part of character building.  Why aren’t people satisfied to say “yeah well, my kids lost but they played with a lot of heart.”  A lot of heart.  You hear that kind of respect often for the loser in a boxing match. 

What fools are those who think they are helping kids by denying them the chance to rise above their weaknesses?