This week's bizarre high school football score

1986, the first year of expanded playoffs. George Mason (now Meridian) was 0-10 and scored 5 touchdowns all season. GM lost to Brentsville 9-8, so 6 touchdowns and 11 losses.

 

I posted on this thread a couple years ago about a team in my area winning their first game of the season in the second round of the playoffs. The Section rules said you could petition to get into the playoffs no matter your record, and this school was in a division a bit small in numbers, so they got a first-round bye, and won in the second round before being eliminated.

Now, the Section requires a team to win at least three games to be considered for the postseason.

 

If they finished 0-12, you'd have a real story.

 

Are you Central Section there? They were very liberal about which schools could get in, but a few districts required teams to be at least .500 on the year or in league to play on.

 

Yes, it is the Central Section.

 

Re 1986 in Virginia, I now recall that as that year the playoffs were broken down into Division I and Division II in each of the 3 classifications. The divisions were divided by enrollments, however Division I in each classification followed the system that had been used previously (regardless of division assignment, with district champions, while Wild Cards had to be Division I teams in the event a region had only 3 districts) while Division II featured the top four non-Division 1 qualifiers tht was designated as Division II. George Mason got in at 0-10 as there were only 3 Division II teams in their region. IIRC the Division II state championship games were dubbed the "Loser Bowl" which prompted the VHSL to change the system the following year.

 

Sounds like it's gotten a little better then under a new commissioner. At least over in the valley, they're making some moves toward competitive equity and realignment.

 

Well, the 10-0 defending state champions beat the 1-9 84-0 losers the previous week 104-0. It was 56-0 after one quarter, 84-0 at halftime after playing an 8-minute second quarter. Second half was 12-minute running clock quarters with the winning TD scored on the last play of the game on a 30-something yard TD pass. Losers fumbled the ball away on their first two plays from scrimmage, then threw a pick-6 on the third play. 46 seconds gone in the game and it was 20-0 already.

 

I'm sure some Karens will be shitting bricks because they threw a pass with 15 seconds left and a 98-0 lead.

Will this shatter the self image and emotional well being of the losing team? Maybe! Although I seriously doubt it.

Anyway, if anybody was really concerned about the physical well-being or the emotional fee fees of the losing team, think maybe at some point... maybe halftime when it was 84-0, the losing team coach might have just said, "You know what? Fuck this. We're done. We're going home."

But he didn't say that.

 

In Michigan they go normal clock rules in the first half no matter how bad the score is. Running clock kicks in after halftime if the margin is over 35 (I believe remains in effect unless the trailing team narrows it under 25, which is very rare).

Some officiating crews are more aggressive than others on keeping the running clock going. I've seen some games that were in the 50s at halftime, they just ran that clock literally nonstop. They didn't stop for nothin.'

And neither coach complained. When it's 50-0 plus at halftime, nothing much good is likely to happen from then on out.

 

Only in the CIF: