This week's bizarre high school football score

I had a 58-0 basketball game this year.

 

I'm not covering games live anymore but through the magic of NFHS.TV, it was possible for me to see one of our area girls teams lose 57-1.

Shockingly,

1, the winning team didn't press or really try to RUTS,
2, the losing team didnt continuously throw the ball away, kick it out of bounds, etc etc. ... they actually got off a couple dozen shots or so, but just missed them all. They had several rim rollers the just fell off. They had a lot of turnovers, but they weren't horrible unforced errors.
3, nobody on either team broke into tears during or after the game. Perfectly normal handshake line at the end of the game.
4, although I wouldn't say the court was crackling with intensity, nobody was blatantly quitting, walking down court, etc etc. They slll maintained a medium jog.

 

Was this like the first round of the area tournament or something? Why such a mismatch this late in the year?

 

Well, the 57-1 game I was referring happened about 3-4 weeks ago.
I had happened to see the score in the paper (a rarity in itself these days) and I said, WTF? So since our family has a subscription to NFHS to watch some of our kids play other sports, I clicked through, and sure enough the game in it's entirety was available on video.

 

Absurd finish. Team up 3 throws it length of the court with 2 seconds left to kill the clock, except a kid for other team grabs it and ties it with 80-footer. That team then won in OT. Obviously this is 1 in a billion but when up 3 and 2 seconds, just throw it under your own basket. Other team can score as time expires, you win by 1. No reason to throw it anywhere near 3-point line.

 

State record for longest baseball game. But that’s not the bizarre part.

https://www.al.com/sports/2024/04/g...wn-in-ahsaa-record-longest-baseball-game.html

 

They played a game on Wednesday night? That's like violating a blue law in some places in the South.

 

Is Pedro Cerrano coaching high school baseball in Kansas?

https://www.kwch.com/2024/04/23/chi...alley-center-high-school-police-say/?tbref=hp

 

Kristi Noem offered to drag the offending players to her gravel pit and take care of business.

 

This feels like one of those "tip of the iceberg" stories.
A Riddell salesman in Mississippi, Ferrell Trimm, has pleaded guilty to two Sherman Antitrust Act violations, and one count of wire fraud, for conspiring to rig bids for sales of football equipment to schools. According to the DOJ he ripped off at least 100 schools in Mississippi and "elsewhere" (presumably his territory also included parts of Louisiana and Alabama).
At least three of our area schools have used him as their Riddell rep, and another had limited dealings with him, but none of the ADs were even aware of the DOJ investigation. I was breaking the news to them when I asked if they'd dealt with the guy. So they have no idea if or how they've been scammed, or if they might have any sort of recourse.
The DOJ release mentions that he "conspired with two unnamed sports equipment distributors and numerous individuals" in the scheme, so there might be more to come from it.

Sports Equipment Sales Professional Pleads Guilty to Long-Running Bid Rigging Schemes and Conspiracy to Defraud Public Schools

 

A long while back, I actually looked into becoming a traveling setup guy (don’t think salesman is quite the right term) for Scholastic Book Fairs. It was no way to get rich but the pay was decent, enough to live on even after paying for gas and vehicle wear and tear. Makes you wonder how many of these vendors catering to school trade have a little something cooking to feather their nests.

 

A Texas company is popularizing distinct designs for high school helmets, but I don't know if they're manufacturing them or just putting the designs on them after the fact. Riddell and Schutt are the top two manufacturers I know of.