It wasn’t the first time I had heard such a score nor will be the last.  72-0, 69-3, 68-6.  Yes football scores that got out of hand.  Too many times the response is:

“Wow coach could you pile on little more?!”  Here are the people that usually believe the coach on the winning team just kept piling on.  He knew he had the better team and he wanted to prove it.

I am here to tell you that is not the case.  Wait stop, there could be a few coaches across the entire state that would do that, I can’t tell you who but  there could be a couple.

I have spent time around some really amazing programs including McCook, NE.  The Bison coach Jeff Gross is a Hays native and has built an absolute powerhouse in southwest Nebraska.  During a Saturday morning coaches show I was chatting with coach Gross about a particular score that looked bad.  Like 69-0 bad.  Ya it was one of those scores.  My question to coach Gross was point blank, “what do you do in those situations?”  McCook has enough football players they do not (or at least not at the time) took freshmen on the road as this game was.

Coach Gross pulled his starters at half time, playing exclusively sophomores with a couple of juniors to plug holes.  Coach Gross also ran dives up the middle for the rest of the night, hoping that the opposing team would take his kids down after just a few yards, eating up clock and keeping the score down.  The only problem is that the other team couldn’t make the tackles.  So the burden came back onto coach Gross.  How can he or any other coach for that matter tell his kids to “lie down?”  How can you tell kids that are chomping at the bit just to prove themselves and play under the Friday night lights to “take it easy?”

To simply put it…you can’t.  You can’t tell kids to fall back what may be their only shot.

I know coaches that have sent letters off to the team they just beat terribly on the previous Friday night explaining that they did try to stop the onslaught by certain play calling and pulling players out of the game.  I admire these coaches trying to explain to others in their profession that they did not want to or mean to embarrass them or their team.

So before you start chastising coaches for running up the score…take a minute to realize that the coach very well had done everything to control the score, but it simply got out of hand.

I have been involved in some sort of sports activity for the past twenty years.  Coaching, playing, or broadcasting I love it all.  Sports has always been a part of who I am, and not because my family pushed me in or pulled me away from athletics.  I just love sports.

One of the greatest parts of sports is the closeness a team develops over seasons of playing together or just simply over a quick summer of baseball of softball.  Some of my very closest relationships today extend from a bond that was shared in fighting for the same common goal of winning a particular sports event.  The sweat, tears, hardships and joys, a team experiences together lets you see a person at the rawest form. 

Sports teams often become more than just friends, they become a family.  In the past month stories such as the Kansas Wesleyn soccer team losing two players before the start of the season because of a car crash, and the Cleveland Indians baseball team pitching in thousands of dollars to fly home a teammate on a private charter jet so he could be home for the birth of his premature baby have made headlines and for good reason.  Stop and read past the athletics.  Past the goals, the runs scored, the money and realize that when you spend so much time with your team you love (and yes sometimes hate) them like family.

I have seen this on the Hays High football field the past two years.  Last year a strong senior class took a new quarterback Austin Unrein to the field so he could learn the offense before the start of the season.  Most recently at a football practice this last week, a freshman quarterback with tons of talent, trying hard to impress teammates and coaches alike, kept missing his target in a live scrimmage.  Instead of dropping their heads in disgust, every single offensive lineman and running back made their way back to the huddle with quick taps to the helment or shoulder pads, and with a quick word, assured the young gunslinger that everything is fine and he will be fine. 

But for having spent twenty years around athletics I have never seen what happened at the end of that practice.  The coach blew his whistle yelled “brotherhood” and all the players, starters and back-ups all the same, took time to exchange handshakes and hugs, building that sense of not just team but family. 

Even on the professional level Kansas City Chiefs coach Todd Haley realizes the importance of this.  Haley schedules times for team building exercises even if it is as simple as going to a movie. 

On a much smaller level I see this every summer when I coach girls youth softball.  One of my daughters is in the coach pitch division and at the beginning of each summer, the only kids that converse with one another are the kids from the same school.  But by the time games start rolling around even my daughter who spends the school year in Nebraska is laughing and having fun with her teammates and you can start to see that feeling of family take place.  Maybe a slight sister-like bond forms by the end of summer. 

I deeply cherish memories of sports from my childhood and since in broadcasting and coaching.  I cherish moments that don’t always come from winnings.  I cherish moments that come from spending more time around my team that my own actual blood family.

These bonds of family can extend past just teammates.  I spent a year in Nebraska broadcasting, and the basketball team I covered that season was Imperial.  Imperial had a very heated rivalry with Grant.  Short in distance and temper, this rivalry had a history hitting its’ boiling point quickly.  Leading up to the game to be played in Imperial, a Grant girls basketball player was nearly killed in a car accident and was flown to Denver, Colorado.  The Imperial school quickly put away the rivalry and found ways to raise money in their own town and their own gym in support of the young lady.  A moment of silence was held before the game with most everybody saying a quick prayer.  These actions were not required, and certainly not with the history of their rivalry.  But the bond of family quickly superceded all the other feelings and took the lead.  I to this day couldn’t tell you who won the basketball games that night. 

Sports becomes your family.  Maybe that is the “crazy” part in sports.  Maybe that above all else is what keeps somebody like me coming back for yet another year.