Columnist Adam Candee: Blowouts simply part of sports

Adam Candee

Friday, Nov. 22, 2002 | 10:08 a.m.

Adam Candee covers high school sports for the Sun. Reach him at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at candee@lasvegassun.com.

TONIGHT'S PREP FOOTBALL GAMES

Sunrise Region Championship

Desert Pines at Las Vegas, 7

Sunset Region Championship

Palo Verde at Cheyenne, 7

Holy Gymnasiums, Batman, someone sounded the Prep Ethics Alarm again!

A prep girls basketball team in Michigan won a playoff game by a 115-2 final this week, and no one on the winning side has since apologized for destroying a winless squad from a school of 50 high schoolers.

So, we therefore have two choices:

Count me in for Option 2.

Spare me any labels of jaded or indifferent on my forehead. I am not about to award this coach a gold star for failing to call off the dogs in this game. In fact, I find the whole thing to be sad and I lament that the innocence of amateur athletics shrinks by the day.

I fail to see, however, how this story grants us any rights to crocodile shock or aloof finger pointing because one coach's moral compass regrettably did not point north during the course of four quarters of a girls basketball game.

By spinning this story into the national spotlight, we imply that it means a whole lot more than it does.

We cannot possibly be attempting to shine the black light on Michigan prep athletics. For the love, even the losing coach already dismissed the allegations that his opponent deliberately ran up the score.

Naturally, the torch of All That Is Wrong With Amateur Athletics is already in transit to the state of Michigan for a quick jog around the campus of this high school. The coach is being fitted for his sportsmanship albatross as you read this, and a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton rally for the losing team must not be far off, either.

Granted, the winning coach's attempts to curb the 113-point margin of victory were downright futile, putting in freshman players and restricting who could shoot in the second half.

If we are going to choose this situation to attack with sportsmanship as our platform, however, maybe we need to pose a few questions first. Maybe we also need to evaluate which battles need to be fought, and in what order.

Be honest: Would a 50 or 60-point margin of defeat have allowed us to take a pass on beating the ethical drums here? Really, is there an easily defined point where we, the uncrowned keepers of The Game, decide that enough is enough?

Also, with scourges like taunting, steroids, cheap shots, illegal recruiting, and an innumerate list of other issues out there, is this really the sportsmanship battle we need to fight right now?

A ridiculous girls basketball score does not represent the greater ills of our sporting society, nor does a delusional hockey dad's lawsuit against a youth league because his son did not win the MVP award reflect our bigger problems. Check out another section of the paper if you want to find those meatier causes to these effects.

These mom-and-pop stories are convenient leaves for us to pluck off the tree of much larger issues. And we are too content to allow this coach and this score to stand for greater problems to which they just do not correlate, without a whole lot of philosophical steps in between.