HARTFORD, Conn. -- High school football coaches in
Connecticut will have to be good sports this fall -- or risk a
suspension.
The football committee of the Connecticut Interscholastic
Athletic Conference, which governs high school sports, is adopting
a "score management" policy that will suspend coaches whose teams
win by more than 50 points.
A rout is considered an unsportsmanlike infraction and the coach
of the offending team will be disqualified from coaching the next
game, said Tony Mosa, assistant executive director of the
Cheshire, Conn.-based conference.
"We were concerned with any coach running up the game. There's
no need for it," Mosa said. "This is something that we really
have been discussing for the last couple of years. There were a
number of games that were played where the difference of scores
were 60 points or more. It's not focused on any one particular
person."
Some have dubbed it the "Jack Cochran rule," after the New
London High football coach, who logged four wins of more than 50
points last year. In New London's 60-0 rout of Tourtelotte/Ellis
Tech, Cochran enraged the Tourtelotte bench by calling a timeout
just before halftime. Tourtelotte's coach was arrested on breach of
peace charges after police say he struck a security guard and an
assistant New London coach.
Leo Facchini, New London's athletic director, called it unfair
to single out his coach.
Facchini said he and Cochran tried to pull in the reins during
New London's 90-0 drubbing of Griswold last season by trying to get
both sides and the timekeeper to agree to run a continuous clock.
Some states, including Iowa, continuously run the game clock in
the second half if a team has a 35-point lead. The Connecticut
committee rejected a similar proposal because members thought it
would unfairly cut into backups' playing time.