The lesson
In a kids’ soccer game, if you are up by more than five points, you lose the game. No doubt, it’s some hippie’s idea that losing by such an amount is bad for the made up concept of self-esteem. As such, we must do something. Else little Johnny grows up to not like himself very much.
So, we will coddle the losers. And make sure they feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Can’t go hurting their self-esteem by telling them how the world really works. The concept that there are winners and losers and that some people may actually be substantially better than you at something is a harsh reality and must be kept from you. You can’t handle it.
I weep for the future.
June 14th, 2010 at 10:02 am
that is JUST SO WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
June 14th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Plus they punish the winners for playing too well
June 14th, 2010 at 10:14 am
“Hey guys, if we play really really bad and let them score all they want, then we win! All right!”
Sounds a lot like:
“So, if I don’t get a job, I’ll get more money in handouts! All right!”
June 14th, 2010 at 10:29 am
Compare this with the disincentivization in Soviet-era factories by central planning, and this gets quite prescient.
June 14th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Oh, bullshit. You all have obviously never played for a sucky team, or played against a really good one.
It’s called the mercy rule for a reason.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:02 am
A lot of kids leagues simply do not bother keeping score. Everyone knows which team is better, but ata young agethe score doesn’t matter, and you don’t want to turn the young’ns off sports. The lose if you win by to great a score is a dumb version of this.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:12 am
@Rustmiester – I’ve played for plenty of sucky teams, and the worst insult is when they get up on you by -1 the mercy number and throttle back just to keep playing.
So obviously the strategy they’re trying to teach the kids is to give up 4 quick goals then put the ball into their own net with a few seconds left.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:18 am
It is much better for self esteem for the team up by 4 to simply pass the ball around mid field running the clock down rather than actually treat the losing team as opponents. Of course, the winning team could just put in 2nd and 3rd string while the 1st string hit on the losing teams cheerleaders.
Some times it isn’t whether you win or lose but how you play the game that reveals comparative skill levels.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:57 am
Soccer’s for girls. Sissy girls.
What I’m pissed at is my daughter’s school taking dodgeball out of the gym curriculum. If I could get my daughter to play dodgeball one hour a day, I would not care if she had any other physical activity. (Besides swimming. She will be a good swimmer.)
And I am now on the PTA board (Parliamentarian) and I will make it (dodgeball) a pain in the principal’s and gym teacher’s behind.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:58 am
So I guess the strategy is to kick the ball into your own net 5 times = “Victory”
June 14th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
I’ll tell you, my wife is a super-liberal Obamamama, but she got it when she saw on my daughter’s report card that the A’s were on the things we had homeschooled her.
I don’t trust my daughter with a gun yet, but she has a fifteen pound bow, a bo, a jo, and a bokken, a pocket knife to match mine, and a horse every weekend. Raise your kids yourselves as best as you can.
June 14th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
Rustmeister is right. Do you also oppose the Slaughter Rule in softball? I eagerly await the flood of breathless denunciations of my college’s intramural sports program from conservative and libertarian bloggers.
At +5, you’ve made your point. It’s not inconceivable that the other team could score that many points themselves in the remaining time, but it’s realistically not going to happen. Heck, once you’re up by three or so you should be subbing out your starters.
The kids on the losing team are already getting their faces rubbed in a humiliating defeat. There’s no need to pour salt on that particular wound just because bad things sometimes pile up in the real world.
June 14th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
The problem Wolfwood, is not the existance of “mercy” or rules. Those rules are such that when the score becomes “a slaughter” is that the winning team, Oh, I don’t know, *WINS*.
In this rule, the winning team *LOSES*.
June 14th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
My high school football team mostly used to win by scores of say, 50-60 to nothing. We’d still keep scoring with our third team in there. Our guys were all perfect gentlemanly sportsmen, too. (FCA membership was encouraged)
June 14th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Children must be allowed to fail. Teach children from a young age that life is not always fair, and that they will sometimes have very bad things happen to them. You can not protect them from the realities of life by babying them with mercy, or slaughter rules. If your child is on a losing team, then encourage them to train harder.
This mentality of never letting children fail, by removing grades, mercy/slaughter rules, and babying them, will raise another generation of adults that can not handle reality.
June 14th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
I would love to see the fallout of this be that the winning team stops at a 4 point lead and starts playing “Keep away” from the other team!
June 14th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Hold on now, we’ve got two different, and perhaps incompatible, rationales by those in favor of the rule.
Yu-Ain Gonnano argues that the problem is the negative consequence for the victorious team, not the goal of prevention of harm to the losing team.
The more common view seems to be that this rule prevents kids from feeling the full consequences of their actions, and might even result in insult being added to injury if a team deliberately and obviously pulls its punches.
I agree that the first rationale makes sense: if we’re trying to make sure there’s not unnecessary grinding into the dirt then a better solution is to simply impose the Slaughter Rule. The game stops and there’s no insult added by a team deliberately holding back. It arguably even adds an additional motivation to a team to focus on offense in the too-often low-scoring game of soccer.
The latter rationale, though seems unnecessarily cruel. If you lose by 5+ goals in soccer, you know you’ve gotten your butt thoroughly kicked. Running up the score just creates further ill-will. These are kids: as a society, it’s in our interest not to force children to suffer more consequences than are necessary to get the lesson across. Any condemnation of this rule on the latter grounds should rightly take offense at all slaughter and mercy rules, be they here, your rec softball league, or the entire sport of Cricket.
June 14th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
rustmeister, Wolfwood,
I understand (if not entirely agree with) the idea that you don’t want kids to get beaten so one-sidedly that they lose all interest in the game. I understand that the younger the kids, the more reasonable this idea gets.
However, this IS NOT the way to do it. Remmeber, the team that is ahead is ALSO made up of kids the same age — any argument that we don’t want to discourage tem from trying their best applies in their direction as well.
There’s a different variation on the same rule that accomplishes the same (claimed) goal, but without the absurdity of forcing the better team to arbitrarily lose because they performed too well. (Perhaps when one of the team gets carried away with his perfect drive, feeling like his favorite sports idol as he skillfully avoids all opposition and scores that 5th, LOSING, goal. Ever seen a little kid get so worked up in the moment he runs the wrong way in baseball or football? If they’re old enough that isn;t a credible issue, then they are old enough to learn to accept defeat with grace — THAT’S ONE OF THE POINTS BEHIND THE GAME!)
Simply stop counting scoring goals once the count becomes too lopsided. For example, if the magic number is set at 3; any goals that would bring the winning team more than 3 goals ahead are simply not counted. Goals the team that is down score still count (thus bringing the score to a 2 goal lead, so the winning team could score again. . . if they are able.)
Oh, look, “problem” solved, only without teaching the kids that if they try to hard, they lose because they make everyone else look bad. (Hey, forcing them to lose if they play too well; that’s a GREAT way to indoctrinate them into good little Soviet factory workers, never exceeding their line quota.)
June 14th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
not the goal of prevention of harm to the losing team.
Not exactly as I don’t see losing badly as “harmful”. I just don’t see how losing (for example: in baseball) by 15 in three innings is any different than losing by 30 in 7. The latter is not more harmful, the former doesn’t teach you less. It’s simply pointless. Admit you got your ass handed to you in the 3rd, move on and do better next time.
June 14th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
rustmeister und wolfwood. I played for the loosing team and I have played for the winning teams. Do you know how I got on the winning team from the loosing team? By not giving up no matter how bad the odds got. Even when we lost by 20 I did not give up and neither did most of my teammates. With what you consider ‘fair’ I consider an excuse to encourage a WORTHLESS backward work ethic. Do you seriously think when these kids get into school that anything they learned from this bullshit rule will apply? How about when they get into life? This takes away the better teams willingness to try because it teaches that if you are good at what you do and work hard you are a LOSER… And to top it off the guy who does not good at what he does and does not work hard is the WINNER. What kind of fucked up world do you want these kids living in??? Sounds like you guys should go work for the UN. Rules like this make sports worthless which I believe is the point. In life it is good to know that you are not deluding yourself into believing you are better at something than you really are. What you guys want for these children is a delusion based on lie that all children are exactly the same. We have to make all the children equal or they might grow up thinking that everything in life is not given to them on a silver platter in the workers paradise.
June 14th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
It’s not the future that I weep for. I weep for the present. I yearn for the past. The future gives me the heebie-jeebies.
I think this is teaching them a lesson — a very accurate lesson — about how business today really does work. Success is punished with negative reviews because other employees may have been made to feel uncomfortable or inferior. Mediocrity and substandard performance is rewarded with continued employment. Indeed, even true failure often leads to raises and promotions. **COUGH*BP*COUGH**
This is now — the present. Today is yesterday’s future.
Congratulations, World, you’ve turned yourselves into a bunch of spineless, castrated, cowards. That’s something you can’t come back from easily.
June 14th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
To you who quoted the “mercy rule,” guess what?
THIS IS NOT THE MERCY RULE!
If the losing team LOSES by 5 points, the losing team automatically wins.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
John Smith
Are you an idiot? Yes? No? You sound like one when you take “disagrees with me” and extrapolate it into “Commie sycophant living in his mom’s basement” -type conclusions. Most people commenting on this blog probably agree with you on about 95% of your political beliefs. Don’t lose the forest for the trees.
June 15th, 2010 at 2:52 am
I mind the change of the millenium. (Not the real one, the change from 2000 to 2001; some people don’t understand the difference between cardinal and ordinal,and when was the year zero, exactly)
Well, anyway, there was a celebration at our cul-de-sac. All of us Boomer grownups happily set off fireworks of amazing kaboomitude. The kids, of junior and senior high-school age, declined to participate in setting off the fireworks. It was like they were scared, or something. It was left to us 50-somethings, some of us in Black Tie and barefoot, to set off the celebratory kabooms.
Really, I fear for the future of my country when I see teenagers who are afraid to associate with, and ignite, pyrotechnic kaboomish things. All of us who touched off the pyro stuff had gray hair. The kids didn’t even approach and showed no curiosity. Fucking Government Mommy Schools!
June 15th, 2010 at 2:57 am
Umm, I mean “1999 to 2000.” Sorry.
June 15th, 2010 at 5:11 am
Sorry to have stirred the feces by pointing this out, Unc.
To those who think this post is about the “Mercy Rule”, go back and read the post again or, gasp, hit the link.
This new rule is, essentially: If your team scores six points more than the other team, your team forfeits the game and the other team (literally) walks away with the win.
As for “The Mercy Rule”: If your psyche can’t handle having your ass handed to you on the sports field, maybe you should think about taking up knitting.
June 15th, 2010 at 9:09 am
You know what? Not only should we get rid of the mercy rule but it’s high time we stopped forcing the kids to wear these nanzy-panzy shin guards, too. Sometimes the real world just gives you a good solid kick to the shins and puts you on crutches for a week. That’s how my grandfather did it when he sailed over on the Mayflower and, gosh-darnit, these sissy kids today could stand a few barked shins and broken tibias so they know what it’s like to be real Americans!
June 15th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Wolfwood, you didn’t read the link. This isn’t a mercy rule, this is a “if you’re really bad, then you win” rule. Mercy rules are bullshit, because sometimes in sports you get your ass kicked. This is a whole different level of suck, wherein playing hard and succeeding is actually punished by forcing you to forfeit.
I argue against mercy rules because I think the bad feelings don’t differ much between losing in 9 innings by 15 runs and having the game called early because of the mercy rule. Plus there is a big life lesson in playing out the game to the end, instead of throwing your hands up and quitting. Perseverance is a virtue we need more of these days. I don’t think that “if things don’t go your way early on, it’s ok to quit” is a good message, just as “playing hard and winning is bad because it hurts the feelings of others” is a damn terrible message to send.
June 15th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
If I’d be a coach in such a league, I’d tell my kids to kick an own-goal every time they’re up by 4, then go for it again. After the second 10-6 victory someone will get the message.
June 15th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Wolfwood what exactly do shin guards have do to with mercy rules? So you are saying that we should have a mercy rule or get rid of shin guards to prevent breaking bones as if that has to do with anything. Last I checked shin guards do not ensure your team a win or a loss based on superior talent. This is coming from a guy who has played without shin guards many times wiht no broken bones. Or more likely you are in need of a mercy rule for the verbal ass kicking you have received. Liberal.