Pee Wee Football Player Runs Back Interception, Team Fined $500 For Running Up the Score [UPDATE: Fined for Unsportsmanlike Conduct]

Here’s a story from Georgia involving an eight-year-old football team and a $500 fine that is head-scratching on a couple levels. WNCN reports that a team in Lawrenceville was fined $500 and had its coach suspended because it ran up the score. You see, the league in question has a 33-point mercy rule in place and in this instance an eight-year-old kid ran back an interception in the fourth quarter with his team ahead 32-0.

The kicker here, it was the kid’s first touchdown, according to his mother.

On a macro level, sure, a mercy rule isn’t necessarily a bad idea. There’s no reason teams at that level need to run up the score, especially when mismatches at the youth level can be commonplace. If a kid is on a team — whatever the sport — that is continually blown out, he or she might get discouraged and quit playing which probably isn’t a desired result of youth sports.

But there needs to be a little common sense here, right? Expecting an eight-year-old to remember the mercy rule in the heat of the moment — especially with his first touchdown looming ahead of him — is a tad unrealistic. This isn’t a professional, trained athlete like LeSean McCoy going down down at the two-yard line instead of scoring to help the Eagles run out the clock.

Here’s what one of the parents of the team is quoted as saying:

"“How do I explain to an eight year old kid that your coach has been suspended because your teammate unintentionally scored?” Chando (John) asked. “It is hard having an 8-year-old in flight to think of everything everybody has said, other than I need to make a touchdown.”"

The fact this league has a $500 fine in place leads me to believe that running up the score was probably an issue in the past. Even so, from the details presented here — for what it’s worth the report from WNCN only talks to the team in question, not the league handing out the fine–   it doesn’t sound like this was by any means intentional since it happened on defense. This wasn’t a team throwing the ball deep up by 32 points.

Unfortunately the emotions that youth sports stir inside a lot of people lead more toward irrational behavior than logic in many cases.

[UPDATE: The story has been updated with a response from the league.

"Erik Richards [the league commissioner] said the team made a mockery of the game by laying on the ground, running off the field and mocking the other players. Richards said in essence, they showed unsportsmanlike conduct. . . . Richards said the fine for violating the mercy rule is $100. In some cases, Richards said the fine will be waived if it is a defensive play, similar to the play that was scored. Richards said he is glad that the media covered what happened because he wants it to be an example for other teams who he said show unsportsmanlike conduct, that they will be fined. Parents for the Black Knights said they have never shown unsportsmanlike conduct in any of their games."

Here’s a video of team from just a week earlier.