Save the children? Not like this.

On Friday, September 15^th, Bridgeport Central High School football beat the crap out of Bassick. The final score was 56-0. This should not have been news. Yet I - despite living approximately 866 miles from Bridgeport and having no rooting interest in Connecticut High School football - heard all about it.

The athletic league that these teams play in has a new "score management policy" this year, stipulating a one-game suspension for any coach whose football team wins by 50 points or more. Presumably this rule is intended to keep a team from running up the score unnecessarily and embarassing their opponents.

Well, it didn't work. Here's your game summary: Coach Dave Cadelina's Bridgeport team runs the opening kick back for a TD. They force Bassick to punt, then run that back for a TD. After another punt, their first offensive play from scrimmage is a long pass for a TD. Bing, Bang, Boom! 21-0. Backup tailback Ramon Mignot runs for two touchdowns. Pow! 35-0. It's still the first quarter.

Cadelina and the refs agree to keep the clock running constantly for the rest of the game, and the coach benches all his starters and some of his second-stringers. By halftime it's 49-0. In the third quarter, the third-string running back hit pay dirt from 24 yards out for the game's final score.

What would the board have had Cadelina do differently? Certainly he shouldn't tell his kids to ease it up; nevermind the horrible implications with regard to sportsmanship, people can get hurt in football games if they play half-speed.

To take it a step further, who gains anything from this rule? Is it any less embarassing to lose 49-0 to third-stringers who deliberately avoid scoring than 70-0 to a team that uses its best players and gives their all? I would think not.

I find it absurd that this rule was ever put in place. Since when do we need to protect kids from losing? Certainly I understand wanting to discipline coaches for deliberately embarrassing opposing squads, but is the problem so bad that a rule needed to be put into place?

If so, I would argue that Connecticut should go to work on their conference alignment and configure a schedule that isn’t filled with completely lopsided matchups. I have always been under the impression that there is a classification system for high school athletics designed to group teams with similar talent levels, and I would think this system should keep ridiculous blowouts to a minimum.

We go too far to protect our children in cases like this. A blowout loss can be a learning experience, or at the very least a character-building one. There’s no need to shield kids from the emotional pain of losing big – yes, it’s difficult, but that’s life.

Freedom of the Sporting Press

It's entirely possible that Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams - the reporters famous for breaking the BALCO steroid scandal and writing Game of Shadows, the tell-all exposé about Barry Bonds - will soon be writing their articles from lockdown. They were recently sentenced to 18 months in jail for refusing to reveal their sources in the case.

For those of you unfamiliar with the details of the case, the primary source for all of Fainaru-Wada and Williams' scribblings was leaked grand jury testimony, which (according to my understanding of the rules) is supposed to be sealed. In this case, all indications have been that the witnesses (Jason Giambi and Bonds among them) were given a guarantee that their testimony would be kept secret.

The reporters have been stalwart in their refusal to disclose their source, as has the court in its insistence that said disclosure is a matter of importance. There is an appeal in process, but - as I said - it is quite possible that Fainaru-Wada and Williams will do time. Is this right?

In a word, yes. In three words, I think so. I heartily embrace the freedom of the press, and I usually agree that protecting one's sources is the appropriate action. In this case, though, oughtn't be a factor that someone violated a very important code in our justice system to break a story about a game?

Sure, Bonds and Giambi - and sooooo many others - are guilty of cheating and misleading sports fans all over the world. But in the grand scheme of things, beyond sports, what harm have they really done? On the other side of the coin is someone whose law-breaking has much more far-reaching implications.

If leaking grand jury testimony is allowed to go unpunished this time, a dangerous door is opened. Suppose a similar leak in a mafia case led to the murder of a witness. I'm certain a public outcry would demand the identity of the source.

The case of Watergate also jumps to mind, though, and I do worry about that - specifically, it would be a lot harder to expose a government scandal if sources were not secure in the secrecy of their identity.

At the end of the day, though, I think that sort of scenario is the exception to the rule, and in fact it is much more dangerous to open a door to the insecurity of grand jury information than to questionable protection of journalists' sources. After all, the writers can always choose to spend the time in jail rather than expose their source, and hopefully a scandal at the level of Watergate would inspire such surreptitiousness.