USA-365 Commentary:

Let's make scrimmages history

A USA-365.com Special Commentary by Mark Smith

8-28-2005

CROWN POINT (8-28-2005) The classic childhood memory has my young forgotten inner boy and his dog playing in the field on some time-dimmed, sun swept summer day. I lift my right arm and throw a twig into the field and the dog eagerly bounces through the underbrush and retrieves the stick, happily bringing it back to me. Smiling broadly, I throw the stick again into the bushes and weeds, watching it sail on the cool breezes of years gone by and again, my dog races through the bushes and plants to get back the piece of wood.

I wind up and throw the stick a third time, even farther than the previous two tosses, feeling strong in the sunshine of my childhood.

"Mark, " he says. "If you think I'm going to spend all afternoon running through the weeds to retrieve a damn stick, you've got me confused with some other dog."

"I've got an idea," he continues. "Why don't I throw some worthless piece of bark into a pile of rocks and broken glass and I'll stand here laughing and scratching while you stumble your way through sharp objects to find a piece of dead wood."

At Crown Point in this 2005 season, senior Matt Jansen, a potential all-state quarterback was seriously injured in a meaningless scrimmage at Highland. Junior Matt Ernest was seriously injured the next week, in the season opener against Lowell, a game CP won 16-6.

No difference? There's a big difference between being injured in a glorious victory and being hurt during a waste of time. If you believe that high school football programs need the preseason scrimmage, ask yourself why colleges don't. Major college football programs that need to hit the ground running to rock the box office at Hometown U, do not scrimmage other teams in the pre-season.

Please don't mention that the NFL has four pre-season games. They don't care if people get hurt. Unless your name is Rex Grossman, they put you on the disabled list and tell you to get your resume in at Red Lobster. Pre-season NFL football is the biggest fan ripoff in all of sport because, as in prep scrimmages, you are asked to pay real money and the fourth quarter is populated by players who are fighting to get cut after the season begins instead of before.

The two worst things presently on television are 1.) Any episode of 'Scrubs' and 2.) NFL pre-season football. Only very bored people watch either because both are packed with talent-free juveniles whose only skill is that they can disguise the fact that they

Lets be honest. Football is a violent game where players are supposed to inflict pain on each other. To put young boys on the field and risk them getting injured in a non-practice scenario with no meaning whatsoever is foolish and wasteful. Why wasteful? Because you can play a 10th regulation game for money and glory. Under present IHSAA rules, schools get nine games. Four home games one year and five the next. Football pays for itself at most schools but there's a cash-flow crunch in that four-game season.

If someone just visited here from another planet, it would be difficult to explain why we have young boys dress up in body armor and slam into each other for 60 minutes anyway. The value of the sport versus the high ratio of injury is especially questionable. If you're going to play football in August (a bad idea to begin with), it should only be games that count. For several reasons. Intelligent people quickly realize that exhibition football in 90-degree weather with no score being kept is about as exciting as watching gas prices rise. And almost as painful. The stands are 2/3 empty. In NW Indiana alone, a 10th regular season game would allow intriguing new matchups like Lowell-North Judson, Merrillville-Elkhart Memorial, Andrean-Northwood or Hobart-Plymouth. Matchups that would pump new life into NW Indiana high school football and pump much-needed money into grid coffers.

But the best thing about a 10th game would be the elimination of the scrimmage, a dangerous dinosaur-like relic of days gone by when football was played in leather helmets, 'TO' meant 'time out' and school didn't start until after Labor Day.