THE MERCY RULE
On Monday, October 14, 2024, I sent an email to Rico Ragsdale, the head football Coach at Milwaukee Academy of Science, telling him that his quarterback, Brayln Albritton had set a state record. On Friday, October 11 against Kingdom Prep Lutheran Brayln tossed six 2-point conversions in a 54-0 win. Rico responded, thanked me and then asked if I had any records of teams quitting at the halftime and what were the most in a season. I had been thinking about this story and I responded that I did not have any “official” state record I could only think, off hand, of one other incident (Not in Wisconsin) and that took place back in 1977 in California. It seems that Kingdom Prep called it quits at halftime. M.A.S. had another occurrence against St. Francis when the Novas were manhandling the Mariners, leading 36-0 after the second quarter.
After replying to Rico, it suddenly occurred to me that I DID know of one such game involving a Wisconsin team. That was the first national Championship game that took place in Detroit on Christmas Day, 1897, when North Tonawanda New York called it quits after trailing 14-0. My three-part series posted earlier this year covers the event.
REVISITING THE FIRST NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME AND MORE…PART 2…THE GAME AND THE MADISON PLAYERS (wihifootball.com)
The occurrence in California back in 1977 leads to a long path of the beginning of the Mercy Rule. Los Angeles Wilson High School was a powerhouse for several years in the mid-70’s thanks to the coaching of Vic Cuccia and the play of his son, Ron. Wilson ran a semi-spread offense and between 1975 and 1977 Ron passed for a then national career passing record of 8,804 yards and 91 touchdowns. He also ran for 2,647 yards and 54 touchdowns. Wilson went 39-0 during this period and won three Los Angeles City Championships. As a sophomore in 1975 Ron was 41-29-0-509-4 in a 36-3 win over L.A. Lincoln. The next season, 1976, Ron was 32-24-0-398-4 passing and 14-136-2 rushing again against Lincoln. Now, a senior, Ron was having another great season in 1977 when he was hurt at the end of game three, sat out the next game and only played the fourth quarter of game six. In game seven Wilson again faced Lincoln and Ron was 39-34-0-509-7 (Yes, again, 509-yards). ALL IN THE FIRST HALF!!! The sc ore was 63-0 and Lincoln called it quits for several reasons, including the score itself. The first reason was that Coach Vic had his team try seven onside kicks, recovering five. During this three-year period Wilson would try as many as 23 onside kicks and recover 16 of them. The next reason was that Lincoln had a lot of inexperienced defensive backs and Wilson was exploiting that fact. And finally, the Lincoln coach felt that Wilson was running up the score. That might have been, but Coach Cuccia had a comeback, one also used by Florida State’s Bobby Bowden when William and Mary Coach Lou Holz complained about a high score…” It’s not my job to play defense for you”. The game report made national papers.
Now I digress a little. In 1969 actress Sharon Tate and several others were killed by followers of Charles Manson, a story that made national headlines as well as the trial of all involved. The first police officer to be called to the scene was Don Markam. Don was young and when he wasn’t working, he coached football.
After 25-years coaching in California, in 1987 Don moved to Brandon Oregon and stayed 5-seasons. He then returned in late 1993 to California to take another coaching job. When he returned, it was on the heels of opponents from Oregon howling about his running up the score. Don's leaving was caused by a better coaching offer back in California. The OSAA (Oregon State Athletic Association) began a 35-point lead at halftime rule was instituted after the 1991 season. Those who proposed and helped write the rule pointed to Markham as the reason with his high scoring teams. So, we have his high scoring teams to thank for the creation of the Mercy Rule.
In 1994, at his fourth of what would be ten schools that he coached over the years, Don took over a Bloomington High team that had gone 1-9 in 1993. Of his 10 coaching stops Markam would have two stints with Bloomington. His time at Bloomington would see his teams score even more points than in Oregon.
Utilizing the Double Tight-Double Wing offense where his squads ran a toss play that few teams could stop, Bloomington went 14-0, won the CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) Division III Southern Section title while scoring a then, national team record 880 points or 62.9 points a game. His star back, Greg Oliver, would set a state record with 352 points on the season. Bloomington would win D-III titles in 1996 (Scoring 722 points in 14-games) and 1997 (Scoring 774 points also in 14-games). Don Markam would end his career, dying in 2018 at age 78, with a career 311-112-1 record. 265 of those wins were in California as well as earning five overall C.I.F. championships.
Since 1991 the Mercy Rule has caught on and 34 states currently have adopted it in some form. Wisconsin introduced the rule in 2008. California began utilizing the Mercy Rule in 2011. There are some variations from state to state. A few have a 42-point rule. Some have a rule that anytime a team has a big lead, even in the first half, the clock starts running. One of the reasons for the rule was, I’m sure, to prevent teams from canceling the rest of the game. But in some cases, the rule hasn’t kept the scores down. In 2021 Wauwatosa West rolled over Pius 90-8. West was leading 72-0 at halftime before the rule kicked in for the second half and only scored 18 more in that second half but they did convert on two 2-point conversions (Plus a safety). The Trojans were content to run the ball gaining 474 yards on the ground, averaging 12.8 yards per carry. They only threw the ball once for 36 yards.
But one team from California failed to play well against an outmanned team. Nearly two-months later in 2021 Inglewood High School blew out Morningside High School 106-0. Leading 59-0 at halftime, the Inglewood coach refused to allow a running clock and kept his star quarterback in as he was allowed to toss 13…yes 13…touchdown passes. Why the refs didn’t insist on the running clock is a mystery. The Inglewood principal issued an apology and the C.I F. condemned the un-sportsmanship coaching.
High school football: UCLA commit Justyn Martin of Inglewood throws 13 touchdown passes in 106-0 win
Since 1994 a number of schools have passed Bloomington’s 880 seasonal points, mainly because those schools have made it to the finals in their state and have played mo0re than 14-games. Aledo Texas scored 140 touchdowns in 2013 in 15-games and totaled a record 951 points on the season (63.4 points per game) while allowing only 134. After Aledo beat Western Hills 91-0 there was an outcry from some Texans asking for the Mercy Rule to be implemented in 11-player football. Texas also plays 6-player football, and they do have a Mercy Rule for that side of the game. The UIL (University Interscholastic League), the Texas high school athletic governing body, voted NOT to implement the rule in 2014. Spokespeople for the UIL cited that if they had the rule in place and games were cut shorter then, the third and fourth string athletes wouldn’t get any playing time.
If you look at the Wisconsin state record book there is a list of schools scoring 100+ points in a game, but the latest 100+ game occurred in 1929, with most prior to 1919. MaxPreps.com has a quick look record book. Check out (Cut and paste) the most touchdowns by a team that has a lot of super high scores:
The overall record book is at:
FORFEITS
The previous week to my contacting coach Ragsdale, on October 4 in an 8-player game Almond-Bancroft defeated Menominee Indian 66-0. In that game quarterback Emmitt Stiles threw seven touchdown passes and made it into the 8-player record book. When I looked at the game stats on WisSports.net I noticed that only the touchdowns were listed in the scoring recap, the quarter-by-quarter scores weren’t entered and none of the conversions so I wrote Coach Andy Louis how they scored the two-pointers. He couldn’t give me a breakdown and said he would have to look at film. I asked about other games as Stiles probably had additional conversion passes and could set records. He said it would take time to find out who scored what and how.
I noticed that in the A-B’s season schedule they had a 2-0 win over Wausau Newman Catholic. Now I know that Newman is an 8-player powerhouse and ranked in the polls but I didn’t give it much thought at the time. Then, as I was looking at the overall listing of game scores, I see some schools have two games listed. A cancelled game and a score for another game. An example is Abundant Life/St. Ambrose being scheduled in both 8-player and 11-player. How can that be?
On October 4 Darlington played a real game against Lodi and won 55-10 but their schedule also shows on that same day a game scheduled with AL/SA and they are credited with a 2-0 win. How can that be when in 8-player AL/SA played Oshkosh Valley Christian and won 52-8?
If you look at the two Milwaukee Academy of Science games mentioned above, they have scores and stats. To me that is acceptable if it is a win and not a forfeit. Now, I don’t pretend to have all the details about the Newman vs Almon -Bancroft game but it seemed that there were a number of hurt players, and the game should have been called at some point and it should have been listed as a win, not a forfeit. Today, October 24, I looked at Almond-Bancroft’s schedule and saw that they had two games on October 11. A 66-28 victory over Wabeno/Leona and a 1-0 win over Bowler/Gresham? Again, no conversion stats and no quarter-by-quarter scoring for the Wabeno game. Was that also a second half forfeit? A-B has stats for the Newman game so to me, that’s not a forfeit no matter when the game was stopped. And what about the scoring? 2-0 or 1-0?
Well, Mr. Google knows all (Or thinks it does) as it states that:
“In the event the team forfeiting the game is already losing at the time of the forfeit the score stands as is. Otherwise, forfeits result in a 2-0 score in the NFL or a 1-0 score in high school, NCAA or Canadian football”.
In the early days of high school football, the scoring was 2-0 and that has stuck in my mind until now. Moving forward I will use 1-0 as the standard. So, does that mean that the real score of the A-B vs. Newman game was 1-0?
Just wondering.
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