I went to my nephew's HS football game on Friday and it was probably the most ridiculous game I've ever seen.

My nephew was on the visiting team. These are prep/private school teams, so not like it was big-time 6A schools playing.

The first half was ok and the game was going along at a good pace. A couple of strange penalty calls and a couple of missed penalties, but no big deal. It was hot and the kids were getting tired by halftime.

Then the third quarter started and I don't know what changed but the refs started calling everything and then some. I mean every play there were flags. On top of that, the home team's players were getting injured on EVERY play. Someone was down with leg cramps every play whether they were playing offense or defense. One kid was playing both sides and he went down with leg cramps 3 times in one offensive series, but they never took him out of the game. Another kid was the QB and on defense he played defensive back, and he was literally limping around the field and obviously hurt. Not just limping for a minute between a couple of plays, but limping badly the entire rest of the game. The third quarter took almost an entire hour to play. And I don't think they were using injuries for stalling, there was no need to stop the clock.

The refs were doing some really strange stuff also. Weird decisions about downs after penalties, whether a down was lost or not, whether to move the chains...it was like all of a sudden they had no idea what they were doing when the second half started. Once there were offsetting penalties and the ref signaled the penalties and marched the ball 10 yards downfield to spot it, and then picked it back up and marched it 10 yards back to spot it in the original mark again. Never seen that before. There were about 5 unsportsmanlike calls in the fourth quarter, including one kid who got too hot and took off his helmet, and one on the visiting sideline between plays.

Ok so my question is this because I really have no idea, and keeping in mind this high school - from a rules standpoint, at what point (if any) is it the ref's responsibility to tell the coach to bench an obviously injured player? And if the ref has the ability to do that, what is the penalty if the coach refuses?

If you can’t play hurt you don’t need to play at all. It’s a physical sport. Football wasn’t made for everyone.

Sounds like those private school boys aren't very tough. Tune on ESPN2 right now and watch South Oak Cliff play Duncanville. 47 of the kids have college scholarship offers between the schools.

Well I don't disagree, but there's playing hurt and then there's playing hurt. These kids weren't just knocked around and bruised up a little. If a guy is going down every other play, that's different in my opinion.

Well yeah, that was my point in pointing that out. It seems to me the game isn't important enough to go through that, especially the first game of the season. These aren't football scholarship caliber players.

Maybe they should drop football and start a science club. Maybe poetry. Football is not for everybody, it's a violent game.

Oh good grief. I was asking about the rules, not whether a kid should stay in until he has to be carted off the field on a stretcher. It's high school, not Rollerball.

There are rules for injuries. If a player can't get up and get to his huddle or line of scrimmage the ref will call a injury timeout so they can get an injured player off the field. The player can return after 1 play unless it's a suspected head injury. It's ultimately up to the coach to pull a player if he's limping or dogging around.

Ok, thank you - I appreciate the info.

One of the refs went down for a few minutes with cramps also during that quarter. I don't know if they were just drinking water over there or what, but they needed a whole lot more salt than they were getting.

We had a set of parents who were bitching about their boy not getting to play and was upset that everyone didn't get to play last night. Of course we took the posts down on the football page of the school and come to find out they were fake accounts. Parents obviously created fake accounts to talk carp about the coaches not playing everyone. This is varsity mind you. Some parents even by varsity don't understand that on varsity not every one gets to play. They play to win not hand out trophies to every one

I thought they had to take a player out for at least one play if they stopped the clock for his "injury". Or the team could take a timeout to leave him in.

JR

Any player down that causes white hat to call time is out for the next play.

There’s a difference in being hurt and being injured. You go off the field when you’re injured. Every HS FB player in Texas will be hurt the rest of the year. Your 1st game is the only game you go into fully healthy.

To my knowledge, no rule exists that allows a ref to force a hurt player off the field.

Sounds to me like these kids are not in very good shape. When players get tired, they get sloppy and that causes a lot of those penalties. Conditioning is hard at the beginning of a season. Coaches spend the majority of their practice time teaching football as opposed to running and lifting.

In my opinion, maybe 90% of all injuries on the football field can be avoided with flexibility and conditioning. Coaches need to find the balance between getting and keeping their players in shape vs. putting a few more pages in the play book.

There is a huge difference between playing hurt and toughing it out and playing injured. If you are injured then you need to get out of the game

edit what Coach Hark said