iStockphoto
There are plenty of mismatches to be found in high school sports, and most states have rules in place to prevent things from getting too out of hand when a team is firmly overmatched by its opponent. However, one high school football coach in Alabama declined to take advantage of one that would have brought an expedited end to a game his team lost by triple digits.
When it comes to sports, there tends to be a correlation between the overall amount of talent at various levels of competition and the level of parity you can expect.
There are obviously haves and have-nots in the NFL on a season-to-season basis, but you’re never going to encounter a game between two teams that’s lopsided on paper to the point where sportsbooks won’t even offer a spread. However, that is occasionally the case with college football, and the disparity between the best and the worst teams tends to be even greater when you make your way down to the high school level.
“Lopsided” could certainly be used to describe the result of a recent showdown between Williamson High School and Murphy High School, as the meeting of the two squads that play their home games in Mobile, Alabama was a rout the likes of which the state hasn’t seen in over 50 years—and one that was only possible because the losing coach refused to wave the white flag when he clearly should have.
Former NFL player Sherman Williams refused to switch to a running clock after his team got blown out in a game they lost by a score of 100-0
Sherman Williams is a Mobile native who was a dominant running back who led Mattie T. Blount High School to a state championship before heading to Tuscaloosa in 1991 to play for the Crimson Tide. The Cowboys scooped him up in the second round of the 1995 NFL Draft, and he won a Super Bowl with the team while serving in a backup role during a five-year career where Dallas was the only team he played for.
His NFL career was already on the verge of ending when the door slammed shut after he was sentenced to over 15 years in prison after he was arrested for smuggling over 1,000 pounds of marijuana from Texas to Alabama, and he was incarcerated in 2000 before being released in 2014.
He’s spent the past decade getting back on the right path, and he was hired as the head coach at Murphy High School prior to the start of the current season in the hopes he might be able to inject some new life into a program that hasn’t won a game since October 2023.
That has not been the case so far, as the Panthers fell to 0-6 on the season and extended their current losing streak to 18 games with a loss to Williamson High School on Friday night in a game where the Lions improved to 5-0 with a 100-0 victory.
That marks the first time a high school team in Alabama has scored 100 points in a game since Keith beat Alabama Industrial in a 122-0 bloodbath in 1970. I can’t tell you if the Alabama High School Athletic Association had a mercy rule to trigger a running clock at that point, but according to AL.com, Williams refused an offer that would have put one into effect after his squad headed into the locker room down 73-0 at halftime.
Williamson coach Antonio Coleman said he was fairly baffled by what went down after he informed the refs he’d be fine with a running clock after the game got firmly out of hand. However, he needed Williams to agree to the proposal only to learned the gesture of sportsmanship had been rejected.
Coleman still isn’t sure why the offer was spurned, saying, “I really don’t understand what was happening…. I never experienced anything like that. It’s a first-time deal for me. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
ASHAA rules mandate a running clock if a team is up by at least 35 points in the fourth quarter, and it went into effect as soon as the final frame started in a game where Williamson ultimately scored 100 points despite playing middle schoolers for the bulk of the second half.
Neither Williams nor the school he coaches has offered an explanation (Coleman added he didn’t explain himself during what was positioned as an amicable and routine postgame handshake), but it doesn’t seem like a decision that can really be justified in any way.