Peewee Football Team Fined $500 For A Dominant Victory? Mercy Rule Is To Blame


Whenever young children participate in some form of peewee sporting event, they do so not because they want to win or lose (though it might be an element to the game), but to have fun. Remember a time when a game during recess had winners and losers, but it didn’t matter because it was about having fun? Well, that is what little kids feel playing any sport. It is when we get older that winning and losing becomes more important.

With that understanding, when an 8-year-old boy playing his first season of peewee football is given the chance to score his first touchdown, all he wants to do is to run to end zone with ball in hand. That was his instinct when he caught a pick-six in the fourth quarter and scored for his team. What he didn’t know was the touchdown would result in his team being fined $500!

According to an article by CBS Atlanta, parents of players on a Georgia peewee football league are furious that the team was fined $500 and the coach suspended for one week. The reason why is because the 8-year-old boy’s touchdown violated a league statute known as the mercy rule. For those of you who don’t know what mercy rule is, it is usually a consideration in which a team monumentally losing choose to forfeit the game to the winning team. It is called the mercy rule because it spares the losing team the humiliation of suffering a more formal loss while denying the winning team the satisfaction thereof.

To be fair, mercy rules are actually very useful for certain sports, especially those without time limits like baseball or softball because they have no game clocks. However, it is rarely seen in any other sporting event because they have a set time of play. It does happen at times in football, especially if the score ends up to be 91 to 0, as reported by The Inquisitr.

However, the mercy rule is unique for this peewee football league. It is instead known as the 33-point rule. This means that the total accumulated points cannot exceed 33 points of the other team. Elijah — the boy who scored the controversial touchdown — probably didn’t think about the fact that his team, the Lawrenceville Black Knights, were beating Collins Hill 32 to 0, less so when he intercepted a pass and ran for the end zone.

Brooke Burdett, Elijah’s mother, had this statement to say in accordance to her son’s touchdown causing more turmoil than it did good.

“Right, I guess if he [Elijah] were to be staring at the scoreboard, and knowing he couldn’t score anymore, I guess he would have just watched the ball fall? We were all super excited, he was beyond excited and we were fined for it.”

“He had no idea. This is his first year. This was his first touchdown. He is an 8-year-old boy making a pick-six.”

Brooke Burdett also stated that the football team is more than willing to pay a $100 fine for the violation, but $500 and a one-week suspension of the football coach is excessive. As a matter of fact, Bleacher Report took the initiative when Dan Carson made a strong opinion on how these league rules ruined a good thing.

“Elijah now finds himself on the receiving end of the James Harrison treatment for the crime of doing everything he was told to do. As for the rule itself, I have less a problem with mercy rules than I do with the fact there are player-triggered fines in the constitution of a youth recreation sports league.”

“Don’t fine the kids. Don’t fine the team. Send an email and ask for the coach to “maybe try” to get their kids to score less, and get on with life.”

“Don’t ruin football for eight-year-olds. They have the rest of their life to learn to hate pointless fines.”

What are your opinions about the Lawrenceville Black Knights getting fined and their coach being suspended? Is it overkill? Is it just?

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