This was an issue in a couple of college games last year.  According to the Findlay Courier, for this season, if one team has a 30-pt lead in the second half, the clock keeps running.  Doesn't say if they stop the clock for injury timeouts.  I can see why they'd do it, but I really don't like it.  Last year, one of our area high schools blew at least a 4-TD lead in the second half and lost.  I'd keep it as the coaches' prerogative.  If they want a rule, maybe up it to 40 pts, or make it applicable only in the 4th qtr.

I don't like the idea either in most cases. They have had a mercy rule for a long time in Columbus already. I daughter went to Centennial High School and I went to a lot of games where the 4th quarter was either shortened to 9 minutes, the clock kept running or both. In 2008 Centennial lost to Beechcroft 96-0. Nobody wanted that game to be played regulation. Beechcroft actually score 102 points but the Beechcroft coach asked the ref's to take the last touchdown down(fumble recovered in endzone) and place the ball on the one. 4 knees taken from that point.

I'm torn on this. On the one hand, the huge blowouts teach an important lesson: Just because things look bad now (i.e. you're losing), it doesn't mean that they can't get worse (i.e. you get embarrassed). Don't like it? Get out or get your act together. That being said, with injury concerns being what they are its probably a good rule change

I never understood folks and their, "it teaches them a life lesson" - "they need to learn to toughen up" crap.  In the games I've witnessed that are so lopsided as to warrant running the clock/shortening the game, never have I seen the kids give up.  And they get back out there Monday and practice yet again...trying to get better.  That says more about their character than the score Friday night.

Also, as stated above, often they are simply out manned physically.  Keep in mind it is also often times with larger schools (more player, fresher players) beating up on out numbered opponents.  And fatigue contributes to injury. 

I can see the value of this rule on the basis of personal experience...

A long, long time ago (i.e., 1962) I was a senior playing football for Jacksonville-Trimble HS (AKA J-T, or Trimble, for short), one of two high schools that were consolidated in 1967 (the other being Glouster HS) to form the current Trimble HS. During the previous decade, neither Trimble nor Glouster had much success on the football field (except for Trimble's 1960 season in which we were 5-3), both of them regularly getting blown out by their conference rivals and OOC opponents alike on a regular basis. (The most competitive game either team had every year was when we played each other.)

The next to last game for us (Trimble) for the 1962 season matched us against Belpre, a conference rival (South East Ohio Buckeye League, or SEOBL). At that time Ohio schools were classified by size as Class A, AA, or AAA, with A being the smallest schools. Trimble was Class A, Belpre AA. The Trimble team was never very strong or numerous, but by this point in the 1962 season the team had been decimated by attrition to the point that we were able to take only 14 players to Belpre, a school that regularly dressed 80+ players for a football game (to talk about a mismatch).

Of course the game was a total massacre. Because we had such a weak team, we could not possibly mount a running game, and were forced to pass on every play, and of course this scheme was not successful either. The point here being, of course, that, because we passed every play and the clock stopped for every incomplete pass, the game stretched on and on well beyond the time it should have ended and put us all at serious risk for injury. A "mercy rule" here would have been the humane solution. (Of course we should have just forfeited the game, but our pride would not let us do that.)

Interestingly, the following week, the same 14 players went out and held the conference champion, The Plains, scoreless in the first half of our final game, although The Plains scored several times in the second half to defeat us.

wow interesting story about only 14 players. I remember when Columbus Centennial would only drew 22 or 23 for road games and half the players weren't any bigger then me. On the college side I went to the Oberlin-Wittenberg game last year and Oberlin only dressed 35 players while Wittenberg dressed well over 100.

I also have mixed emotions about this, except from an injury perspective. The safety of the players is the most important thing. Other than that, there are lessons to be learned, and even small victories to be had, even from bad losses.

The worst loss I was ever a part of happened to be in an intermural basketball game. Our team was very bad, and we knew it, so we seeded ourself in League 18 of 18. Even then we were winless, but we were competitive in most games. Fresh off a loss to the Lilliputians, in which our only decent player was hurt, our next foe was a sandbagging team that was quite good, but poor sports. Not content with just seeding themselves in the lowest league so that they could win easily, they wanted to embarrass us by scoring 100 in a short intermural game, so they used a full court press and fast break the entire game. At the half we trailed 56-16, and we knew we could expect more of the same in the second half. We were not willing to resign ourselves to letting them have their way, so we set a new goal for the second half - keeping them under 100. Thus, for the entire second half we went into a 4 corners stall, and never attempted a shot. Frustrated, they fouled us if we didn't turn the ball over fast enough,  In the end we lost 92-28, and left feeling victorious, having accomplished our diminished goal.  Had we kept them under 100 only because the officials accelerated the clock, we would have had nothing good about that day.

I think that in most cases a true slaughter can be avoided if the better team shows a bit of class.  They don't need to trip over imaginary defenders, which just adds insult to injury. Instead they can have people play the wrong positions, and/or run the same play over and over.  If it is still out of hand, shortening the clock is probably not a bad thing because it's a sign that things are so uneven that someone might get hurt.

Louisville, almost Buffalo, Bowling Green, Kents.

Thank you for a perfect example of how to win a lopsided game with class. If all coaches and players had this kind of class, there would be no need for, nor call for, a "Mercy Rule".

35 pts down here in Florida

That's a tough call, Robert. If I were the coach, I probably wouldn't have called the fake punt, but I see his point. If he had punted, the other team might have run numerous passing plays, and the game might have gone on much longer. The way he did it, the game ended quickly, and he didn't try to score after that.

Actually a similar thing occurred in an Ohio game not that long ago. In 2011 Ohio was leading Marshall 37-7 with about 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, and Hershey came in to punt.  When Marshall didn't cover him, since he had a permanent green light, he took it on himself to make the first down, which highly offended the Marshall fans. 

There are always going to be plays where the losing side thinks the winner is trying to run up the score, and the winner had no such intention. As another example, I remember a play where the offense called run after run up the middle. The losing team finally put 11 in the box, and rushed them all. The 3rd string QB did what he was trained to do when he read that - audibled into a pass to the wide receiver that was not even covered. The winning coach apologized for the TD, but explained that the possibility of that sequence of events had never occurred to him - the loser blitzing everyone, and the 3d string QB as a consequence audibiling into the obvious play.