Sunday Sports Comment: Enough with Whining About Running Up the Score

Growing up way back when (the 70's) in good ol' Houghs Neck, we use to have a term when one side picked for kick ball or street/floor hockey was better than the other: smuck. As in, "those are smuck teams." Haven't heard it in decades, probably anotherBoston English term going the way of hosie.  But while we may have complained about unfair teams, I never heard anyone whining about "running up the score" even if the team were smuck, let alone evenly matched.  Maybe we were different around Boston, but maybe times were different.

Because today, whining about  "running up the score" in pro sports is all the rage. Players do it, coaches do it and even fans in what you would think to be tough towns like New York and Chicago do it. It seems to have become prominent in the last decade. Maybe its all the Gen Y  and Millenial kids who received trophies for just showing up in order to protect them from any possible self-esteem boo-boo and exposure to the reality of failure in life.Who knows, but its getting pretty annoying. Last week the Patriots destroyed the Jets, answering a week of New York's trash talking on the field. Today they manhandled Da Bears in Chi-town. After both games a furious whine began on the intertubes about how the Pats have "no class" and "run up the score"

WTF people. These are professional athletes getting paid millions. They're supposed to play to win and not let up simply to protect the fans po' widdle feelings. I remember many a shellacking of Boston teams and I blamed them for the debacle, not the other team for scoring, and that includes the '86 Super Bowl, Bears 46, Pats 10 (no one whined about Da Bears running up the score).

Maybe people should worry instead about those with plenty of money screwing over everyone else rather than paying a penny more in tax, or people killing each other (literally) over Black Friday "deals" on some piece of crap they don't really need.