Brian Out Loud
Do you try to score another touchdown before the game ends with a mark in the loss column?
The book of sportsmanship will tell you the answer is no.
Gulf Breeze didn’t care. It opted to answer that question with a yes and go for it.
It caught me by surprise. It also ruined the tweet I had set up to send once time expired. That didn’t-mean-a-thing touchdown forced me to backspace and replace the six with a 12.
Navarre was winning this rivalry game in convincing fashion, in command with a 40-6 lead. The lead was safer than nuclear bomb codes. I can say that with confidence because the last time I checked there is no 34-point play in football.
Then again, what do I know. I’m just a writer.
Maybe the Dolphins figured they’d score within a couple of seconds, get the two-point conversion, recover the onside kick, score another touchdown and then get another two-point conversion.
Their plan was then to rinse and repeat that scenario three more times and win the game. All in under 10 seconds, which I imagine would be a world record that even former Olympic track star Justin Gatlin would be proud of.
The ending would have been the lead on ESPN. President Donald Trump would call it fake news, but the tape of the craziest rally in the history of football at any level would prove otherwise.
What I’ve just mentioned had to be what Gulf Breeze was thinking when it burned that timeout in the closing seconds of a game it had no chance of winning.
Or maybe the coaching staff was so mad at Navarre for dominating the game the way it did that it decided to take the low road and run one more play, knowing full well that it would do no good.
I get it that you want teams to play until the final whistle. That you want to fight until the clock says there isn’t any more time left to fight.
It’s all woven into the fabric of sports.
But in this situation, in this game, you take a knee, take the loss and move on to the next week.
Setting up a play to score a touchdown when it isn’t necessary is about as bad as running up the score on an opponent that is just praying for the game to end as mercifully as possible.
I remember once covering a game where the team I was the beat writer for was trying to run out the clock on an easy win.
The opponent managed to get the ball back with a little time left and burned timeouts just to attempt to score one more time.
The team I covered turned around and scored on them, basically sending a message.
If Navarre had gotten the ball back in the Beach Bowl, I doubt it would have tried to score just to punch back after the low blow the Dolphins delivered.
The Raiders simply would have run out the clock.
Which is what Gulf Breeze should have done with 8.8 seconds to go.
The Dolphins didn’t, though, either because they didn’t care or they were just hoping to pull off the greatest rally in the history of football.