A key principal in sportsmanship is that you shouldn’t run up the score on your opponent. The reasoning is simple: as long as you win, the score doesn’t matter. Part of winning graciously, therefore, is to reserve some dignity for your opponent. And there is very little dignity in getting slaughtered. This basic tenet plays out in different ways in different sports, but all of these things only apply when you have an insurmountable lead late in the game. In baseball it’s considered rude to steal, bunt, sacrifice, pinch run, etc. In basketball, you are never supposed to keep up a full court press–that is guard the ball handler before he reaches half court. In each of these cases, these plays are “supposed” to be high-risk, high-reward strategies, but you shouldn’t go out of your way to score when you’ve already got victory sewn up.
Football probably has the most of these “unwritten” rules of sportsmanship. Teams are supposed to minimize passing, especially passing deep. (Passing the ball in football allows the offense to move down the field using significantly less game clock than rushing.) Teams should avoid running high-risk, high-reward “trick” plays, and they shouldn’t go for it on fourth down. Teams should bench their star skill players, especially in the last few minutes of the game–this also has the practical element of reducing injury risk to those players (which is a much greater concern in football than in most other sports) and giving your bench players some playing time. You get the basic idea.
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