Sportsmanship is about fairness, ethics and respect and a sense of fellowship with one's competitor. Former Florida Coach Steve Spurrier, who now heads up the football fortunes at the University of South Carolina, was once questioned about running up the score on a Gator opponent. Spurrier's response was something to the effect that it's not his team's job to keep the score down; that's the other team's responsibility.

Rubbing it in the face of a hapless opponent brings up the issues of "sore loser" as well as the "bad winner" argument. In some ways, it's all about something called situational ethics.

When Lake Nona High School recently clobbered winless Celebration High School 68-10 in a Florida matchup, the losing coach Ben Aarestad called his opponent's methods into question. "It was 47-10 in the second quarter and he's (Coach Anthony Paradiso) using all his time outs in a two-minute drill to score."

Lake Nona Coach Anthony Paradiso acknowledged that he left his starters in to allow freshman quarterback Tucker Israel to break the state touchdown passing record (10), beating the previous record (8). And while Paradiso did order his team to take a knee on three consecutive plays to run out the clock in the fourth quarter, the damage had been done in his opponent's eyes.

At the Pop Warner levels you have mercy rules and even at the varsity high school football level you have such things as a "running clock" to hurry the romp along. History is laced with hundreds of examples of even larger margins of victory at every level that the sport is played.

When is enough too much? As a coach, you put players on the field to contest a game and you expect them to give it their all regardless of the circumstances. How do you say to a player to lay down on a play and not give his best?

If you're a fan of Celebration football, there's not much to celebrate here but to whine about your opponent running up the score is tantamount to a public pity party. The best move that Coach Aarestad could have made was to say nothing and let the critics do his talking for him. He should have remained quiet or simply congratulate both teams on playing the game… and leave it at that. He would have taken the high road and the noble position, leaving his opponent to explain his actions.

Instead, he's now defending the lopsided loss by blaming his opponent for doing what he's paid to do, win football games. There are coaches that have been fired for running up a score. A girls' basketball coach at Covenant Christian School in Texas was fired after winning by a score of 100-0. The school called it "shameful and an embarrassment." On the other hand, thousands more have been fired for not winning by enough of a margin.

Time out! Didn't you hire the coach to win? Did you specify that he should walk his team off the field of battle after a certain score? Yes, what we have here are situational ethics. Should a coach's career be ended because he did what he was paid to do?

Perhaps the answer lay in the rules themselves. If high school athletics doesn't want a repeat of this kind of thing, then call the game after a certain score and be done with it. Don't expect players not to play and coaches not to coach. That's what they are supposed to do. One could make the argument that any effort less than their best would be unacceptable.

Coach Paradiso defended his position by saying "I understand everybody has their own perception. When you've got a kid who has a shot to get a record like that, you've got to go for it."

Imagine in your mind's eye if the losing coach would not have said a word. Wouldn't the perception of his opponent's decision have been a bit different? Perhaps not, but why diminish the value of your position by saying anything at all. Take the high road and let perception become reality.