At this point you may or may not have heard of the beat-down that Smith Center’s High School Football team laid out last weekend. In their playoff game against Plainville, Kansas (insert your own joke here) Smith Center scored 83 points and allowed a whopping Zero en route to a nail-biting victory in a close game. Now you may be thinking to yourself, “That must be a typo, surely he doesn’t mean that an 83-0 win was close.” Well apparently it was through the eyes of Roger Barta, the head coach of Smith Center. How do we know this? Because he went for two, on every touchdown that his team scored. That’s right, when his team was up 64-0 with minutes still left in the 1st quarter of the game (oh, did i mention 72 of Smith Center’s points were scored in the first quarter?) Barta put up the two fingers signaling that he wanted his offense on the field to attempt to convert a crucial, game-defining, two-point conversion.
Now I must admit, upon hearing this I feel that I’m missing something very important in all of this. Because there has to be a good reason for Smith Center going for two every single time. Here’s what smells fishy to me. First is the fact that Plainville (repeat earlier joke again) coach John Petrie was completely O.K. with the two point conversions. I feel like must be the case because Petrie and Barta are friends or something to that of that ilk. Second, you look at a possibility of why Smith Center was going for two from an inverse perspective. Perhaps their team was lacking any players in possession of three things: a foot, a leg, and the ability to swing the combination of the first two in a forward direction, and was therefore unable to kick an extra point. But then you look at the box score of the game and realize that in the 3rd quarter, Smith Center kicked a field goal to put up their final insurance points. So they obviously had someone capable of going for one, but instead Barta put up the two fingers, even when his team scored their 2nd quarter touchdown while already up 72-0. So again, I feel like considering the reaction of the Plainville coach and the fact that Smith Center had a kicker, there has to be something I’m missing here, right?
Right??
Well, assuming that I’m not missing anything, this is completely outrageous, and I don’t think I need to explain my reasoning there. It seems to me like this is just a case of an overzealous High School Football coach getting way too wrapped up in the moment of his crucial, earth-shattering, playoff game. Oh by the way, did I mention that Barta is himself a graduate of Plainville High School? (I’ll make the joke for you this time) I guess when you come from a place as exciting as Plainville, Kansas, putting up two fingers is probably twice as Page 1 newsworthy as putting up just the one.
Warren
Tags: football, high school
