On the surface, it must have appeared that the Smith Center (Kansas) football team was running up the score in Tuesday's playoff game, during which they outscored Plainville, 83-0, posting a national-record 72 points in the first quarter alone.

However, a subsequent story indicates that Smith Center coach Roger Barta went to extraordinary lengths to keep the score from getting even worse, pulling his first-team offense midway through the first quarter and the first-team defense at the end of the quarter, then ordering his players to fall at the five-yard line if it appeared they were going to score and kicking field goals on first-and-goal at the five.

Perhaps a certain NFL coach in the Northeast could take a lesson.