Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
Friday, October 13, 2006, Washington Post

Let's Set the Records Straight

Paul McCoy, a running back at Matewan High School in West Virginia, set a single- game record last month when he rushed for 658 yards. McCoy also scored 10 touchdowns as Matewan crushed Burch High School, 64-0. Newspaper reports said that the Matewan coach kept McCoy in for the entire game just so he could break the rushing record.

Games such as that make me wonder how the kids from Burch felt and what Matewan's second-string running back thought as he sat on the bench and watched McCoy score all those TDs.

It also makes me think that coaches and athletes have gone crazy about records and statistics.

The high school sports record book has grown from about 100 pages to nearly 500 in the last 25 years. Coaches and others around the country send in more than 300 submissions every year, each claiming that some high school athlete has set a national record. Yes, it's cool to set a record, but 500 pages of records is ridiculous. Lots of records aren't that important. But you can hardly watch a game these days without some so-called record being broken.

This summer, Nationals left fielder Alfonso Soriano became the fourth player in Major League Baseball history to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season. Soriano had a great year, but how many bases did he try to steal just to reach that 40-40 mark?

Soriano stole 41 bases but got caught stealing 17 times. He wasn't helping the Nats win by getting thrown out so many times. In 2005, when he wasn't trying to set a record, he stole 30 bases for the Texas Rangers and got caught just twice. That's better base running and better for the team.

A couple weeks ago everyone made a big deal about Redskins quarterback Mark Brunell setting a National Football League record by completing 22 passes in a row. That's great, but most were short tosses that were easy to complete and didn't gain much yardage. The best NFL quarterbacks, including Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb, throw the ball farther downfield.

Another thing: Brunell set the record against a weak team, the Houston Texans. I'll bet Coach Joe Gibbs wishes he could have saved some of Brunell's record-setting completions to use last Sunday against the New York Giants' tough defense.

It's easier to set records against sorry teams. But even if it doesn't make the record books, it's more important for the team if a running back scores two touchdowns in a close, hard-fought game than if he scores 10 touchdowns in a runaway.

I'll bet Paul McCoy knows that now. The week after he set the rushing record, McCoy was held to 81 yards by Tug Valley High. Matewan lost, 8-7.