Houston Scarborough, a Texas High School football team with a 0-10 record and 57-game losing streak, will become the first winless team in Texas history to make the playoffs.
How did this happen?
Well, Scarborough was placed in a five-team district by the state’s governing body of public high school sports. One of the schools in that district was going to be shut down, leaving only four teams. The school was able to stay alive but at a cost, they had to cut their athletics program.
This automatically pushed Houston Scarborough into the playoffs.
“Week 1, we lined up, we thought we were going to end the streak,” said Sanders, whose team is in Class 4A, the third-largest in the state. “Week 2, the same thing. Week 3, here it is, here’s the week that we end the streak. And that’s how we play. We don’t go out and say, ‘Hey, we’re going go out here and try to survive.'”
Sanders’ team has lost by an average score of 53-8 this season, including defeats of 66-0 and 65-0. But that’s an improvement over last season, before he took over as head coach, when the Spartans were shut out six straight games.
As much as he likes to note the improvement, Sanders isn’t hung up on margin of defeat.
“I trust that these coaches out there, they’re not going to embarrass the kids,” said Sanders, who left a job as an assistant at another Houston-area school because he wanted to be a head coach and he thought his teaching could reach beyond the field. “I’m not going to help the score get run up on me either. I’m not going to be passing the ball every other play if it’s getting out of hand.”
Source: For The Win | AP