Today's Lesson In Punitive Taxation
There's A Point When You've Scored Enough Points*

11 year-old Demias Jimerson is learning a valuable lesson in "fairness" this football season.

"He is going to score almost every time he touches the ball," said Wilson Intermediate School Principal Terri Bryant.

And because of the injustice ... an outrage, really ... of having a player on the team who so outshines his peers, the Wilson Intermediate Football League is invoking something called the "Madre Hill Rule"

Once Hill scored three touchdowns, if his team had a 14-point lead, officials banned him from scoring any more touchdowns.

Wait. What?

I grew up in Georgia in the '70s and remember when Herschel Walker ran roughshod over any opponent that faced him. He racked up over 3,000 yards rushing in his senior year alone on the way to a state championship. No one, to my recollection, ever talked about how awful it was that Herschel kicked so much ass. No, the talk was about what could be done (wink, nod) to get him to commit to play for [insert favorite NCAA Division I team here]. My, how times have changed.

The Madre Hill Rule is, in effect, a 100% marginal tax rate on touchdowns. I'm surprised the district didn't update it for the Age of Obama™ and let Jimerson score but then redistribute some of his points to the other team. A Jimerson surtax, if you will.

To run with this idea a little more (and ignoring PAT's), if the redistribution was, say, 5 points for his own team and 1 point for the other team, I'm sure the coach would let him keep scoring. 4 to 2? Maybe.

But once it got to parity, the coach would be telling him to run as hard as he can to the one yard line and then go out of bounds or down the ball so he could take three cracks at the goal line with a kid that could get him the full 6 point advantage over the other team. The league would immediately begin referring to this as the Jimerson loophole and then institute even more cockeyed rules that had the effect of keeping the kid on the sidelines or off the playing field entirely. Hmmm ... seems familiar somehow.

And why? All in the name of "fairness", that's why. Too much trouble to ask other teams to rise to the challenge and design a defense to stop him, I guess. Nope, it's just not fair that he's so good, so we have to erect roadblocks in his path.

And this prepares the other kids for life in the real world, where there's always someone bigger, faster, stronger, smarter or better in some way how again? Answer: it doesn't but the primary goal of our education system is keeping teachers and administrators employed so shut up.

Master Jimerson appears to be a fine young man who's taking all this in stride, though:

"I'm gonna run hard and bring our team to victory," said Jimerson. Then he added, "but God always comes first, before anything, and grades second."

I hope he continues to score every time he touches the ball despite this dumb rule. And if he should happen to see this post, there's an inspirational video tucked below the fold that I hope he keeps in mind when he's picking colleges in a few years.

*Excellent alternate title suggested by Soothsayer in the comments

This could be you in the Red and Black, buddy:

posted by Andy at 12:02 PM

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