I heard about this on the radio last night on my way home from work. What a load of horseshit.

Imagine some team being up by a bunch, so the coach goes to 2nd and 3rd stringers. Some 3rd string kid who is going to get a total of about 5 carries all season long is handed the ball......Is he supposed to run it out of bounds or take a knee? That kid is gonna wanna play his ass off.

In hockey you can sort of get away with tanking when you're up by a lot. We used to just basically hold passing clinics when we'd be up by 10+ goals. That, and every once in a while toss some outside shots from the blue line at the net. Football is a whole nother beast. I could never imagine purposely going into a pile just to get tackled or downing the ball or any of that. To me, that is more insulting to the losing team than continuing to play.