LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – New numbers from the Kentucky High School Athletic Association shed light on disqualifications. The group tracks disqualifications for all sports during all seasons.

The sport with the most disqualifications is football.

“Football is a contact sport, there are some tough moves, but also rules. If I get two yellow cards, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with unsportsmanlike conduct, but I’m out,” explains Butch Cope, deputy commissioner of the KHSAA. Cope monitors their sports rules. More than one in three disqualified athletes last school year was a football player. “You can’t judge that because the rules are a little different.”

The reasons for disqualifications are varied. They can include fighting or hitting, spitting, unsportsmanlike conduct and rule violations, which are most common in football. Overall, football had the most disqualifications last year – 226 players and 18 coaches – followed by basketball, football and baseball.

More than a third of disqualifications in baseball involved the exclusion of coaches from the game.

“Sometimes they say, ‘I have to cheer for my team.’ You’ll hear a coach say, ‘I have to get involved and cheer for the team.’ I don’t really think that’s a motivating factor, but for some reason that seems to be the norm in this sport,” Cope says.

The KHSAA also breaks down the numbers by school. In Western Kentucky, Butler County had the most with 27, followed by Seneca in Louisville, Breathitt County and then Anderson County.

According to Cope, a large number of disqualifications at a school usually means there was a bench-clearing incident. In these cases, any player who leaves the bench is disqualified.

“We’ve seen more cases in recent years of players being evicted from the bench, whether on the basketball court, on the football sidelines or on the baseball field,” Cope notes.

WKYT has received disqualification numbers for the past six years, but they’re difficult to compare. There were no sporting events in the spring of 2020, and the following fall and spring of 2021 had greatly reduced seasons. Cope told us the numbers are now back to pre-pandemic levels.

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