Scores of 66-6, 62-7, 62-12, 58-3 ... What has been going on with area high school football these last couple of weeks?

Of the 23 games played the past two weeks involving local teams, 14 of them had a team winning by the margin of 30 points or more.

Karns City hung a 62-7 beating on Franklin.

Slippery Rock crushed East, out of Erie, 66-6, one week after scoring a 62-12 triumph at Bradford.

Butler suffered a 58-3 loss to North Allegheny a week after bowing 49-0 to North Hills.

Seneca Valley posted a 36-0 shutout of Connellsville, then got blanked 42-0 by Central Catholic.

During the first three weeks of this season, there were only nine games in the area decided by 30 or more points.

Last season — all season — there were 38 games determined by that margin.

Nobody likes to see lopsided scores of that magnitude. No. 1, nobody on either team is getting a whole lot out of the experience. No. 2, watching one group of high school kids getting manhandled by another isn’t any fan’s idea of an ideal Friday night.

So what can be done?

The sad answer is, nothing.

The mercy rule invoked in the second half of games, when one team reaches a 35-point lead over another, doesn’t accomplish a thing.

All it does is take reps away from second and third-string kids who practiced hard all week. Instead of playing for a quarter or more, they find themselves on the field for a handful of plays as the scoreboard clock continually ticks away.

Bad idea.

The reality of high school football is it’s the toughest sport in which to turn around the fortunes of a program.

In baseball, you can put a winning team on the field with six really good players. In basketball, you can do it with three or four.

In football, you need 20 or more.

And if you’ve been losing, good luck finding them.

Slippery Rock, Knoch and Seneca Valley have successfully reversed previously tough times on the football field during the past decade. A couple of winning seasons created enthusiasm among those schools’ athletes for those programs.

Mars has a winning season pretty much every year. So do North Allegheny, Woodland Hills, Upper St. Clair, etc.

Football is part of the culture at those schools.

Butler hasn’t had a winning season since 1997.

Almost cruelly, the Golden Tornado have run into North Hills, North Allegheny and Upper St. Clair in successive weeks and witnessed the difference between winning tradition and trying to build a program.

Other schools feel similar pain. Derry Area lost 64-7 and 58-7 to Mars and Knoch in successive weeks.

It’s just the nature of the beast.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle