The "S" word came up Saturday afternoon following the 6A title game.

The "S" word I'm talking about is sportsmanship. It's something we seldom salute in what is a winner take all society. It doesn't make the highlights, and it isn't printed on the front page. But perhaps it should be.

Pine Bluff head coach Bobby Bolding talked about the good sportsmanship displayed by his Zebras and the Greenwood Bulldogs during Pine Bluff's hard fought 28-21 win. The communities of Greenwood and Pine Bluff are as different as night and day, but on this day all I could see were two well-coached teams giving it their all to win a State Title. The great thing about sports is that it can bring kids together from entirely different backgrounds, and the hope is that they will leave the playing field with a new respect for each other. I hope that happened Saturday.

On Friday night, I witnessed a lack of good sportsmanship from Pulaski Academy coach Kevin Kelley.

The 5A Title game was the most compelling matchup of Championship weekend: the feel good story of the 2015 season, the McClellan Lions, facing the Mighty Bruins of Pulaski Academy. It was a rematch of a mid-season meeting where PA scored an early knockout. The final in that one was 41-30, but 24 of McClellan's 30 points came against PA's reserves. The Bruins led 35-0 at the half, and 41 to 6 early in third quarter.

Friday night's Championship Game was different.

McClellan came in with a great plan, and thanks to some friendly bounces and huge plays, they led Pulaski Academy 30 to 29 at halftime. This game wouldn't be decided until late in the 4th quarter.

It was the Pulaski Academy defense that came up with the play of the game. Trailing by only five, midway through the fourth quarter, McClellan faced a 4th and two at midfield. The PA defense swarmed the "Lion King" Pierre Strong to end McClellan's final threat.

The Bruins would add a touchdown to go up 13 at 43-30. That should have been the final score, but it wasn't. What happened next made me cringe.

With 12 seconds to go, after using two timeouts on the drive, PA threw for another touchdown to make it 50-30.

No one likes a bad winner.

It was the final seconds of PA's second straight state title win, and Coach Kelley should have been thinking about the celebration. You'll often hear coaches and former players call the victory formation a team uses when the quarterback kneels down to run out the clock the "greatest formation in football." Apparently, it's gone the way of the punt at PA.

Instead of running out the clock and soaking in a second straight title, Coach Kelley decided to use the last seconds to get payback; to punish McClellan. He later went to Facebook to explain why he went for the final Touchdown.

I'm not interested in his reasons. Coach Kelley was wrong. And if he needed to justify his decision after the fact on Facebook, he likely knows he was wrong, too. Instead of talking about the tremendous effort by the kids on either sideline or the heroics that turned the game by the overlooked defensive unit instead of PA's offensive juggernaut, we're talking about running up the score.

That unnecessary late touchdown has created nothing but bad blood. There's no middle ground on this one; it's PA against the world.

The relationship between public and private schools in this state is shaky at best, and stuff like this doesn't help the private schools.

Coach Kelley is a great coach who preaches "we, not me" to his players. If he were thinking that way late Friday night, he could have saved everyone a lot of grief.