In this dizzying growth cycle that is mostly cause for celebration in Maine high school football, roughly half the games we cover are crawling with cops.

Not those helpful men and women who stand where the school access road meets the two-lane highway, helping me find the quickest escape route to a reliable wireless access signal any given Friday night.

I mean the sportsmanship police.

You know ’em. They show up at blowouts. They’re the fans and parents who enforce every contradictory, unwritten rule of scoreboard decency. This shifting stance, to nobody’s surprise, often coincides with what side of that scoreboard disparity they’re on.

If you don’t see where I’m going with this, go ahead: Frame your own one-sentence answers to each of the following questions.

How many points is it OK to score before you stop throwing the ball?

How big a lead or deficit is necessary before it’s time to start working in the junior varsity and freshmen?

Whose job is it — the coach of a powerful team, or the coach of its badly beaten opponent — to wave the symbolic white flag and replace the starters with second-stringers, inviting the other guy to follow suit and stop the madness?

There are no right or wrong answers, at least none that are universally agreed upon. And that’s the problem.

We hear the grumbling in other sports about basketball coaches who keep applying the press while nursing a 30-point cushion or continue to steal. We cringe and await the reaction when baseball managers sacrifice bunt or hit-and-run with an eight-run lead.

But never is the hue and cry louder than in football, where the emotions, the contact and the risk of injury are markedly higher.

One of my games this past weekend fell into this category. Winslow was rarely stopped on its way to a 34-7 halftime lead over Telstar in a Class C clash.

The location was significant. Two years ago, when Winslow was struggling in Class B, Black Raiders coach Mike Siviski took exception to Leavitt having its backup quarterback (you probably know him as Jordan Hersom) throw a pass while on the favorable side of a 49-0 (soon to be 56-0) flogging.

When the game ended, Siviski sent his team to the locker room without forming a line for the requisite handshake.

At the time I thought it was bush league and wrote such. Most of us media veterans could recall more than one time in the 1990s when Siviski probably could have called off the dogs and didn’t. And the pass in question was one play out of a half in which the Hornets were more than generous.

So in fairness to one of Maine’s most experienced and successful coaches, let me say this: Siviski was a perfect gentleman last Saturday. In fact, he might have made himself a poster boy for the conundrums coaches face when they try to be gentlemen.

To say Winslow’s offense went vanilla in the second half is unfair to vanilla. Siviski pulled his stud running back. Almost every third-quarter carry was a belly dive or quarterback sneak.

Still, Winslow’s lead grew, to 41-7 over the expansion Rebels.

Siviski subsequently yanked his starting defense, which was assuredly the right thing for him to do.

Tim O’Connor, his Telstar counterpart, stuck with his starters and didn’t change a thing, employing a 50-50 mix of the run and the pass and even mixing in a reverse that went for a touchdown. As coach of a new program seeking confidence and continuity, it was precisely what he needed to do.

I didn’t hear a lot of mumbling or see many shrugging shoulders or hairy eyeballs. Two men who recognized where their teams stood in the pecking order took care of it on their own.

Football is a humbling, self-policing game. With few exceptions, programs rise and fall. Everybody gets the chance to be both the hammer and nail eventually.

At least one other New England state instituted a rule a few years back, subjecting any coach to suspension if his team won by more than 50 points.

Silly. I’ve seen more than enough games in my time in which the winning team couldn’t have done anything to keep the game that artificially close, short of having both quarterbacks start taking a knee after every snap in the second half. That’s far more humiliating than giving up another touchdown or two.

I have enough confidence in our local coaches to know that they don’t need a random number, a rhetorical question or a fan or reporter’s conscience to do the right thing.

No traffic cop necessary.

— Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist who says you worry about your team, and he’ll take care of his.