Moms to Congress: It's time to protect kids in contact sports

I was one of those kids.  My Dad was a football nut.  I thought it never made any sense to pack the box when the field was so huge.  I wanted to be a Wideout catching 10 passes a game, but coach saw a big strong kid at 12 and made me a tackle.  I was 30 years ahead of my time on spreading the field. 

So I played a couple of seasons for a Lombardi wannabe - and retired from football at 12.  My little brother who never played youth football came along at 5'7" and 150 lbs and was a stick your nose in there hard edge linebacker.  My father loved those games, me playing basketball - not so much.

Best football highlight - in a conference championship game my brother beat a block and popped an RB at the corner in the backfield on a sweep, caused a fumble and picked it up.  He ran 30/40 yards to the end zone where my father who was under the goal post decapitated him in the middle of the end zone and was in the middle of a dog pile.  My brothers head rang for two days off of that hit.

d-mac posted:

I would like to see youth football transition to flag football.  Around here the youth teams have very physical practices.  There is a lot of tackling every day.  If you go to a high school or college practice the first thing that stands out is how little they hit.  They teach technique on tackling dummies or on each other but rarely tackle to the ground.  Most of the youth football coaches are not very good and most do not know what they are doing.  My son played one year of youth football.  A lot of the good players on his 9th grade team never played football before 7th grade.  The kids who played youth football don't seem to have any advantage over the kids who didn't play.  I think youth football probably runs off more kids than anything.  Our youth league had around 45 kids in 6th grade and the next year over 100 kids came out for 7th grade football.  

My father never played organized football before school ball. He played big time college football. He wouldn't let me play until 9th grade. It didn't affect my success. I didn't let my son play until 7th grade. I listened to other parents tell me he would fall too far behind. As the fastest. Most athletic kid I was afraid some insane coach would have his players go for my son's knees. He started in 7th grade. He was a cocaptain in 8th.

The only detriment to not playing at a younger age was he didn't have the passion he had for basketball and baseball. He started soccer at a very young age and dominated. It was his best sport in high school. But he never loved it. He decided football and fall baseball didn't mix. His best friends played soccer.

I'm in agreement youth football should be flag. The reasons schools have limits hitting are the rules. There are few rules governing kiddie football. It's not uncommon for a program to not be part of an organized national program.