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The Nation's Pulse
Welcome to the NFL
Masschusetts pee-wee football squads show how it’s done.
Pop Warner games don’t usually make it into the New York Times and USA Today. But youth football games generally don’t end 52-0. The lopsided contest last month between Massachusetts pee-wee teams Southbridge and Tantasqua has become fodder for press conferences, hearings, suspensions, and national headlines.
The game has become the most talked about, least watched, competition in youth football history. People have very strong opinions about a game they never saw.
The Southbridge team hurt Tantasqua’s pride. They also hurt their heads. Five Tantasqua players suffered concussions in the blowout.
Tantasqua charges that their opponents ran up the score, led with their helmets, and disregarded weigh-in procedures. The pee-wee division limits play to 120-pounders. Tantasqua coach Erik Iller claims that Southbridge’s scale-watcher explained, “Nobody gets refused to play football in Southbridge.”
Rob Philion, vice president of Southbridge Pop Warner, countered at a press conference that after going ahead 28-0 in the first quarter “the coaching staff immediately made the necessary adjustments in order to maintain compliance by, among other things, pulling their starters, running only between the tackles, refraining from all passing and outside running plays, and frequently substituting players into the game.” They also punted once on first down and scored their final three touchdowns on defense. Tantasqua, he noted, played with fewer than the minimum allowable number of players.
Pop Warner responded by suspending the coaches of both squads for the season and banning the refereeing crew. The slaughter rule in Pop Warner is 28 points, 24 points less than Southbridge’s margin of victory.
I asked a referee who has officiated several hundred Pop Warner contests in Massachusetts if he had ever witnessed such an imbalanced outcome. “Absolutely not,” he responded. “Never. Never, ever, ever.” Another ref labeled the outcome “abnormal” but not unheard of.
The dangerous blowout certainly seemed alien to the pee-wee contest I watched last weekend between two other Massachusetts squads, Arlington and Winchester. The evenly matched teams finished regulation tied at six. The strong tackling on defense, and sweeps and dives on offense, recalled an earlier incarnation of football. Plays frequently resulted in negative yardage. They took four overtimes, which in Pop Warner consist of four plays for each team to score from the 10-yard line, to settle the matter — in Winchester’s favor.
I caught up with some coaches and players after the hard-fought struggle. Arlington’s coaches stressed proper tackling technique, better equipment, certification for the coaches, and the extensive concussion training they receive as ways the game has become safer. Winchester’s coach Brandon Bergstrom detailed his team’s use of mats for tackling drills and their emphasis on form freeze-tackling, which enables coaches to teach technique while preventing player injuries from collision. Headlines suggest a game more dangerous than ever. But watching practice and talking to the fathers who volunteer their time as coaches belies that notion.
Adam, Arlington’s quarterback who also plays basketball and baseball, told me that he took up football because “one year I thought it would be really fun to go out and hit people. I tried it and I liked it.” One of his teammates explained his motivation for playing: “Really, I just like to tackle people.”
Football’s attraction for boys also serves as the fuel for its detractors. A retired Southbridge teacher blogged, “It is time for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to act and make tackle football illegal for young children.” A school board member in Dover, New Hampshire, has proposed doing just that in high schools.
The pigskin abolitionists may or may not understand football. They certainly don’t understand boys.
Football provides boys a structured outdoor environment to run, jump, tackle, and roughhouse — activities in which boys would partake in otherwise in an unstructured environment. Whereas classrooms often fail to keep a lid on the vigor of eleven-year-old boys, fields succeed in channeling that energy in a positive direction. As several of the boys explained to me, they love football because it serves as an outlet for their energy and aggression. In a nation where obesity, not head injuries, remains the primary children’s health concern, talk of banning youth football lacks perspective.
It’s a shame when coaches pile-on the score in a kids’ game. The worse bullying occurs when adults pile-on kids’ sports.
Football isn’t for everyone. That doesn’t mean it should be for no one.
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The War on Football: Saving America’s Game, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (27) | Leave a comment
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Gary B| 10.26.12 @ 6:27AM
Liberal code: "If I don't feel good about something, it should be universally banned, regardless of the facts."
JD| 10.26.12 @ 11:21AM
Well put.
Bob K| 10.26.12 @ 11:46PM
Absolutely!
There is lots of stuff going on in this country that I disapprove of and to make matters worse the people doing it are enjoying it!
The government should ban these activities!
Darin| 10.26.12 @ 6:55AM
It doesn't sound like Southbridge was piling on the score. They are supposed to try to score, and Southbridge deliberately limited it's options to make it easier for Tantasqua to stop them. It's not Southbridge's fault if Tantasqua can't stop their players.
I was on a basketball team in high school that lost 72-22. The other team ended up going to the state championship game. I don't fault the other team - it's our job to score and to prevent them from scoring.
Darin| 10.26.12 @ 6:57AM
I was also on a team that won 55-18. You do your best, period. If you get thumped on, you learn how to play better.
Sean| 10.26.12 @ 7:06AM
Even though you are losing badly it can still be fun to play. I remember games being stopped because of mercy rules and it isn't very fun for both sides. You practice long hours during the week and want to play a full game. Who cares if someone losses 100-0. Also at 12 the teams should be playing tackle without pads or helmets. As kids we played for years like that in full side pickup games and no injuries to anyone except one broken collar bone. When you have no pads your wrapping up your tackles and not leading with you head.
OP4| 10.26.12 @ 7:53AM
My son plays Pee Wee in New Jersey. I don't care about the score at all - but the weigh-in is very important. You just don't let kids too heavy play - that's how other kids get hurt.
I trust my kid's coach. He and the opposing coach might look the other way if a player is a half-pound over the limit. But he would never agree to let the other team put kids significantly too big on the field. We would simply pack up and leave if they insisted.
We did stop a preseason scrimmage with another team at one point that was getting out of hand.
OP4| 10.26.12 @ 7:55AM
Erik Iller should have had the backbone to not play the game when the Southbridge coaches didn't cooperate on the weigh-in.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 10.26.12 @ 8:57AM
My youngest son played Little League baseball. Like any endeavor in which human beings participate, it contained opportunity to see people at their best and worst. As a parent, it was critical to use the examples of good and bad behavior on and off the field by the officials, players and family spectators to teach the life lessons that one hopes a child draws from participating in organized sports.
Just as important, though, was the idea that the purpose of playing a sport (as opposed to working it) is supposed to be fun. I think everyone believes that winning is more fun than losing, but I appreciated those coaches who didn’t forget to emphasize that the kids were supposed to be enjoying themselves, while learning about the game and life.
Poorly managed application of the mercy rules has the potential to reveal to the kids that there are too many officials and rule makers who want to excessively control outcomes, rather than promote the development of sportsmanship, competition and a spirit of fun.
Moe Blotz| 10.26.12 @ 9:15AM
What, football should be only for the primary children whose health Mr. Flynn refers to as a primary concern?
Petronius| 10.26.12 @ 9:41AM
Libtards cannot stand the Fact that life is for the smart and the strong. They also refuse to understand that refusal to compete doesn't excuse them from anything. They have ruined this nation by handicapping the competent to make life palatable for every weenie who can barely walk a straight line without stopping to breathe every 10 feet.
Some idiot sports writer got into a discussion like this with the late Coach Lombardi about football being a contact sport, to which the response was, "football is Not a contact sport. It's a collision sport." There are millions who are smart enough to know better and will never be good enough to make it. So what is the political response of this gigantic mob of losers? Eliminate heads up competition and take all the prizes away from the winners. If all can't be successful, nobody should be; it's Only Fair.
Who Knows?| 10.26.12 @ 9:52AM
The unacknowledged essence of this story is the HEAVY bodies.
In my own seems-to-me short life, which has involved a love of playing football when a kid, and watching it ever since, there’s been an incredible surge in the weight of players. I can still see this photo of my high school team’s football line, in the Oregonian, lined up ready to fire out.
In 1959, a division 1 school, Portland’s Roosevelt, admittedly a weaker team, had a line that averaged 145 pounds. Oregon State was happy to recruit an all-state lineman from Medford, in the late 60’s, who couldn’t have weighed more than 180---I subbed for him, and he was a short stocky guy, who no one would have guessed was a lineman in games against a USC, say.
And, NOW?
Just look at high school players! Every team, it seems, has at least one player way over 200 pounds, maybe 300.
Better nutrition and weight training---thanks Nebraska---have resulted in bone crushing behemoths, the best of them even fast runners. Where will it all end?
Hello flag football?
JD| 10.26.12 @ 11:23AM
Seriously? You're expressing amazement that a high school team would have a player over 200?
Most only the very small schools have lines averaging under 200 pounds, and it doesn't take weight training to have kids that big. In a standard population sample, some will exist normally, and they don't have to be fat.
TW in SC| 10.26.12 @ 4:14PM
But wait!
Childhood obesity is the scourge of the nation. National security will suffer because of it! But how do we balance obese children's self-esteem with being able to participate in sports?
Nobody complained in the 80's when William "The Refrigerator" Perry was carrying the ball for Chicago, even though he was obese. But the times they do change, no?
Seems to me that Moochelle needs to spring into action like the nutrition feline predator that she is and get cracking on banning football for children! It's the only way I tell you!
/sarc
MikeBee| 10.26.12 @ 10:08AM
Mr. Flynn,
You're right about boys needing an outlet for roughhousing. My wife teaches in an urban school, with 100% poor children. The boys are constantly hitting, kicking, physically challenging each other, and she is constantly trying to get them to stop this behavior in the classroom. If they were allowed to roughhouse in an organized sport, like football, there would be less of this behavior in the classroom. In fact, if they were simply allowed to go outside during the day and have recess time, their classroom behavior would be much better. But, these children are rarely allowed to go outside and play; they spend their entire days sitting in a chair in a classroom.
Someone needs to stand up and say that boys are not being allowed to develop properly when they are not allowed to compete in sports, or have recess time, etc.
Cats1cowboy| 10.27.12 @ 9:11PM
Recess was banned by weenies.
cicero| 10.26.12 @ 10:54AM
If they would limit organized sports to junior high and above, it would help. Seeing 7 years olds in full gear is rediculous. Even in jr. high, weight must be taken into account. Given the weight training they indulge in today, you have high school boys weighing in 20 to 30 lbs above their normal size.
I played all of the blood sports as a boy, through junior college. Loved them all, and still talk about the games and plays with my brothers, who played, too. Got injuries in all of them, that still remind me of those "glory days" - especially when the weather turns. That does not mean that we should be intentionally sending kids out to be injured.
The main problem is with the adults. They all think they are in the "big time". How many times have you seen little league baseball caoches show up in full uniform, and spike shoes? I remember volunteering to be first base ump at a pee wee game one of my little ones was in (years ago). One of the coaches (wearing full uniform with spandex shorts, and spikes), got in the face of the teen age girl who was the home plate upm. He was yelling at her about a nothing call. I quietly approached him, and politely told him that if he did not go back to the dugout and shut up, that I would kick his sorry a$$ right there on the field for everyone to see. That ended that.
Occam's Tool| 10.26.12 @ 3:17PM
I am concerned about the weight limit not being followed and the concussions that resulted, as a Psychiatrist.
But banning the sport would be far worse. However, the weight rules are there as an appropriate safety precaution, and the Southbridge coach should be held responsible.
My son, age 8, was playing flag football this fall and loved it. One of the things I noticed is that the parents were nice, and the coaches were nice. Of course, Minnesota is famous for that. He also took swim lessons, actively takes riding lessons, and eventually we may get him involved in curling, since the best in the world in that game are from Minnesota.
Sports are useful, as is competition.
littleroundtop| 10.26.12 @ 2:16PM
When I played freshman football, we beat a team 55-0. At our next practice we had to run 10 100-yard wind sprints. One for each penalty we took in the game. That was one tough coach!
Alej| 10.26.12 @ 2:52PM
"England's battles were won on the playing fields of Eton."
- Arthur Wellesly, Lord Wellington.
dsayne| 10.27.12 @ 4:57PM
Last year my son played for a middle school soccer team in that school's first year. Being a new school, the facilities were not ready, the coach was a baseball coach who admitted he knew very little about soccer, and there were only 11 boys on the team. Most games they had no subs, and on two occasions could not field enough players to play an official game. They borrowed players from the girls team to be able to scrimmage. The team lost every game, mostly by wide margins of 7 to nothing, 1o to nothing, even once 16 to nothing! They only managed to score in one game the whole season, but they learned how to persevere. They discovered how tough they actually were by virtue of playing completely through every game without rest, while the other teams were constantly subbing with fresh players. They learned each other's strengths and weaknesses and became a very close team "family". This year was better, with two wins, two other very close games, and scoring at least once in all the games except two. This year they had subs, but the boys that played last year were the natural team leaders, even though there were some new players who were actually more skilled. It has been a good experience for my son, and I have watched him grow through the adversity. Competition is a vital part of education, whether it be athletic or academic.
Cats1cowboy| 10.27.12 @ 9:16PM
Another reason why libbies want to ban things. Thinking for ones self, perservering in the face of adversity and learning from experience undermine their contol over others.
JmsA| 10.27.12 @ 5:03PM
I like the picture of the gang-tackling Cowboys. As to lopsided scores, some of the kids on the losing side will be jolted by their hurt pride and incentivised to improve; while others will just not care, forget about it, and move on. As to the parents, some will just make trouble, not realizing that Pop Warner football is an exercise in team work/effort, and a game.
Cats1cowboy| 10.27.12 @ 9:07PM
I played in a baseball game where we lost 26-0 in a 7-inning game. Was I devestated and scarred for life? No. I got to play baseball. I had fun, too. Will you weenies please just S T F U!
PCPSmokerII| 10.27.12 @ 10:38PM
typical retards in Ma. When our little game baseball exceeds 10-0, we call the game. It makes no sense sitting there watching a blow out. Call the game at 28-0.
snipelee25| 10.28.12 @ 4:25PM
I actually played Pop Warner football at Tantasqua. Our "locker room" was an uninsulated semi-trailer. Some Saturdays, our equipment would be coated in frost or ice. My parents grew-up in Southbridge and I attended my first elementary-school classes there.
I've been on both sides of a whooping in sports and in life. It's - well - life...
NoGoBlue| 10.29.12 @ 12:34PM
My kids played both football and rugby. Liked football, loved rugby.