Rules of Youth Football

Some of the rules of our youth football leagues - and maybe most youth football leagues, I dunno - make sense.

Like the rule that every player gets to play in at least 10 plays each game. That makes sense to me because there are a lot of players that are new to the entire game and/or new to playing football. It allows them to get valuable experience and discover talents they didn't know they had. Or for those players that aren't new, they get practice. The best way to learn is by pratice - to get out there and do.

And it allows them to have fun. It isn't fun if you just stand on the sidelines letting everyone else play. If you are excited about how your team is doing, you want to get on that field and play too. Right? Right.

We've seen some improvements in Adam's additude from football, he seems happier and healthier than he ever has. He seems more outgoing - which is surprising there is more outgoing for him. His teacher has noticed a difference too.

I would love it if we won every game, but thats not how things work. I still have fun watching and chearing and taking pictures. I still have fun swearing at the couches for wasting the clock when they shouldn't or repeating a play 10 times that didn't work the first. And bitching that the refs don't always make a good call. And the administrations of the organization - well some of them just suck ass and need to quit, they aren't doing anything but giving all the parents someone to bitch about; BTW I'm talking about one particular administrator who decided to post on Facebook that the parents are stupid. Also note: I only swear/bitch/complain to friends and family, I'm not bugging the admin with complaints.

But there are some rules that just do not make sense.

We have won one game. One game of the six we've played. The boys have had fun at every game. I have had fun at every game, so I'm not complaining about the 5-1 ranking. But we've won one game and it was a great game. We were kicking butt! Everyone was extremely pumped up, especially the boys. To see their excitement over their success was a better thing than watching them win. If they were that excited about losing I would rather watch them lose.

During halftime of that game the couch informed the boys that if they scored one more touchdown and put them 35 points (5 touchdowns) AHEAD of the opposing team, they would automatically forfeit the game. Its like saying, "Okay, you're doing great, but you gotta suck now."

WTF!?!?!??!? In my opinion, that is some MAJOR BULLSHIT!

I have always tried to teach my kids that while it is natural to want to win, to be the best, that having fun and doing your best is the goal. Why are they teaching our kids that they can't just be a better team sometimes? That they are just better players that day? All just because we don't want to really hurt their feelings? I think they should give our 9, 10, 11, and 12-year-old boys more credit than that.

That winning game was 10/10/2009, game before last. This last game, 10/17/2009, we were losing. They had 4 touchdowns and we had 0 - and then we scored. While it was a great play, the boys played very well, and it felt good to score, I didn't appreciate it as much as I had in previous weeks. It was tainted. It felt like they let our team score so they wouldn't have to forfeit. I wonder if it felt like that to the boys?

I hope not.

Now Robert and I, after finding this out, are torn between hoping Adam wants to play again next year to hoping he doesn't.