League rule changes , embrace of players and the future

Youth participating in football for those between the ages of 6 and 12 declined just over 30% from its peaks in 2008, according to a 2020 Forbes report. Additionally, high school football participation declined just over 5% from peak levels in 2009.

Concussions and other health-related risks have also been a cause of concern for parents over the last few years. Bloomberg reported in 2014 that half of Americans wouldn’t want their children playing football.

  • from Fox News

This is what nfl owners could be thinking about as the rules so many complain about are changed to make the game safer.
Given it’s a “way out” there’s probably always going to be talent willing to take the risks

Trying to keep game engaged and popular amongst the people has still got to be a concern for ownership needing the pipeline.

It would be interesting to see how much of the drop in participation is from meaningful participants. Meaning, are the real athletes still playing and just the dorks at the end of the bench deciding to not come out? I would also like to know how many youth football leagues are experiencing participation issues in part because of their size criteria. I know that in my little town you could see the difference in the players who played football when our youth leagues didn’t have a weight limit…to when they instituted a weight limit. Suddenly our entire high school team got smaller and some of the biggest kids in school never got started playing football and saw themselves as basketball players or nothing by that point.

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Put a governor on how much they can operate a gaming system. It’ll come back. So important for young men (most would call them kids) to test themselves physically, IMO.

One thing is nfl will find the athletes and the money is there. I can’t tell how long you actually have to play full time to get good in terms of how much college coaching us needed before nfl coaching.

I might pare out the people who wouldn’t really advance

Or if popularity wanes could lose top athletes to other options -

I think this is true

Weird there’s a viral video out as this comes up of two small kids in a drill.

I grew up in seventies so a lot was different but
I also think a premium of safety for our young

I envision a helmet that clicks into an “artificial neck” that pretty much makes neck injuries impossible. It could be breathable and highly flexible, and be worn under, or part of, the shoulder pads. Let them be violent…it’s healthy to be in touch with our primal side, when used in healthy ways.

Sounds like that might work !

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Neck injuries arent the real issue. Head injuries are.

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Interesting topic… I grew up watching/loving the NFL… the last 2 seasons we watched 1 Lions games and my boys are 4th and 5th grade. At that age I was very tuned in to the NFL, stats, highlights, collecting cards and wearing apparel etc… As i got older I had season tickets for 4 years and had sunday ticket on top of it and a bunch of misc gear and jerseys! Now, wont buy any more NFL gear, no TV at all(antenna that we dont use), and what the kids have now for apparel is gifts from the in-laws.

This upcoming youth football season both my boys will play 5th/6th grade football… My oldest played youth football last year and loves it. He did okay being a 5th grader. Shitty part was the prior year to him playing the 5th/6th team had 13 kids for 11man football(small school district), 10 were 5th graders and they had a total of only 3 first downs in 6 games and 0 points!!! Fast forward to last year when I became a board member for the local league(not affiliated with the schools). Those 5th graders became 6th graders and half didnt want to play again because of the ass beating they took from the bigger schools… After speaking with the kids and most of their parents we were able to get 11 6th graders and 9 5th graders. they ended up going 3-2! This year we had no issue getting these kids to sign up for 5/6th and 7/8th football!

One of the big concerns from parents, coaches and officials going into sign-ups was having to wear masks outside. Our league will not make any of them wear masks. Same with baseball this spring, even though the baseball league rule says they have to for baseball in the dugout, no one is doing it.

Last year we did do homemade shields over the bottom part of the facemask which is actually quite simple. Just cut up a couple dog cones and drilled holes in them and used old shoelaces to weave around the facemask. Cant beat free! lol

Because we’re too small to have tryouts for football we usually get 1-2 kids a year that like to whimper every time someone makes contact with them but they just play the minimum and if they ask to not play then they dont. by the time they’re on the 7/8 team they arent playing anymore.

Cant wait til we start doing baseball tryouts!!! lol This will be the last year for the current president of our local area baseball! Ive got reasonable plans how to run the youth baseball program…

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It’s not the presents , it’s your presence ! Go go dad !

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