Football has become America’s pastime. Oh baseball fans will make an argument, but in terms of popularity, football is the sport that has captivated America. The fall is full of football from Thursday night through Monday.
But while the popularity of the sport is huge, participation, especially at the youth levels, has taken a hit. Registration for the Pleasanton Junior Football League (PJFL) has been down the last few years.
Initially you may be thinking just contact (tackle) football is suffering, with the fear of concussions topping the reasons why, but the flag football enrollment has been down as well.
Why would flag football — a seemingly much-safer alternative to contact — be suffering as well? There’s a couple of reasons. One, regardless of the physical nature of the game, to many, football is football and they don’t want their kids playing the sport.
The second reason is what PJFL is calling “football fatigue.” There is football available year-round to kids now, with a program called “Next Level” taking place at the local high schools just after the first of the year. If a kid plays from January to March, they may be less likely to play in the fall.
It’s been a source of frustration for the PJFL, a group that really does put player safety front and center in both flag and contact. But the league is working hard to try and bring players back to the league.
On the flag side, they have partnered with NFL Flag, helping the league get better equipment, logo jerseys and additional insurance at no additional cost to the players.
There is also a new “Varsity” league for players in eighth and ninth grade. In the past, there were times where you would have sixth-graders facing eighth-graders, an unattractive match-up for most families.
The new “Varsity” league is appealing. Every year I see kids playing freshman football that are nowhere close to being ready to strap it up with cleats and a helmet.
Now they have an option to play football — and actually play — while learning technique and physically maturing another year. I get that there are many who play freshman ball to ease the transition into high school, but there are times I cringe watching some of these kids try to make plays.
This brings me to the contact side of PJFL, a league I spent three years coaching. In those years my teams suffered one broken arm, that’s it. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t lose sleep each night of those seasons worried about one of the players suffering a serious injury.
It’s certainly nothing on the league, which goes above and beyond to make sure every coach is qualified to be coaching. My co-head coach and I spent countless hours at practice working on technique, making sure the players were in the right spot and stance to make a tackle.
The problem? Not all kids are meant to play the sport. Each year, we had at least one player whose parents wanted to “make a man” out of him. I will guarantee you we were not the only team that faced this issue.
That responsibility needs to fall on the parents, not youth sports coaches. We went out of the way to coach-up these kids, but at times it came at the expense of other kids on the team.
Parents, if you think your kid needs to “become more of a man” then try to make something work at home, but don’t throw him into something he’s not ready for at his age. If you think he can handle contact, then put him in the program. It does teach discipline and hard work, there’s no denying.
If they are not ready but you are intent on them playing football, put them in flag football. They will have a better experience in a structure geared towards their ability.
For more information on the programs or for registration go to www.pjfl.com.
* Dennis Miller is a contributing sports writer for the Pleasanton Weekly. To contact Miller or submit local high school sports scores, game highlights and photographs for his weekly Pleasanton Preps column, email him at acesmag@aol.com.
