Posted on 07/29/2015 12:11:04 PM PDT by Kaslin
In the coming days, a million or more teenage boys will eagerly show up at their high school campuses weeks before regular classes start. They will plan to spend their whole day at school, pay close attention to their instructors, and work as hard as they can.
They will spend time in the classroom and time in the field, and they will all be focused on a single, venerable all-American goal: becoming part of a winning football team.
Football is America's greatest game for boys, not only because of the lessons it teaches but also because of the broad range of young men who can play the game and learn those lessons.
In track and field, one athlete faces off against another -- perhaps a teammate. Even the relay teams have only four runners.
In basketball, each team puts just five men on the court at a time.
In baseball, it is nine -- and perhaps a designated hitter.
But, in football, there are 11 players on the field for every play -- and many different types of plays needing different types of players. There is an offensive team, a defensive team, and multiple special teams to handle punts, kickoffs, field goals and extra points.
And there are variations on all these. A shrewd coach might put different men on the field when his team faces a desperation onside kick rather than an opening kickoff -- or when it is fourth and one, not third and 30.
In the 2013-2014 school year, according to the National Federation of High School Sports Associations, 1,093,234 boys played high school football in the United States.
No other sport came close.
Only 580,321 high school boys participated in track and field that year, and only 541,054 were on a high school basketball team. 482,629 played baseball and 417,419 played soccer.
When you add together all the boys and girls who played high school basketball (974,398) or all the boys and girls who played high school soccer (791,983), they do not equal the more-than-a-million high school boys who played good, old American tackle football.
The first great lesson boys learn playing football is that great things are only achieved after long hours of hard work. Great high school football teams do not just show up on game day and play. Nor do its players first show up in August when it is time for double sessions. Players on great teams work all year round to develop the strength, endurance and skills they need to win in the fall.
A second great lesson boys learn playing football is that they must play as a team to win. The greatest of quarterbacks cannot save his team if the line cannot block. A powerful offense cannot lead a team to victory if the defense cannot stop the opposition. When teammates work diligently together to prefect their skills in practice and then put them to test on the field, they learn to respect each other, trust each other and rely on each other.
More than any other team sport American boys play, football requires and develops physical courage at the same time it encourages fair play. Opposing football players are supposed to hit each other -- airly, safely and according to the rules -- but, nonetheless, with ferocity. Yet they cannot fail to appreciate the difference between a fair hit and a dirty one, nor fail to respect the former and revile the latter.
A fourth great lesson football players learn is that wit matters. You can study another team's offense and defense and sometimes discover a way to outsmart them.
But the greatest lesson football teaches is really a combination of all its other lessons. It is that football -- like a free society -- functions as a true meritocracy.
The team with the greatest natural athletes does not always triumph. Sometimes the team given less at the start wins more in the end.
If they put in the long hours of work, if they trust their teammates and merit their teammates' trust in return, if they are tough and fair, and if they play smart, they just might beat a team that is bigger and faster and stronger than them, but never mastered the underlying virtues of the game.
That is why football is not just a uniquely American game, but also one that reflects the American Dream.
Yup.
The cheapest game in the world to play is soccer, all you need is a ball.
Homeless kids in Brazil play it and become world-class players. But in this country to develop a decent soccer player costs an arm and leg.
I weighed 105 lbs as a freshman. Everybody who went out made the freshman team...because they needed bodies. The head coach decided at 105 lbs I was a lineman. I was the second string right guard. The backs outweighed me by twenty pounds.
One scrimmage I tried to block one of defensive players during an end sweep. I took a running start at the guys chest and hit him full force....and bounced back ten feet landing on my back. As I was lying on the ground I noticed the def. player (a kid from my grade school) was laughing at me. That's when I knew for sure I had no future as a football player.
I loved playing football, even though I wasn’t that good at it...as a young teenage boy, there isn’t much more fun than running down a field at full speed and trying to lay a hit on someone. Sigh, yeah, I hurt myself playing football too, but...heck, I have hurt myself doing a bunch of other things too.
When I was playing high school football, I was new to the area, and tried out for varsity. I wanted to impress the coach (never played formal football) so I tried to make up with aggressiveness what I lacked in knowledge or skill.
The coach knew I had never played, so he was trying to figure out where I might work out (I was 5’9” and weighted about 155)
He tried me at running back, so on one play I was lead blocker around the end, and as I came running full speed at a guy who weighed a good 40 lbs more than me running at me full speed, I figured if I used leverage and technique, I could stop the guy.
He obviously had the same idea, but also had a lot more experience. When two immovable objects meet, the one with less mass loses. That would be me. My spine probably shrunk an inch, and I have paid for that lack of knowledge ever since. After practice, we had to run laps, and I couldn’t run or even walk, but I was gritting my teeth and trying to finish even though everyone else was gone, and the coach had to come out and tell me to call it a day...
A lot of liberals hate football. It is masculine, and females cannot share the field with men...the field cannot be “leveled”.
Not to say many liberals don’t enjoy football, because they do, but the committed, ideological ones cannot abide it. It is why they love soccer, if any sport.
The war on boys and men demands the abolition of football.
That picture of your son says all about football that I love, and liberals hate.
Sounds pretty much like my experience.
At that age, I figured I was indestructible.
I was wrong.
I had plenty of enthusiasm, but I got bounced here and crushed there. I learned a lot about the laws of physics.
Next year, I went out for soccer.
I learned so much more than just how to play football...
I learned how to reach deep within myself to push my physical abilities past what I thought I could do...
As an example: our freshman high school coach had us run either 40 - 100 yard sprints or 100 - 40 yard sprints everyday at the end of practice...
If the opposing teams scored any points during the game we had to run a mile for every point they scored after the game !!!
I'm sure in today's environment he would be arrested for child abuse...
He did turn us into a bunch of tough SOB's
One time I went and watched the football team play the best team in the area. The other team drew from a twenty mile radius and had the biggest and best athletes in the region. These were eight graders, and some of those kids from the other team were pretty big. The size/weight advantage between our team and theirs was patently noticeable in favor of the other team.
They beat our team easily, but what was disconcerting to me was three of our players had to leave the game after sustaining concussions or other injuries.
That's the problem with football. Small(er) players can really get hurt bad. Enthusiasm only goes so far.
Nothing, it distracts us from real issues!
So true! In NYS, we even had a Assemblyman who proposed a bill to ban youth football. Fortunately, it died in the "very conservative" State Senate.
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