Program Development Archives:

Often times I hear from youth football coaches that X or Y can be done with “all” youth football teams. When you do your due diligence, though often times you see those guys are playing with a stacked deck. In “select” youth football teams either selectively recruit players, have tryouts and demote the unworthy to other [...]

As many of you know the game of youth football is being assaulted from many sides. Many youth football programs numbers are suffering as the feeding frenzy instigated by a very small but very vocal group of detractors has gotten into the willful ear of their willing accomplices in media and even to a few [...]

It looks like there is a full scale assault on youth football  by the misinformed. The attacks on youth football continue from many sides and include well publisized assaults from the political ranks in Illinois and New York amongst others.  While youth football like any activity has risk, the risks seem to be misunderstood and [...]

In Defense of Youth Football Somebody Has To Many of you that are coaching youth football have been inundated by attacks on the game and you don’t know what to think or how to respond to it. The first part of this five part article will share some findings that many don’t know about, they [...]

Coaching Youth Football, the Team Audit   Many youth football coaches squander their off-season time in areas that in the end won’t do their teams a whole lot of good. Often times coaches will put their time into an area they personally like and not where the team needs the most help. If you really [...]

Youth football kids say the darndest things. But what they say may give you some insight on how effective your coaching has been. We played our last game of the 2012 season this Sunday. It is starting to get cold. We have no available home field dates for any additional games, our league season ended [...]

Many youth football coaches struggle with how much and how to teach football terminology to their kids. What often times happens is they teach too much and in a fashion that leads to fake knowing nods, glazed over eyes and players tugging at grass. Too many youth coaches use this time to show off their [...]

Pop Warner Takes First Step  Pop Warner, one of the nations largest and most influential youth football leagues mandated new practice rules this month. Pop Warner football has announced that coaches will be required to make at least two-thirds of their practice time non-contact, and during the one-third of the time with contact, there will [...]

Youth Football Helmet Dilemmas If a players helmet doesn’t fit well, you often times have an uncomfortable player who has little confidence in his gear. This can lead to problems like not blocking or tackling aggressively or even worse, injury. Most people don’t understand that not all youth football helmets are designed the same way. [...]

Defending Our Game If you haven’t been camping out under a rock for the last few months, you know our game is under attack. The game we love and devote so much time to in order that our sons and players can gain the life lessons most of us learned from the game, is being [...]