Winning Youth Football

Select and Non-Select Youth Football is Two Different Games

davecisar — Wed, 15 May 2013 22:26:43 +0000

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 teams, or do both. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with select football, what I am saying is it is a different equation than the guy who takes every player who signs up, doesn’t selectively recruit, doesn’t cut or run kids off and tries his best to retain everyone .

I’ve coached select and non-select youth football and I can tell you beyond any doubt they are different games. My Omaha teams played in a league where there was a select level and a non-select level. I had 120-150 age 8-10 kids every year to choose from. The best 25 went on the select team, the remainder were divvied out based on the players address.

When you get the best 25 out of 150 you have lots more options. Your teams are older, more athletic, bigger and more experienced. If you divided up the 150 into even teams of 25 kids each and then took the 4 very best players from each team- that would be your select team of 25. Imagine taking the very best 4 players from all the teams you play and making that into a team. That is what select football is. Can your top 4 players do more than your remaining 21? So imagine you have 25 clones of your best 4 kids? Now ALL of our 25 were like those top 4. Our worst player would be the super star of the “B” teams. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that you could do more and be better at what you do do if all your kids were the best?

Say you can’t run a certain offensive or defensive scheme because they require that you have legitimate athletes at every position in order to succeed; well now you can run those schemes. You don’t have to run schemes that minimize the impact of an ultra weak player. Every non select team will have some ultra weak players with poor athleticism, poor size, poor body control and poor strength. In many youth football leagues, those kids are required to play a certain number of plays. I’ve seen many youth football games lost by teams that didn’t manage this play requirement well and didn’t develop these minimum play requirement players well.

Most of the kids that play select football are committed, they play other sports, they have lots of “game” experience. If during evals they rose to the top 15% etc, they have something to offer that your other kids didn’t, that’s why you chose them. When I coached select teams we always had kids with a lot of natural ability. We didn’t have very far to go to develop many of them. We always had kids who could throw the ball, always had 3-4 who could catch it and plenty of just good “football players” inbetween. We threw more, we could play with wider splits and we could play our 4-4 defense and we could gamble more. Our special teams were off the charts because we had athletes at every position. Even the BEST youth, High School and College coaches vary what they do every year based on talent. If we are honest with ourselves and others, when we have more talent, we can do more on all 3 sides of the ball.

I’m not saying that one style of play is better than the other, there is value in both, I enjoy coaching them both. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying coaching select football is a cakewalk, it isn’t. It comes with its own problems and challenges. But you won’t be dealing with any unathletic, young, small and non physical players.

The Importance of the Passing Game in Youth Football

davecisar — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:24:59 +0000

The Importance of the Passing Game When Coaching Youth Football

Many youth football coaches look at their kids and look at their league and they see lots of teams futility in throwing the football. They see poorly trained Quarterbacks and Receivers in systems that make little sense for the age group. These coaches see lots of interceptions, sacks and losses with many of these poorly conceived throw first offenses. They then look at some of the better programs who consistently win and dominate with a consistent running game. Their conclusion is: passing=bad, running=good.

While this approach may yield you a good number of wins against poorly coached or inferior teams, when you play a team that is well coached and or better talented than your youth football team, you need to have the legitimate THREAT of a passing game. If you don’t you are going to see fully loaded boxes. Your offensive play will need to be nearly flawless and you better have a great defense and never need to get a couple of scores in a hurry.

I’m NOT saying you need to throw 40 times a game, complete 75% of your throws and have a Tom Brady Quarterback, what I’m saying is you need a LEGITIMATE passing threat. You have to pose a reasonable enough passing threat that teams will feel it is too much of a risk to load the box against your offense. That COULD mean your Quarterback has been able to hit 35-40% of his throws and your team only throws 5-6 times a game. But if you never throw and when you do, your passing game is totally inept, you pose no threat.

Even run heavy teams who use offenses like the Single Wing, Double Wing, Wing T, Slot T or Dead T teams need to develop a legitimate threat with the passing game in youth football. Sure these are all great systems that put the defense in conflict and are able to generate incredible scoring numbers. But against great teams with good coaching, if you can’t threaten with the pass, you are severely limiting your teams ability to win these types of games.

We have committed to getting better at throwing the ball since about 2006. In 2009 we started implementing many of the techniques and methods espoused by Darin Slack. Darin is considered by many to be the nations foremost “Quarterback Guru.” Not only do we use his approach to training Quarterbacks, our kids have gone to his camps as well.

Just to give you a feel for where our numbers are at: in 2012 my age 7-9 team threw for 14 touchdowns, we had 1 interception and averaged 41 points a game in a 10-1 season. In the last 3 years my own teams have scored 39 touchdowns via the air and had a total of 8 interceptions. Now 39 isn’t a huge number, but consider that in our league, when you are up by 21 points you aren’t allowed to throw the ball anymore. In our 28 wins in those 3 seasons, we won 25 by mercy rule and 19 of those wins were mercy rule wins in the first quarter. So had we not been under mercy rule, we could have easily thrown for double that number, or 78 touchdowns.

That is one of the reasons why we are teaming with Darin to offer Quarterback and Receiving training to you and your Quarterbacks and Receivers at our upcoming coaches clinic and youth camp in Baltimore

http://winningyouthfootball.com/winning-youth-football-camp.php

When you commit to improving your passing game, expect to see your running game improve as well. Since 2010 we have been fortunate to have scored 8 times in the last 30 seconds of a game or half, primarily due to our improved passing game. Several of these scores won games for us, including a tournament game at Bill Snyder Stadium in Kansas where we won the game in dramatic fashion on a 9 play 80 yard drive in about 1:30 in the 4th quarter.

Investing reasonable amounts of time doing the right things, the right way and with our rapid pace Oregon pace practice methodology, you can improve your passing game. But if you don’t know how, you will have poor or mediocre results. That’s why we are offering the Slack Camp designed specifically for youth to you.

The Youth Football Coaching “Dream Team”

davecisar — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:08:36 +0000

Last week in Ft Meyers Florida, I helped a youth football team along with a couple of long time friends, Dan Schalger and Jeff Miret. The coaches we helped kept referring to us as the youth football coaching equivalent to the “Dream Team.” No matter how much we laughed at and tried to move past the term, they wouldn’t stop using it.

Dan is someone I’ve known for about 7 years thanks to working with his program and meeting Kevin Justice at an Orlando Nike clinic. Dan is a very accomplished coach who won a Pop Warner National Championship in 2011. I met Jeff at the Pop Warner National Championships, he uses some of our materials and his teams have played in 4 Pop Warner National Championships, winning 3 of them. Jeff has helped me on a couple of coaching clinics, including both the Panama and Germany clinics. Dan is working with me on several projects and I hope to have him with me next month to help a team in Denver.

While I’ve helped out many youth football programs over the phone, via coaching clinics, film study and even team camps, this was the first time I’ve brought others along. The task was a bit bigger than I could handle alone as this team was struggling with some motivation and team chemistry issues along with significant issues on both offense and defense. Dan was the man for our motivation and team chemistry problems and Jeff and I took the offense and defense.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but after the team got over the level of pace and precision that they would be held accountable to, it went great. The kids were attentive and cooperative. I would have loved to have a couple of those kids play for me, but it was very evident these kids loved their coach. It was obvious he really cares about these boys and most of the players know and appreciate it.

After the kids adapted to the pace and precision intensity, we made good progress. We saw a marked improvement in precision, technique and pace. The results were very noticeable on the offensive line, quickness off the ball with all players, base technique, improvement in defensive recognition and run fits, significant improvement in Defensive End play and much better acceleration into the point of attack by the backs.

While 5 hours of on field practice isn’t enough to make champions out of an average team, the team was well on its way. We started the process with film analysis using Hudl of the teams previous games. Then I had them fill out a detailed questionnaire that helped isolate the strengths and weaknesses. They also provided a detailed description of each player, his skill sets and how he measured against those in their league.

We started each day with a coaches meeting at the coaches house. These were roundtable type meetings that often times evolved into interactive sessions in the living room, working off of a big white board. A few times the conversation evolved into a demo on the back patio. We were very blessed to be the guests of a very good, open minded and accommodating host.

Each practice day started with a small select position group working 1on 1 with Dan, Jeff or myself. The rest of the 2 hours was broken up by position groups. We adhered to a detailed practice plan that I worked out with the existing coaching staff along with Dan and Jeff. The next day we reviewed the previous day and put together another detailed plan of attack.

When we got home, I prepared a detailed report of our findings and an action plan on how to move forward. The teams goal? Pop Warner Disney. While I’ve attended 6 Pop Warner and AYF National Championships, if they make it, I will be there. I kind of reminds me when I made that same promise to a hapless Spirit of Faith Warriors program from Temple Hills, Maryland. That year 3 of their teams made it to Florida. Hopefully Ft Meyers will fall in those same footsteps.

Thanks again to our hosts and as always I got to learn something. It always happens when you work with great coaches like Dan and Jeff. Hopefully we can do a few more of these this year.

At What Cost- Playing FAST in Youth Football

davecisar — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:52:11 +0000

I see a lot of youth coaches asking their players to use techniques that often times make a youth player play slow.

Speed and quickness are the keys in youth football at every position on the field. Sure you can out muscle weaker teams and overcome marginal teams with pure athleticism, but what happens when you play a team that matches up well with you or even is much more talented? When you are faced with teams like that, every inch and split second counts, it will be the difference in the game. Put your players in a position where they get that second foot down later than their opponents second step and your players are getting pushed all over the field. Put your players in a position where they have to think too much or where their bodies are aligned in uncomfortable positions and you have a team who will play slow and lose those games against those better teams.

There are many examples of coaches doing this, trying to overthink or outcoach themselves. Now I’m not saying that there isn’t any merit to some of these techniques or that these coaches aren’t nice people or don’t know what they are doing. What I am saying is many times, some of these techniques and schemes slow a player down to a point where the slight technical advantage of that technique or scheme is negated by that player playing slower. One example I can think of off the top of my head is inside hand down for offensive linemen. A number of systems coaches suggest players do this for a variety of reasons that make reasonable sense. However, what happens if you have a right guard who is right handed? When a right handed player puts his left hand on the ground, even if he is not putting a lot of weight on it, it is uncomfortable.

Try it right now in your office or living room. Put your non dominant hand down and try to come out fast, try to move laterally. How does it feel? Now put your dominant hand down and do the same thing. Amazing how that works, how much faster you can play when your dominant hand is down isn’t it? Sometimes the perfect technical technique just isn’t the best when it comes to certain players or when a game moves from the chalkboard onto grass.

The same goes for scheme. Ever see a real good looking athletic youth football team who looks slow on defense? Well some defensive schemes ask players to do a LOT ot things to make the scheme perfect on paper. I’ve actually seen a defensive scheme used at the youth level that had Linebackers read through the guard to near back and depending on the backfield flow, they had to read through that to the backside back. The same scheme had the Defensive End make a verbal call, while the play was being run as a call to the Mike Linebacker. Now this scheme may help a coach win a chalkboard battle in theory with another coach, but when it comes to a real youth football game in real life on real grass, his team wouldn’t stand a prayer.

The same goes for blocking schemes. When youth offensive linemen have to do all types of counts and make lots of calls (don’t even get me started about how simple it is to stunt and stem pre-snap to mess these guys up) in order to determine who they are supposed to block, many of them are going to either make the wrong call or play hesitantly. I would MUCH rather have a scheme that is great, but not perfect. What I mean by that is a scheme that puts my kids in a position to have success on nearly every play, but that MAY not be the perfect on paper scheme, which optimizes every situation to the nth degree ON PAPER. A scheme that is great but gives up being perfect on paper for the ability of the players to play fast and aggressive is what I’m talkiing about. In my mind THAT scenario is a very reasonable and in fact a preferable trade off to the perfect on paper scheme.

Everything in youth football is a trade off. Think about what you want to do technique and scheme wise and then study how that impacts the speed in which your players play in real ife on grass (not the chalkboard) BEFORE you decide to implement it. This goes double for teams that lack athleticism and speed.

Youth Coaching Clinic Atlanta

davecisar — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:14:56 +0000

Thanks again to all the fellas in SEC Country, we had a near sellout at our youth coaching clinic in Atlanta. Thanks to a very active and engaged crowd we were able to do a lot of demos and dig deep into the bits and bytes of what we do to make teams successful.

I saw a bunch of familiar faces who have been to clinics past as we had coaches from Alabama, Georgia, Tennesse. South Carolina, North Carolina and Colorado in attendance. We still have a number of public clinics on the schedule and maybe 2-3 open dates for private clinics.

Youth Football Coaches Clinic- Panama

davecisar — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:14:28 +0000

I’ve had a lot of people ask me about football outside the US. I’ve done over 150 clinics, done several for Canadians, Germany and now Panama. I’m going to write up an entire article on the history of Panamanian football in the next few weeks. What I can say now is that the Panamanians love their football and they took great care of me.

Panama City, Panama is a metropolis of over 1,000,000 people. It has a small but growing group of American Football devotees, that don’t look much different than those that have attended the over 150 clinics I’ve spoken at here in the states. Like any clinic, the consistently successful coaches were easy to pick out after the first hour or so. They sat in the front, asked a lot of questions and were open to new ways of looking at the game. More on that in the coming weeks, including some great pictures.

Many thanks to my kind hosts, John Christopher Carbon, Raul, Tito and the Kiwanis.

On the Youth Football Coaching Clinic Circuit- Dallas

davecisar — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:06:08 +0000

On the Youth Football Coaching Clinic Circuit- Dallas

Thanks to the nice folks at Glazier Clinics we had a nice crowd in Dallas. Pictured here is Rob Adams our Winning Youth Football Coach of the Year Western Region Award Winner. He was presented his award in Dallas and shared with the audience some of his expertise and experiences of his 2012 season, which included beating a team coached by Sean Payton from the Saints.

If you don’t attend football clinics you are really missing out on developing your coaching skills. The interesting thing about clinics are the best coaches are always the first in and last one out. They are listening and taking notes and they are developing relationships in the crowd.

It didn’t surprise me a bit that Rob was attending our Friday night session that ended about 10:00, yet was one of the first in the room for the morning session the next day.

Sean Payton Coaching Youth Football

davecisar — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 19:07:37 +0000

Sean Payton Coaching Youth Football, Up Close and Personal

Many of you know that Sean Payton, was the head coach of the New Orleans Saints. But what many of you don’t know is Sean Payton coached youth football in 2012 after having to sit out the 2012 NFL season due to the bounty scandal. Payton has had an amazing coaching career that included taking over a 3-13 Saint team in 2005, taking them to the playoffs in 2006 and winning the Super Bowl in 2010. Payton was named the AP NFL Coach of the Year.

In 2012 during his one year coaching hiatus, he coached his son’s 6^th grade team in Arglye, Texas, the Liberty Christian Warriors. Arglye is in the Fort Worth area, an area that is crazy about football from the youth level all the way to their beloved Cowboys. Liberty Christian plays in the very competitive North Central Texas Pee Wee Football League. Interestingly enough, his team lost their championship game to a Single Wing team coached by Rob Adams, Rob was named the Winning Youth Football Western Region, “Coach of the Year” in 2012. Rob coached the Springtown Orange 6^th grade team. http://winningyouthfootball.com/youthfootballcoachingtips.php

This week Rob was gracious enough to share some of his interactions with Sean Payton and his team. Rob is an excellent and very committed coach who played for TCU in college. Like many of us former players, Rob struggled some early on before he figured the “youth equation” out. He is an avid user of the Winning Youth Football system and has attended a number of our clinics. Like most youth coaches Rob got into coaching to coach his own boys, now he coaches what he calls his extended family “all his boys.”

Rob’s team played Sean Payton’s team just after the midpoint of the season and Rob’s team won 38-6. After that game Rob noticed Coach Payton was at 2 of his games scouting his team. Coach Payton also got film from another game Rob’s team had played earlier in the season. So when the week leading up to the League Championship game was approaching, Rob knew he would have his hands full as coach Payton had 2 game films and had watched his team play additional times. In Rob’s mind Coach Payton might have overlooked his team a bit the first time and may not have been prepared. Coach Payton’s team had won most of their games in blowout fashion and entered the Super Bowl with an 8-1 recored. Rob was to say the least a bit intimidated going up against an NFL, coach who has well prepared and motivated.

While Rob had a few tricks up his sleeve and had his adjustments well practiced, he just kept pressing what had gotten his team their 9-0 record. He repped his base Single Wing Offense, Wide Tackle Six Defense and made sure the kids were staying fundamentally sound. The end result of Rob’s hard work and sleepless nights, a 58-18 win for his boys in the League Championship game. Rob said that the Liberty Christian team played hard to the end and were great sports as were the Liberty coaching staff.

What was really impressive was how open and gracious Coach Payton was after the game. He came over to the Springtown Orange’s team and coaching staff with big smiles and let them know what a great job they had done. Then he addressed the entire group to tell them as you can see in this clip that: “This week I talked to Jon Gruden and Bill Parcels to figure out how to stop your Single Wing offense, and you guys still put 58 points on us.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhuacUk_16g

Coach Payton then made himself available to visit with the parents, players and coaches and a good number of the boys got pictures taken with him as well as autographs.

In this day and age, it is heartwarming to see such a humble man. Here an NFL Super Bowl champion coach, loses to a team coached by someone that had never coached beyond youth football. He didn’t storm off or slide out the back exit, he humbly put himself out there as his son’s coach and ambassador for the game. I for one have become a Sean Payton fan after hearing how he handled this situation, and wish there were more like him. And for Coach Payton, no shame in losing a game to a team coached by Rob Adams. He is an outstanding coach who recognized long ago, that youth football was a bit of a different animal than what he played in High School and College. He obviously has adapted and overcome. Hats off to both guys for coaching, playing and promoting the game the way it should be. This was just one of those times where both guys coaching youth football just did it right.

The Value of a Good Kicking Game in Youth Football

davecisar — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 19:53:20 +0000

The kicking game seems to be an afterthought for most youth football coaches. You have such limited amounts of practice time and so much to get done, that kicking gets ignored. Hey, I understand that completely. Most of us have 25 kids on our teams, about half of them have never played before, heck some of them don’t even know how to put their pants on properly. Adding to this practice scarcity equation is the fact that all your players are playing both ways and special teams AND they need to get up to speed with simple, basic, necessary but time consuming fundamentals. We just don’t have time, we don’t have kicking specialists at the youth level, those kids are our Quarterbacks or starting Linemen.

For many youth teams that means the kicker gets chosen by lottery or by a 10 minute tryout. Then he might be given a few minutes of practice in one or two practices prior to the first game. In actuality less than 10% of youth kickers are taught how to kick, most coaches just choose the best “natural” kicker they see during the tryout and then let him do his thing. Sure you will let him rep his kicks, but how often are they truly coached on HOW to kick properly? How many of us know how to break down kicking to the atomic level like we do our blocking/tackling/throwing/catching and then teach it and quality control it at the youth level? The net is very few youth football coaches know how to properly kick the ball and then more importantly how to transfer that knowledge into your kickers head.

That’s why you usually see a bunch of bigger “toe punchers” kicking at the youth level, who get beat out by real kickers their first year in High School. Not knowing how to teach kickers will also lose you competitive games. In many youth football leagues including Pop Warner and AYF, the PAT is worth 2 points if it is kicked and only 1 of it is a run or pass. I’ve gone to many big tournaments including 6 Pop Warner and AYF National Championships where many of the games were decided by the kicking games. Sure the dominant teams were winning big in their hometown leagues or even sometimes in regionals, but when it came down to the National Tournaments in Florida, there are lots of very close games decided by the kicking game. A 2 point is HUGE at this level. If a team can consistently kick their PATs and their opponent can’t, that first touchdown and 8-0 score is a 2 touchdown lead.

Same goes for the punting game. So many of these great teams dominate and rarely or never punt in league play. But when they play teams of equal ability, they WILL have to punt. Back in 2010 I saw an undefeated and unscored upon team from North Carolina lose in the Pop Warner National Tournament in Disney because of their punting game. They had their first punt blocked, the second one went for about 6 yards and on 4^th and 8 from their own 10 yard line they had to go for it and didn’t get it. The opposing team took over on the 10, scored and went on to win the game. The opposing team had flipped the field no less than 4 times with punts of 30-50 yards.

If your goal is to be an elite team OR you have a heart for preparing your players for the next level, you need to consider getting better at coaching your kickers. The best resource I’ve seen is Kohls Kicking Camps. John and Jamie Kohl were speaking at a Glazier Coaches Clinic in Chicago. I sat in on 3 sessions and was hooked. We bought their Instructional Kicking DVDs and we’ve used their approach ever since. Last year one of our kickers went to one of their 90 camps and we have another heading to Omaha this June. With a ratio of 1 coach to every 8 players, the kids get great instruction. You can’t learn how to kick well by just buying a book of drills, you have to understand the mechanics of kicking and the Kohl guys do a great job with it. The great thing about these camps are you can get down close and learn how to coach it yourself.

What better way to improve your team in the off-season? Do what no one else is doing, learn how to coach kickers so you dominate the third rail of football, the kicking game.

Defending Youth Football- What You Can Do

davecisar — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:51:04 +0000

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 politicians. Many are asking, what can I do? What can I do to help support the game that does so much in the development of millions of young Americans?

There is a lot you can do as a coach and member of the youth football family. While many of us have our differences, we can all unite together under a common cause to fend off this threat which is very real. It’s going to take a multi-pronged approach to be successful.

Start off by getting educated as to what the true dangers are in youth football. While there are legitimate dangers in playing the game, the statistics are on your side when comparing the dangers to what moms think. See the facts and statistics in my previous articles. Know what the Mayo Clinic and CDC says about youth football injuries and how they compare to other activities. Be ready to defend the game, citing some of these statistics and maybe just share with others what the game has done for the kids you coach. Practice your 30 second “elevator speech” as to why kids should get involved in playing the game.

To successfully get youth football a fair shake, people have to hear from the grass roots at the water cooler, in the baseball stands, at the backyard BBQ pit or at the local lacrosse fields. Make sure you communicate this message to your parents, you first want to make sure they are retained. In the end, it is often times the parents who communicate the message to other parents at school events, athletic events or the backyard barbeque. You have to make sure you educate them, I can’t emphasize this enough.

Work with your team, organization or league to get training for all your coaches on how to practice, tackle and block more effectively, safely and efficiently. Many dads and coaches do a great job of coaching youth football. However there are a minority of guys who can give us all a bad name. While these guys may have played the game, they don’t know how to coach it well. It’s up to us to either educate these guys or get rid of them. Many programs do a great job of policing ourselves, we all need to. All of us, including the lifer veterans benefit from coaching clinics, we all need to attend.

Leveraging the expertise of your best youth football coaches into all of your coaches makes for a stronger organization, stronger league and most importantly a better experience for the players. Many programs and leagues have gone to a “certification process” that insures that the coaches have met a certain minimum level of competency. That is a huge selling point to worried moms. Remember perception is reality for many and Coaching Certifications are a great place to start. Send your coaches to clinics or web sites or even to blogs like winningyouthfootball.com where they can learn how to develop competent, safe and aggressive players without having the kids in full pads or hitting for the majority of practice.

Make sure you know how to fit helmets and shoulder pads correctly from your equipment supplier. Ours was willing to give us a short class on how to do it properly and some even will come down and help you do it on site. Require good mouthpieces and inspect them every couple of weeks. There is research that show a good mouthpiece and strengthening neck muscles may have a significant effect on lessening the concussion rates in football players.

The internet is an amazing and at the same time dangerous and damaging tool. Those that would like to get rid of the game have used it to their supreme advantage. While the majority of Americans support the game and more importantly what it teaches, the majority is pretty silent. When there is something in the media that is negative towards youth football, supporters need to respond. Why do major newspapers and media companies now allow readers to comment on their articles? Because people read those comments. It’s often times like rubbernecking at an accident scene, you don’t want to look but somehow you feel compelled to. The comment section on articles are often times filled with hundreds of comments and they are often times dominated by those in the minority with an agenda.

When a casual passerby, aka interested mom reads an article critical of youth football, often times the only comments are going to be some negative comments from a guy who never played, never had kids who played and was picked on by some high school football players when he was 16. Or from some woman in Timbuktu who had a sisters friend whose next door neighbors uncles, workplace bosses in-law’s godson heard or read about someone that may have had a bad injury playing youth football. If you want to be part of the ready defense, go to google.com/alerts and set up an alert for youth football ban or youth football concussions. Then every day an e-mail will come to you with links to all the stories on youth football bans or concussion stories. There will be a short excerpt and a link you can click on to go to that article.

To comment on those articles most of them allow you to do so from your facebook account, without posting on your own facebook. You just click on the facebook or twitter icons to sign in or you just insert your e-mail address and put in a screen name. Simple stuff that doesn’t take you long but will have an amazing cumulative effect. There are over 60,000,000 living Americans who have either played football or had sons playing and most had a positive and reasonably safe experience, we are the majority. But if the elephant won’t speak, the little mouse wins. Use your social media accounts to let others know why youth football is good for kids and share the information you gather from other sources.

Right now there are bills in the New York and Illinois legislatures that would either ban or significantly restrict the playing of youth football in those states. Like anything that is restricted and banned, it starts in one place, gains a foothold and then spreads. Let your lawmakers know via e-mail, text, phone, letter and social media that banning or significantly restricting youth football is bad for kids, bad for America and you wouldn’t feel comfortable supporting those candidates who came out against the game. If I were in New York or Illinois, I would be organizing letter, phone, e-mail and social media campaigns with all my coaches, players, players families, former players, former players families, friends, family and supporters etc I would be on the ground organizing rallies, protests and press conferences to let those opportunistic politicians know that they are not going to go unopposed by the silent majority on this one. If you are in leadership and know your facts, ask to go on local radio programming to share your perspective. Local radio programs are always looking for guests to fill up air time. The local sports talk shows are great about that.

Don’t underestimate the foes of youth football. We all have to do our part if we are going to help moms and others have a realistic understanding and perception of what youth football is truly all about.