06 January, 2013

Friday Night Tykes - Youth Football Taken Really Seriously

Friday Night Tykes: Texas Monthly January 2013: “I get an email from a bystander mom saying, ‘How do we make the game safer?’ ” He chuckled. “How do you answer that?” The price football extracts is boogers and blood.

Which isn’t to say Allen is a safe haven for nose-gougers. Like his NFL counterpart, Roger Goodell, Beidleman thinks the solution isn’t to radically change football but to more closely enforce the rules already on the books. (He made the Cardinals player who took cheap shots at Joey write an essay before he could play again.) Moreover, Beidleman feels that football’s battle against modernity has to be fought on grounds other than medical ones. “Our biggest competition is social media and video games and iPhones,” he told me. Every kid in Allen—like every kid in Peoria and Seattle and Brooklyn—plays Madden. The problem with Madden is that it’s arguably more fun than real football, it’s certainly safer, and it instills a false sense of confidence. Every kid thinks he can catch 40-yard bombs like he can when he’s playing as Calvin Johnson in the video game. “Can you imagine a new kid who’s never played football lining up against Cullen Perkins?” Beidleman said. Cullen, a Hawks tackle, weighs 195 pounds.