I’m starting to wonder if what I’m witnessing as a volunteer coach for a rec league youth football team isn’t a sort of unintentional canary in the mine of this larger debate, on the privatization of education. Were I being honest, getting an up close look at what the privatization of schools / youth sports teams are doing to youth rec league teams - where the private schools poach the physically biggest / most talented football players away - has given me sincere pause on the privatization of public education. If education follows my experience with the privatization of youth rec league football, some kids - perhaps a great many - not only are but will undoubtedly continue to be left increasingly further behind. It’d be fine and fair if everyone was held to the same rules and parameters, with every team either being “private” - meaning, hand-picked players, you can accept / deny anyone that you want, you can / have the ability to incentivize them to play for you in any way that you want, etc. - or “rec league”, where you can’t recruit another player beyond your agreed boundary, you can’t offer any incentive to play for a particular team, etc. But in this current state, where the “private” schools can offer incentives that “rec league” teams cannot (I can’t offer kids free tuition at a private school to come and play for me), it just seems fundamentally unfair. And while the TSSAA has recently taken some steps to address the problem - essentially, making teams who pay players to attend their school to play in a different division from those public schools which do not - it’s only a partial fix, at best, as the private schools will continue to poach the best players away from the rec league teams / public schools. The inconvenient reality may be that open-enrollment / private schools - such as Fulton, Catholic, CAK, Webb, Maryville (legit sorry, Card), Greenville, etc. are looking out for themselves - and understandably so - but they are also fundamentally and unfairly changing (and some would argue they are killing) rec league youth football, at the same time. To be clear, I’m not alleging that any of these schools are evil, or are even doing anything that isn’t well within the boundaries of the rules, whatsoever. However, that no rules are in place to prevent what’s now happening, or which requires each team to have equal competitive footing, is a significant problem which I think needs to be both addressed and remedied, and which seems impossible to further ignore, insofar as it also relates to youth rec league football. Two cases in point: The same private school team that we beat 35-13 last season, just beat my rec league team in a bowl game last week, by a score of 21-6. What changed? Well, if their own coaches and parents of their players are to be believed, this private school hired two coaches - yes, you read that right, a private school recruited and now pays at least some of their youth football coaches - who coached for a winning rec league team from last season, and who brought several of their starters, including 3 kids who easily weighed 200+ lbs (our division has a 130lb weight limit, and beyond that, you have to play in the interior of the line) and their starting QB / RB. Our older rec league team is the reigning champion of their division, having played for 3 of the last championships, and winning 2. This is an important age because they move to high school next season. While they are a very, very good team, they’re not blowing people out and will lose a game or two per year. However they, like most teams in their league, routinely beat the shit out of another local private school, and which has been largely terrible for a number of years. But as they are now at the age where private schools really start to recruit kids from the local area by handing out free scholarships to attend their private school, this same team showed up last week for the opening game of the season with 10+ kids from area rec leagues / public schools on their rosters, and went from losing by 42 points late last season, to winning by 35(!), instead. Recruiting is a zero-sum game, as it not only considerably boosts the lots of private teams, but simultaneously and fantastically reduces the abilities of their former teams (most times, these are the very best players on a rec league team). This imbalance of fairness, coupled with the fact that some rec league parents are just as incredibly difficult to deal with as advertised (or in some very limited cases, much worse), and that many kids who play rec league ball are simply neither physically equipped nor mentally prepared to make the sustained commitment that football requires (at any level), has honest-to-god made me consider forming my own private and fully self-funded team for next season, in hopes of staying at least competitive. Absent that, there’s only so much that scheme and coaching up rec league players can do, and the current challenges, already nearly impossible now, and which will only get incredibly more difficult, the older the kids get. And, hell, it’d still be entirely possible that I’d still watch the private schools poach my kids when they turn 12 years old or so, and as they now do every year, to all teams, even if I did this. But still, I’m honestly considering it, because it at least gives my kids a chance, whereas the alternative of doing nothing, does not. But I can’t believe it’s come to this, and where I’m even contemplating it. Point being is this - it is neither a coincidence that private / open-enrollment schools are dominating Tennessee high school football right now, nor is it an accident that Knox County has lost some 75+ rec league tackle football teams in the last 5 years (there are app. 25 rec league parks in Knox County, and tackle football runs from age 7-14, so each Park can have 8 tackle teams, so 25 Parks x 8 teams each = 200 tackle teams). Everyone can talk about concussions and CTE all day, and these are surely legitimate concerns, but that’s not what is hurting broad participation in youth football participation, IMO. It’s the fundamental unfairness of it all, instead, and which will only perpetuate and continue to worsen, unless every team is placed on equal footing, or a bright, impenetrable and irrevocable line is drawn and rigidly enforced between the private and public schools / youth sports leagues.
Rec league soccer suffers the same syndrome. You have paid coaches for these big select teams. Neighborhood teams and school teams are going the way of the dodo. My son stopped playing soccer because getting drilled 22-0 in the first half was not fun nor educational.
Look at campbell county. Anderson County use to raid them for talent all the time. Campbell County got serious about football and closed the spigot. I get what you’re saying but it’s a complex issue that has a lot of blame to go around. A lot of places will never win because of their own built culture and unwilling to give up their own fiefdoms.
It will play out exactly the same way for academics, over time. It really already has, to some extent.
I get the point, I do. It's part of it. But i also agree its larger than that. I think 53 and IP are right at the high school level. Culture and fiefdoms are bigger imo. Now, legit youth sports had become a ridiculous free for all. Dont like how little Johnny was treated? Go start a new one. Then Billy's dad gets mad at Johnny's dad for not playing Billy enough, so now we are at three teams. And make sure you spend a ton of money with each team.
Someone explain to me why "rec league" teams are playing against school teams. As someone who lives a far piece from where this is something that happens, I'm confused. My town isn't large enough for its own league. Youth football exists and is what I would call a "rec league". There is one team in the south end of the county that plays other teams from other towns. This serves up until the kids are old enough to play for the (public) school. At that point, there kids either quit or play for school. There's no private school that has a football team anywhere in the county that I know of, so obviously this isn't a problem.
I'll let tenny explain the insanity of Knox county, but it has something to do with no middle school football within schools and how it's set up.
That makes sense. I just assumed there was middle school football there. Private schools are making use of the rec leagues to pick and choose talent. Conversely, when the kids were still in bama, we weren't allowed to sign our son up for a youth league because he didn't go to one of the public schools.
I was totally unaware this was a thing. Is this more recent? I don’t remember this happening when I was in middle school but I didn’t play.
I know a couple of you love it and not dissing your opinion, but in regards to football, if kids want to play tackle, I think most kids should work on agility, speed, footwork, flag, etc until 7th or 8th grade and start playing. imo some kids miss key developmental time since most don't get the reps. We practiced next to the local Blaze teams the last couple years as we are in a patch practicing 7 v 7. I see kids from my sons school that I've coached standing still for 10-15 minutes, some kids getting few reps, some practices without a pass thrown more than 5 yards. We are over there running the route tree, working on hips, backpeddling, working on 1 v 1 man, cover 3, tampa 2, ball skills, etc. Our slot wr's had 40 balls each thrown to them. Blaze slots blocked, taking turns, during the same period. Over and over.
We did flag. I don't necessarily recommend it. I told my wife we should have gone the soccer route for what he was taught, and I even coached one year.
Cant be basic flag that allows 1 hour a week. Thats not time to do much. We spend 4-5 hours a week and half of that is agility stuff without a ball. Basically some combine stuff and the kids love it. They feel bigtime and compete hard.
Trust me the school has a fiefdom. The ones running it might not value football but there’s a lot of politics and egos involved.
no its not but the point is most of the kids in little kids football end up standing around and watching half the practice. Some trainers around here are taking a different approach and kids are showing up to middle school football with footwork, handwork, agility, balance that they learned over the previous years while not playing football and running circles around kids that have been playing tackle since they were allowed.
Theres a lot of it around here at that level especially. One practice last week I saw them practice off tackle right, off tackle left, do some work with tackling form, work on fumble recoveries, and onside kick and return. Very little skill development.
A youth team that is practicing off-tackle is going to be a group of ass kickers. Generally it’s just fast kid right fast kid left. I don’t know what you consider skill development but if a youth coach is teaching them how to block and tackle properly and safely, they’re doing their job.
maybe. But there are reasons why all the old nfl'ers and former vols around here don't have their sons in local youth leagues.
