Play by the rules?

Teams in our league have off season "get together's" all of the time. It just part of youth football unfortunately, some coaches are willing to bend/break the rules in order to win.

If that coach had TAUGHT his QB how to read it on his own he wouldn't need to look back at the coach for signals.

Nothing wrong with watching another team warm up in my opinion. Spying on your practice is a little too much, but not game day warm ups.

Get used to it. I coached a flag team one year (6 and 7 year olds) and one coach was caught cutting 2 inches off of the flags of his running backs.

You'd think these guys were getting paid to win or that their life depended on winning a youth football game the way some of them (and the parents) act.

I coached that same age group and had all the other coaches complain that the option should be outlawed so they did. We had scored 11 TD's one game, no score was kept, and pitched a shutout. The other coaches couldn't stop it and got it banned.

Then they got mad that the Counter X, and the DW Wildcat formation were working. By the end of the season there wasn't much left that we could run other than dives and sweeps, the kids would ask me why can't we run option or another play we called moose 90 (Wildcat spin handoff). That is why I told the league I wouldn't coach again and now coach at the local Middle School.

Next they'll have a rule that the fastest kids on the team can't carry the ball.

So "letting" a bunch of 6 and 7 yr olds score a TD, after they've been totally embarrassed and humiliated by having been scored on eleven times, is a "good thing" .....gosh Dave, you're all heart, lol.....

Actually for some programs scoring a TD at all in a game is a huge victory, so YES letting another team score a TD after they've been totally embarrassed and humiliated by being scored on 11 times can be good thing.

We were up on a team 34-0 at the end of the first quarter earlier this year. The final score was 36-22. We were never in a position to lose the game but the other team acted like they won the super bowl. Their coach approached it in a "we won the second half" kind of attitude. Good for him and good for them. They played their next game against a better team than us a hell of a lot tougher, and I think it was because they built on the success (or perceived success) that they had against us in the second half. If we had left all of our starters in and scored another 40 points and not given up any at all, that team would be totally deflated and probably not do so well the next week.

So yes, calling off the dogs can be a good thing.

Amen coach, glad to see that even in a place where football is important, Texas guys like you have it "right".

I know about those feeling first hand.
About 16 years ago I coached an expansion team in a fairly competitive youth league. The 3 previous expansion teams of 100% rookie players had lost every game.
We played our very first game against the 4 time defending league champs, a well coached team with its top 3 guys being non-dad coaches. On our end, all rookie coaches as well. Pre-internet days.

We were losing the game 34-0 and were driving for our first ever score with less than a minute to go in the game. You couild see and feel all of our kids getting very excited as we got down to the 10 yard line for an upcoming score. But no , the other team called timeout, reinserted their starters and got the shutout. Our kids were more crushed by that than anything else. This coach gave his kids doughnuts after the came for every shutout, so my kids got to feel bad about themselves so some coach could say he shut out a bunch of 8-10s. We came back and ended up winning 3 games that year and beat them 2 years later to win a league title.

I didnt want to do it that way, didnt want to make our opponents feel like my kids did that day.

First season we did "special play" we were playing a team in their next to last game of the season, they hadnt scored a TD ALL YEAR, not one. We practiced the play and in the 3rd quarter let them score, we were up 3-4 scores by then, They acted like they won the super bowl, their sidelines went nuts and they even tried an onsides kick after. THEY HAD NO CLUE we gave it to them. Thier parents , coaches and players were all smiles after that game, a game we won handily. We taught our kids a compassion lesson hopefully they can use later in life.

This isnt life and death, make it a good deal for both sides after you take care of your kids.

Funny coming from a guy who had teams of 15 kids playing in a compeitive "league" where you played the same team 3 times and had a heck of a time even getting kids to show up for practice and hasnt coached in years.
Almost all large competitive youth football leagues (ours has 89 teams, previous had 71 teams) are filled with well coached and poorly coached teams, the poorly coached ones are the ones getting beaten by those margins. We get Plenty of closer games versus the better coached teams, it also is a function of running a no-huddle offense and scheme that can score lots of points and of course execution. We did that in 4 different leagues, guess they were all " not competitive". We have played and won outstate tourneys and have played in the best Select league in the state against teams that have played and won national tourneys. Kids playing in the leagues Ive coached in include 2 Heisman Trophy winners and 2 Outland Winners along with countless DI kids. If youve never seen or coached in a league like that, it is much different than the YMCA Kumbaya leagues with 15 kids a team and all 12-6 scores like some are used to. Competitive football is a completely different dynamic of teams with sometimes 30-50 kids on them, try outs where over 250 kids are vying for 25 spots , cuts, team buses, playing in field turf stadiums, scouting etc etc

We didn't try to shut them out, but there coach had no idea what he was doing. We tried everything short of having our players fall down. The other team just was a vicitm of having a poor coach, as far as knowledge goes.

We also did not try to score 11 td's. The second half I called fb dive every play with lineman running the ball. They couldn't stop it in flag football. I would have never tried to beat a team this badly in 6 and 7 year old flag football, but my options were limited since they couldn't pull the flag off of the slowest kid on the team running right up the middle.

There was no score kept, everyone is a winner type of thing, and was seven on seven. I felt bad that the score was getting that bad, but if the other team can't pull the flags off the slowest kid running up the middle what do you do?

On defense you tell your kids to act like they are pulling the other teams flag but miss. Easy to get accross in a timeout, let em score.

Big fish in little pond would mean when we go outside conference or to local and out state tourneys we would lose, which isnt the case, We usually play 3+ nonconference games each year. But now it is extrememely difficult to get anyone out of conference to agree to play even away games. Last year sent out over 120 emails, over 30 phone calls and got just 3 extra games. In the early years, always easy to get people to agree to play. Now we often have to aggree to play up an age group. Just the way it is and we are willing to travel 120 miles etc to play. Lots of close scores in the FOUR leagues my teams have played in, and we even have a few, but the scores are what they are, we have consistently been able to score a lot of points against pretty much all comers over 11 seasons. Ive even had my non-select teams play teams that have chosen from 150 kids, last year we played a select team that chose from about 75 kids. We cant even get those teams to play us most of the time. Weve gone from playing 12 games a year down to 9. If you look at the game scores on the site, those are the facts, its a shame. We are in a tiny town and the other local team wont even scrimmage us, let alone play us and weverbeen here 5 years now and they suit 35 kids per team to our 23-24.

To give you an idea of how bad it is now: We are in a town of 1100 people and draw from the rural area around here. We play and beat select teams from Omaha population 500,000+ and Lincoln 220,000+. Those are some huge odds and now those teams wont even play us. The results werent much different than when I lived in and coached in Omaha and playing there every weekend. It is what it is.