Middle school vs Pop Warner

Guess you could look at it from two viewpoints poweriguy. You're right, youth foorball in the US is an assortment of different leagues with different rules, age limits, playing and ball carrier weights and coaching prowess(ranging from very good to not worth a s--t! On the other hand, at least the boys are playing football and developing an interest in the game. We were one of the lucky school systems that has a jr. high team and the head coach and I had a great arrangement about players. He preferred to have mostly experienced 8th graders and would send all his 6th, 7th graders that weren't already playing for me, down to our youth team for more training and experience(playing time) And to reciprocate, I would send any skill players with a lot of talent, but over our running/ball carrier weight up to the school team for a tryout. Since the school team was made up of mostly 8th graders, who could range in age from 13 to 15 at times, it behooved the 6th and 7th grade guys who were 11-12 to keep their butts down there with us as long as possible lol! It doesn't take much imagination to envision whats gonna happen in a 1 on 1 hitting situation between a 15 yr old(red shirt) 8th grader and an 11 -12 yr old! Arghhh, Ouchhh could be nasty! This arrangement worked well for us for many seasons and built a nice bridge between our youth league and the high school teams. I was fortunate though, in that the hc of the schools jr high team was also the AD and former HC of the varsity team, who had turned over the HS reins to his younger assts. and spent his last several seasons before retiring, coaching 7th and 8th grade football. The association i had with this good coach, who had nothing more to prove and no giant ego, was one of my best experiences in football and proved very beneficial to all the players, youth league and school team.

I'll get a little long on this subject.......lol

In AZ they don't have middle school programs unless they are private schools, so Pop Warner or another type of private league is about it. The players you get are limited by boundries where they live (ours is the smallest in the state) after that, you can have four out of draw waivers for players not living in your area (there are parts of the country with up to 10). Because of the program we run, we have parents from all over the valley wanting to put their kids on our team because they know that we are fair and teach kids football, plus were pretty good.....lol. The weight limits and age limits are in place for the safety of the kids but should be revised to fit a ever growing population, IMO at least. National Pop Warner has in place rules that all kids must play a minumum number of scrimmage plays, dependent on the total number of kids on a team, for example if there are 20 kids on a team, each kid must get at least 8 plays, if there are 30, each kid must get at least 10 (we play everyone on our team more than the minimums based on effort). In addition, there are other kinds of rules in place, a margin of win rule, etc that are specialized to this age group, other than that its federation HS rules.
Your generalizations about daddy coaches sadly are sometimes true, what usually happens in those cases is that nobody wants to play on that team. IMO, daddy coached teams are usually the worst coached teams by guys who watch too much tv and think their kid is the greatest thing going. When we got involved with this association 6 years ago, we worked on getting rid of these kind of individuals and finding quality people to coach the lower levels, this has not been easy but we are almost there.
For whatever reason, in AZ at the Midget level (7-8th graders) there is very good coaching on about half of the teams in this age division (aprox. 35 teams), guys that have been in it for years know what they are doing and field competitive teams. IMO, the competition at this level is as good or better than most freshmen teams here.
I can only speak for our staff on how we do it, none of our core staff have kids on the team, we occasionally have a parent that wants to "help out" but their duties are assigned to them and we will not let their participation be a distraction.
We take pride in the fact that we take kids that have never played before and develop them into solid football players, for example, last years starting offensive line had 4 out of 5 kids that had never played before, they finished 10-1 (lost in state championship) and were pulling on counter trey and trap and doing it damn well too.
Our motto is you play based on your effort and kids buy into it, they enjoy learning football and I believe they relish the opportunity that we give them to play in a fair, fun and exciting program.
CB, as far as HS numbers here, frosh football at most schools here get 80+ out in the fall and most of the frosh teams have 11 guys going both ways, so the problem of "not developing talent/numbers" isn't a sin reserved for youth coaches.
IMO, too many HS coaches want kids to come in as studs and don't take the time to teach kids, if someone is polished they get the shot and the other guy is cannon fodder. The best HS programs have Frosh/JV coaches that teach football instead of just turning the key with studs coming up from feeders.
If I was a varsity HC and had 80+frosh out, I'd fire the frosh coach if more than one kid went both ways. There is no excuse in the world for a team with numbers not to have separate offense/defense squads, again, just my opinion.

Pop Warner is one of many Youth Leagues in the Country and in fact aggregated makes up less than 20% of the kids playing in the USA. My league is unlimited weight like most. My Prog does a self imposed minimum play rule and I limit team size to 25.
They got rid of MS ball here 30 years ago because there were 50-60 kids on one team playing 4 games with 8 minute quarters, a waste.
The best youth squads here travel to Florida to play for national titles and win.