Inside the changing landscape of youth football
For youth-sports administrators, the landscape of tackle football has shifted more than almost any other sport in the last 25 years. I (kind of) remember my brief time playing youth football.
OK, maybe it was more than 25 years ago, but I cannot imagine today’s parents allowing their kids to do what we did in practices and games.
At 12 years old, our coaches taped small slivers of red electrical tape on our helmets for any hard hit on an opponent. They called them “blood marks,” and receiving them was like getting a trophy after every game. We had one coach whose only job during games was to keep track of hard hits in a notebook. And if a player hit someone really hard and gave a “bell-ringer,” he would receive two blood marks.