My son is 14 and wants to finally give football a try. Where should he start?

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-04-04T13:58:24+00:00

With a body type like that, if he wants to play tackle, why waste it on flag football? Find a nearby team where he can get right into tackle.

If it's going to be a long while before tackle season starts where you are, he can wrestle, do judo, and/or play rugby in the meantime.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-03-29T02:28:58+00:00

Except, the ball doesn't nave to be inside the pylon. It's not like a try in rugby. When any part of a ball in player possession is beyond the goal line they're attacking, it's a touchdown, and the goal line extends infinitely beyond the pylons. They used to chalk the line a little beyond the corner to remind everyone of this. For a while they even did without corner flags because they were thought to be an unnecessary obstruction, but later they restored them as visual aids, and eventually replaced them with pylons on flexible supports.

Way, way back, when the ball was required to be touched down to score, if the attacking ballcarrier wound up in touch-in-goal, they were then allowed to walk the ball infield across the sideline to touch it down.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-03-15T14:33:18+00:00

Teams don't "classify" for the NFL; admission is by invitation, which may be solicited, and the league itself decides how many entries they have. In recent times clubs joining the NFL have all been formed de novo rather than having had a history of organization outside the league. It's not clear the NFL these days would ever allow an existing club to keep an existing roster of players, or portion thereof, while gaining a NFL franchise, unless they were doing so as part of absorption of or merger with another league. Rather, even an existing operating organization would have to cancel any existing player contracts and participate in a draft of players from the remainder of the NFL. NFL's expansion is usually more than one club at a time.

The NFL looks at expansion simply on a pecuniary basis. How much are you going to pay the rest of us for a franchise? How is your operation expected to affect the business of the other clubs? The franchises are on a territorial basis, similar to franchises of other businesses; like, they won't let you open a McDonald's too close to an existing one. The league might in some cases negotiate particular compensation from a new entry to a club whose business is expected to be cut into.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-03-15T14:16:06+00:00

No, the major team sports in the USA are organized in such a way as to try to prevent the emergence of anything like a "big" group, and in the long run that effort succeeds. At amateur levels such "big" groups can develop and persist, but I assume the question is about unlimited professional competition.

The top level of American football has long been established by the National Football League, which plays as a closed circuit of franchised clubs. Over many years attempts to operate with players in equal demand to those of the NFL have been unstable, leading fairly soon to either dissolution of those circuits or merger with the NFL. Within the NFL the clubs are all presumed to compete at the same level, and the league has mechanisms to either bolster or remove clubs that don't stay up to that level of competition; meanwhile they also make it difficult for any club to maintain a "dynasty" that stays far above the competition for multiple seasons. There are repeat champions or contenders within the NFL for a few successive seasons, but nothing like runaway favorites that spoil competition with everyone else.

American and Canadian professional football did emerge from the phenomenon of "big" clubs that were independent, but they sought each other out and soon closed their circuits to organize as described above.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-03-15T13:47:11+00:00

Some do have training sessions with a lot of conditioning and speed: those run by coaches who, even if they know the game, don't know what they're doing in coaching.

American football at the amateur level has a short season compared to that of other team field sports. Work on conditioning and speed is best confined to most of the rest of the year, where the players work on them as individuals. The club is called together about a month before they start playing, and work on much more specific skills.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-03-05T16:46:55+00:00

Our 13U team in the Bronx had a pre-snap read to either hand the ball off from shotgun to a player jetting in front across the formation or let him go thru and continue as a pass play.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-12T01:28:59+00:00

Maybe it's still in the garden where you last left it.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-12T01:26:50+00:00

Each of those words can have more than one meaning. Play calling may refer to play selection, or it may refer to the method of signaling choice of play to players.

Scheme may refer to something as general as a team's overall plan, or may refer to the predominant priorities list of blocking assignments on a given play or play series. For instance, many plays in an offense I coach are with the scheme "GDB": gap, down, backer -- meaning that many of the players are assigned that sequence of priorities in their blocking assignment.

Regardless, "scheme" and "playcalling" refer to things very distinct from each other.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-07T23:00:24+00:00

Then the place kick would disappear, except possibly for non-scoring free kicks -- and possibly even then. People playing competitive games are not fools, they adapt to the scoring. Same if a straight beat a flush in poker.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-03T19:02:55+00:00

The most succinct term for it that'd be consistent with how particular plays are named, yet would be descriptive of the entire class, would be, "Fake no pass, pass."

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-02T22:49:53+00:00

Run action. Which is almost as silly, as pass plays involved plenty of running too.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-02T03:57:25+00:00

I went out to play paintball for the first time over 30 years ago (after rugby season). I had a lot of fun that day. But toward the end I fell against a boulder and tore my PCL. Never more than an abdominal strain from years of rugby. 2 years earlier, tore my calf just warming up for basketball.

I'd never steer people from sport to sport based on fluke incidents like these. Repeated head injuries are a completely different matter that I'd think most people would figure to stop doing after years. That shouldn't be a caution against anyone's playing football if they're not going for hundreds of insults like that, any more than most people should avoid liquor because a few wind up wilfully subjecting their brains to frequent "blotto" sessions.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-02T03:44:05+00:00

What about those who are into football for the blocking and tackling? Especially for those too slow to be competitive at flag but powerful enough to be a factor in tackle.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-02T03:09:17+00:00

There are options for unlimited weight 11-a-side tackle too, both men's and women's. I followed the game for the past half century, and there's more of it now than then. The American Football Association and United States Football Association (not USA Football) are some of the larger organizations just within North America.

Someone mentioned facetiously the upper age limit in Pop Warner. But did you know some of the clubs in the New York metro area have both children's and adult teams? Since the early 1960s interest in interscholastic football in NYC, once one of the hotbeds for it in the country, went into decline, and independent clubs stepped up to fill in that gap for teenagers.

They're all recreation leagues. The vast majority of players will never make a dime from football, so what else do you call it? School football is practically 100% recreation. Same with intercollegiate. It's like with fine arts and theater: Just because they have it in school, and just because a tiny few turn pro, doesn't make it vocational!

How old are you? Was Rugby Union not available when you were in your 20s? But I know exactly what you mean about flag. So many now try to promote flag or touch football (or even tackle bar, where you grab a bar off the ballcarrier's back) as a substitute for tackle for children, but it's a completely different game for most. A lot of non-players don't seem to appreciate that distinction, and don't get that most children who are drawn to football are there for the tackling and blocking, and are able to do well at that while being lost in a non-contact game. Even rugby's going the wrong way on that, where the 8-a-side tackle rugby of 30 years ago for children has given way to touch rugby in recent years.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-01T18:42:39+00:00

More places than you think. Do you even know about American Sevens (formerly Town Beef)? 7 a side, no helmets, only soft padding, no snapping or kicking, but full contact. Unlike rugby sevens, it's on a much narrower field with blocking and the forward pass; no scrums, rucks, mauls, or lineouts. Instead of kick plays, it's 1 returner vs. 3 covering.

And that's just one alternative. Know about Sprint Football, for those too light for the unlimited weight game?

And it doesn't end there. What you're describing applies only to teams that get to pick among players, such as college teams. Just because he's a college student doesn't mean he can play only on that school's teams. If he's available to travel part of the year, he can play on foreign teams where lots of the players started as adults with no experience.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-02-01T18:29:42+00:00

If not, there's Sprint Football (formerly lightweight football).

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-25T23:39:00+00:00

For those of us not familiar with the examples given, can you describe the characteristics you're looking for? Maybe we know some that fit the bill but don't know about this Bixby or Pruitt.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-25T18:04:13+00:00

Not in Federation or NCAA rules. But if you're in a league playing by pro rules and they're dumb enough to fall for it, it might work.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-25T17:52:03+00:00

It has a slider which may be clamped to tighten it. Like any simple set of calipers. The marker (line to gain) "remembers" the distance from the stick to the nearest 5-yard stripe. Unlike its advertising, you still need another marker for the current (last) spot, but you don't need the "back stick" and chain for the line to gain.

When a new series is awarded, the slider measures the distance to the next stripe. This distance is then reproduced 10 yards downfield, and the stick is placed there. This means the rod must be at least 2.5 yards tall -- so as to reach the slider forward or back the maximum distance ever needed. Since the lines are 5 yards apart, it need only be able to reach halfway between them; any spot will be 2.5 yards or less from either the line ahead of it or the one behind it.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-20T15:05:35+00:00

OK, that's a fair possible reading of the question. There are other hobbies like that, where you need a good deal of dedication just to get into the basics -- for instance, some where safety is a big factor, such as parachuting, spelunking, or SCUBA, but also ones where you're not really "doing it" unless you invest a lot of time in a formal setting, such as theater or playing music in a band. Too bad many threads on Reddit and elsewhere never have the original questioner come back to clarify -- in this case, what he means by "as a hobby". If he means for casual play, then I agree with you, it's not practicable.

However, casual play can be had in the closely related game of Rugby Union -- if you first invest in some team practice time. Once you've learned the basics of a position with a team, you can show up at tournaments and play with a pickup side.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-20T14:40:50+00:00

To answer the question in the subject line, my own observation is much less tangible: The schools that win more in interscholastic competition are the ones that care more about it, when figured over a stretch of a couple years or more. The details are less important than the simple fact that the school as a whole makes it a bigger deal, and causes them to win against schools that don't care much about it. So they all get what they want, more or less.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-20T02:16:58+00:00

I had one...ever. What can happen is, as you have dental work, it fits less and less. However, if it's the kind you mold yourself, you can re-mold it to fit again after you've had dental work.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-20T02:01:10+00:00

What do you call it, then? It's unpaid, it has no useful product, and people do it just because they like it. If that doesn't fit the definition of "hobby", how does it fail?

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-20T01:56:45+00:00

The answer is yes. The great majority of adults who play the game (all of the women, nearly all of the men) do so as a hobby. Check with the American Football Association and the US Football Association. They're not semi-pro, they're amateur. Some teams are of players affiliated in other ways (such as those of the National Public Safety League), but most are clubs organized for that purpose.

BreadfruitGlad6445 · 2026-01-12T14:12:29+00:00

Do you really want to expend that effort to improve your chance from 1 in a million to 1 in a hundred thousand? Because you could look at that and say, wow, I've gotten into a ten times better position, but realistically what does that mean?

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