Tackle football makes a comeback
• Two years ago, as fears over head injuries and the long- term consequences of collisions on the field intensified, this small town in the heart of football country took the unlikely step of trying to roll back tackle football.
The junior high school scrapped the seventh- grade tackle team because of safety concerns. The Pop Warner youth program had shut down because of a lack of players. This year, worried about potential liabilities, the local Boys & Girls Club dropped tackle football.
Yet in late October, the crack and thud of helmets and shoulder pads punctuated the warm evening air as about 100 boys ran into one another, a sign that tackle football is not done here after all. The players were on the Marshall Longhorns, one of two new programs that started in the past year, organized by parents and coaches who believe tackle football has its virtues and is more fun for the boys.
“My kids love it, so I love it,” Qwanneshea Johnson said as she watched her sons Quentravious, 11, and Jourdan, 7, practise at West End Park. “They love the contact, and I don’t really worry because they teach them the fundamentals.”
The emergence of t he Longhorns and the Conquering Lions, a rival organization, is a sign of the complex attitudes toward tackle football as parents across the nation wrestle with the decision of whether to let their children play.
Participation in tackle football by boys 6 to 12 has fallen by nearly 20 per cent since 2009, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, although last year it rose by 1.2 per cent, to 1.23 million.
Schools in several states, including Maine, Missouri and New Jersey, have shut down their tackle football programs because of safety concerns and a shortage of players.
Prospective players, including many in Marshall, have been steered toward other sports, leading coaches, players and fans who feel that the dangers of football have been exaggerated to fill the vacuum. They think that boys should be challenged, not coddled, and that football is a good way to challenge them.
That sentiment is acute in this northeastern Texas town of 24,000, a former railroad crossroad. A proliferation of teaching colleges and cultural institutions once garnered Marshall the nickname the Athens of Texas. Yet it is also a football hotbed, having sent numerous players to top colleges and professional teams, including the Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle.
The two new youth programs grew easily, even as more boys opted to play baseball and soccer.
Started last year by former coaches from Pop Warner and the Boys & Girls Club, the Lions and the Longhorns have each filled four teams of boys five to 12 years old, about 200 players in all.
The makeup of the teams, however, reflects a socioeconomic undercurrent that has not gone unnoticed here: Most of the players on the new tackle teams are African- American — the town is about 40- per- cent black — and come from communities where the sport is more often seen as a pathway to eventual prosperity.
Despite the enthusiasm for the sport, the debate over the virtues of tackle football is far from settled, whatever the long-standing tradition.
“If he wants to play in junior high school, that’s fine, but I’d just as soon he not play football,” said Matt Moore, who is happy his 10-year-old son prefers baseball and flag football. “Now that we know about the dangers, you can no longer claim ignorance.”
Still, for every parent like Moore, there are others who believe tackle football provides a good outlet for boys in need of discipline and exercise. They recognize that the sport has potentially devastating effects but believe that better- trained coaches can reduce the risks.
“It can be a barbaric sport, but these coaches teach them the proper technique,” said Chad Hygh, a former high school l inebacker whose 9- year- old son, Caleb, plays for the Lions. “Some of the steps they are taking to make it safer are good. There was a lot more hitting in my day.”
Many of the coaches for the Lions and the Longhorns have taken the Heads Up course, a program aimed at teaching safe tackling techniques. It was developed by the non- profit U. S. A. Football, which has received tens of millions of dollars from the NFL. Critics have accused U. S.A. Football of exaggerating the benefits of the program, but the tackle football coaches in Marshall endorse it. They say they are confident that football can be made safer if players are taught proper tackling habits at a young age.
“Safety is always a concern, but everywhere you go, there’s a concern,” said Desmond Andrus, a founder of the Lions. “But if you’re always worried, you make it safer. The NFL is doing everything they can to make it better, and that’s the same thing we’re doing here.”
In conversations with parents and coaches in Marshall, it was clear that the notion of football as the best way to toughen youngsters and potentially earn them a college education was more closely held in the black community. Indeed, most of the members of the Lions and the Longhorns, as well as many of the players on the local high school team, the Mavericks, are black.
This is consistent with support for football among African- Americans elsewhere in the country. According to an HBO Real Sports/ Marist Poll released l ast month, 43 per cent of whites and Latinos are less likely to let their children play football because of the risk of brain trauma, compared with 28 per cent among African-Americans.
“It’s a way of keeping kids off the streets, giving them something to do,” said Marlon Hawkins, a Longhorns coach whose son and nephew play for the group. “Maybe half of them are dreaming of playing in the NFL, and we tell them: ‘ The ball there on the ground will take you around the world. It’s your ticket.’”
Andrus and the Lions’ other founder, Clarence Haggerty, agreed. Beyond teaching the fundamentals of the sport, they try to be role models to the boys, some of whom do not have fathers at home. The Lions’ motto, “Play hard; pray harder,” is reinforced at every practice.
Andrus and Haggerty coached at the Boys & Girls Club. Bryan Partee, the club’s director, had heard concerns from board members about the safety of the game and the club’s potential exposure to lawsuits over injuries. With support for tackle football at the club in doubt, Andrus and Haggerty left to start the Lions. Unlike the Boys & Girls Club, whose teams played only in Marshall, the Lions intended to travel to other towns to play, something that would expand the boys’ horizons.
“It brings out his character to hit a kid you’ve never seen before,” Andrus said.
Partee, whose father, Dennis Partee, was a punter and kicker in the NFL from 1968 to 1975, defended the decision to drop tackle football. He said that Clint Harper, the football coach at Marshall High School, who pushed to end the seventhgrade tackle program in 2014, told him that many youngsters were not taught the right way to tackle and were susceptible to injury.
“We’re not on a crusade — we’re on the side of safety,” said Partee, whose soccer and flag football teams have grown. “The contact stuff is just outside our youth development strategy.”
Partee said some parents felt as if the club had “jumped the gun” by ending its tackle program but that he was not anti- football. He sold the club’s football equipment to the Lions, and he said Andrus had helped children and was “filling a need.”
For all the angst about head trauma nationally, the parents of the Lions and Longhorns players said that the coaches were taking the right approach and that football would remain as strong as ever in Marshall.
“My son has changed 110 per cent” since joining the Lions, said Rocky Underwood, whose boy, Chevy, plays on the team for 11- and 12-year-olds.
At first, “when he got hit, he cried,” Underwood said. “But football’s made him tougher. Like my wife said, if it’s not broken or bleeding, you need to get back out there.”