I've been participating in a running debate on a couple of sites about this video of a controversial play in youth football for the last couple of days and have to say the biggest disappointment is just how many jerks there are that tend to defend the coach's asshattery as teaching the other team a lesson or some other such nonsense.
Parents get their kids involved in team sports for a lot of reasons. Overall I think we hope the kids will continue to value athletics, working as a team and sportsmanship through their lives. All of the good stuff that comes out of team sports. (I know there's a dark side but as well but I'm speaking in the ideal here.)
The only way kids will take those lessons particularly at a young age is if they have fun at the sport in question and don't burn out on it. "Fun" is tough to qualify. I'm sure the players on the team that executed the "wrong ball" play in the video above thought it was just hysterical. The other team - not so much. We could argue the minutiae of rules as to why that play should be allowed until we're blue in the face but I would say that in the bigger picture anything that causes a bunch of kids on a team to want to hang up their helmets for good because they realize adults are asshats should not be allowed.
Kids have fun when things are COMPETITIVE. That doesn't mean politically correct, not keeping score nonsense or any of the things I've been accused of in arguing for sportsmanship and against the attitudes like what led to that play in the last couple of days. "Competitive" means the teams are more or less evenly matched so that the score isn't necessarilly a foregone conclusion.
That's why kids on the playground instinctually pick teams more and less equally matched. That's why youth leagues don't schedule 8th grade teams against 5th grade teams.
Guys like the coach who actually participated in the play if you listen to the audio are jerks. They're ruining youth sports. Their sorry attitude is the same thing that leads to parents losing their temper and all the other things that are taking away from the games these days.
I would really like them to find another hobby besides coaching youth football.
Let me see if I have this straight. President Lame Duck tells congress that they can't, not "shouldn't" but CAN'T leave for an August recess until they validate his illegal spying program through FISA reform legislation but he apparently doesn't have the same sort of problem with the Iraqi Parliament taking a similar recess while our soldiers are over there dying.
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