Another example of how completely out of check the Cult of Football is...

Rick Reilly's latest ESPN piece.

(Hat-tip to various parties who tipped me off on it!)

So let's start this off with an e-mail that a football coach sent to his (I presume, prospective) players, and Reilly basically asks us to guess (though the title of the article on the browser-bar tips it off!) what level this guy is coaching at...

"My objectives are simple," the coach wrote. "We need to become better, tougher and more aggressive blockers, tacklers and runners. … Tackle football isn't for everybody. It takes a certain mindset, an aggressive or killer instinct if you will …" 

OK, you'd figure, at least a high school program with a pedigree and an eliminative training camp -- as in, not everyone who tries out for the team is going to be allowed to practice and actually be on the team once the season starts.

"Killer Instinct"...

Look, when my brother (next oldest) was on the football team in our small-Wisconsin high school (his senior year was the one year the team was any good until the micro-schools were separated off in the early-2000's), the defense was called "The Swarm".  That was a matter of pride, NOT "killer instinct" in the age of football and concussions and early-dementia/suicides/murder being tied together.

The coach continues:

"Think of your team! The summer camp sessions will be short, but intense. Pre-season conditioning will be intense. In-season practices will be intense. … Mental and physical toughness are also requirements. We must get tougher and through hard work, we will. "

This is beginning to border on a religious rite, given this mentality.

I almost expect, by the end of this, a "CAN I GET AN A-MEN????" out of this letter...

"Players practice full throttle unless they are injured. … It's about team! If you don't love being a Bulldog and can't whole heartedly commit, you are in the wrong place. … You are either getting better or getting worse. We need to get better and it will take serious commitment. … This e-mail is meant to set expectations. No surprises, full steam ahead. Thanks and Go Bulldogs!"

I can understand this mentality if the community, especially in football, believed it MIGHT be slacking as far as players taking off plays and having bad attitudes go.  And even then, maybe high school at best...

But no, this isn't for a high school team.

This wasn't even for one of those Florida youth teams in which games are being wagered on.  Reilly says it himself:

"This email was sent to 8-year-olds."

EIGHT YEAR OLDS!!!

These kids are fucking EIGHT!!!!

This is the kind of attitude that we are trying to instill on our football cult as young as eight.

"Not everybody belongs on the field."

"You give your all until they have to literally scrape you off the grass with a spatula..."

"Or go the fuck home like the pussy you are..."

That's what this idiot coach is saying!  He's basically going to use his intense practices to winnow out 8 year-olds (who will then, in the community, probably be deemed unfit for far more than football!!!) who just can't take the heat.

As I said, I could understand if there was a reputation of slackers and drugs and alcohol in the high school community and that a coach was brought in to whip the community's boys into some degree of shape and discipline.  Even THEN, some of this is excessive.

But this is for EIGHT YEAR OLDS???

EIGHT?

Second-graders???

According to one parent, who asked anonymity so (his son wasn't retaliated against):

• Games were on Saturdays
• Friday nights were often full practices in pads (for many, this was their first year in pads), and the practices were over two hours in length!!
• By the ends of games, the players were often quite tired!

19 families got the e-mail.

Seven families quit the team upon it's receipt.

One wonders how they will be retaliated against in the community because of this!

The state?

TEXAS.  Where football, and kickline drill-team harems, rule the day.

These are the words of the coach, Camron Miller, 36 and admittedly fat:

""I don't regret sending it," says Miller, who insists only two of the seven families who quit did it because of his gung-holier-than-thou fervor. "Intensity is not a bad thing. Some of the best coaches -- and teachers -- I've ever had, were intense. … That email was needed.""

Are we effectively publicly telling these boys at EIGHT YEARS OLD, Mr. Miller, that their only purpose of existence in "Don't Mess With Tex-as" is to be The Big Man On Campus on the football team.

At eight?

What's going to happen when your intensity kills a second-grader?

HUH?

Because that's where this is going to head.  Three two-hour practices a week?  For these kids?

"Look, this is a competitive football league," Miller says. "We were a flag football team at 5 and 6 [years old] and then last year, at 7, we didn't make the transition very well. We won two games. We needed to ramp it up."

There's your first fucking mistake.  OK, keep score if you must.

BUT THESE KIDS ARE EIGHT!

When I was around that age, we won more games than anyone else in T-Ball.  I, in my own mind, crowned our team champs of the local league.  You know what that got me?  No one else knew, OR CARED!  I probably helped myself to a little extra ice cream after the family restaurant closed.

But that was about the extent of it.

Or is that just it?  Their only purpose, for being born in the Great State of Tex-as, is to be either a football player or get abused to the point that they spend 20 hours a day in the fetal position?

Oh my God, Mr. Miller...  Who do you think you are kidding here???

He's not the only one, by the way...  Another coach in his league in Frisco, Texas, was actually caught telling his players to hit players on the other team in the face.

Again, at about eight years old!!!

I'll close this ridiculousness with a paragraph from Reilly from near the end of the article. 

"We are amped up to ramp up in this country. We have ramped up the intensity in football from Pee Wees to pros. We have freshman high school quarterbacks who are considered "behind" if they don't have their own offseason skills coach. We had no less than six high school players die of heat exhaustion last season during summer training drills. We have NFL assistant coaches such as Gregg Williams of the New Orleans Saints ranting at his players to injure people in a playoff game."

I begin to wonder how many of these kids are there to make their parents money, in one way or another...  This is what makes coaches like Mr. Miller scary.