Should I let my son quit football?

Unless your son was injured or being disciplined for a reason both he (and you) had been fully informed about, he should have quit the minute he got home from the 69-0 game. And you should have told him to.

The coach is a fucking dick.

Obviously from the glittering record of the varsity, his talent-selection skills of winnowing out the incomparably brilliant players at the lower levels and giving them all the PT while everybody else languishes is not exactly paying off in a big way.

If the freshman team (FRESHMAN team for christ's sake) is going 5-8, losing games 69-0, there is no excuse whatsoever not to play every single player on the roster. None.

If Mr. Coachy Boy is sitting up in his tower at the helm of his awesome 1-9 varsity program, he needs to tell every assistant coach, every JV coach, every freshman coach, "Look. We suck. We need better players and we need them fast. You need to get every player on your goddamn roster in every goddamn game so we can find out if any of them can play. If anybody on your freshman or JV teams was such a goddamn superstar they should play every single play, believe you me, they would be up on my varsity."

These days one of the main reasons most shittty high school football teams are shitty is sheer numbers -- they don't have enough players to fill out a roster, so they have no depth, so everybody has to play both ways, so all of their players are always playing tired and banged-up and half-injured. The biggest thing to build a good football program is to get enough warm bodies (they don't have to even be really good football players) out for the team to fill a complete roster.

PT-only-for-the-starters/stars policies by the coaches (which lead average kids to quit) ruins this whole concept. If you are an average kid, fair-to-decent athlete, not a superstar but not bad, why the hell should you keep coming to practice if you're never going to play?

Fuck the coach. Your son doesn't owe an idiot like that anything. The varsity team sucked ass and the lower-level teams were awful too. It certainly doesn't sound like he's going to be lifting the program to championship glory any time soon so it's not like your son is going to be missing out on anything fun.

 

Tom, it was a good update. I'm glad he posted that.

 

Very good update...

A coach who doesn't play everyone in a 69-0 game is a dick and someone should let the AD know. Who knows if the AD will care, he probably will not, but still...

 

That would be a sign that either a) coach is a dick, or b) I must really suck if I'm not playing in a 69-0 game.

Either way, time to find a new hobby.

 

I think you did the right thing by encouraging him to see it through.
I'm not going to jump on coach-is-a-d*ck bandwagon without knowing what the coach's trying to do; however, heading into the next season, I'd have a long talk with my son. If I had to talk you out of quitting last year, let's really weigh the pros and cons of joining the team this year.

 

The thing with freshman football is that because of growth spurts, there is usually a really good chance that someone who was a benchwarmer as a freshman is going to be a big contributor on JV and varsity. Two guys I played with in high school didn't start as freshmen and ended up getting scholarships to Pac-10 schools. One grew six inches between freshman and sophomore year and the other went from 5-10, 150 to 6-foot, 210 in a year.

That's one of the many reasons why not emptying the bench in a blowout like that (at the freshman level) is a colossal mistake... Nevermind just the "don't be a dick" aspect of it.

I think you did the right thing, but I agree that you should have a long talk with your son before he signs up for football again next season.

 

I only read the first page two minutes ago, and just read the update.

I missed 16 pages of blather but very glad your son stuck it out. I think that's awesome.

As for the rest of you, with the "The coach is a dick. The coach is a dick. I would have met with the AD. He should have quit the second he didn't play in the 69-0 game....." Will you all just shut the fuck up? Good god, you sound like 3/4 of the parents I hear. So what.... the coach is a dick. Big fucking surprise. Check the message boards and comments for every high school team in your area. EVERYBODY thinks EVERY coach is a dick. So he got screwed by not playing in the 69-0 game. BFD. Life isn't fair.

MTM's kid is learning a life lesson, and he isn't whining. He's coming back for next year. I love this kid. Higher caliber character than most parents and most of the complainers on this board.

 

Both are true: life isn't fair, and the coach is a dick.

My son's sophomore team was the one delivering those 69-0 beatdowns. And they did a great job of making sure everyone got some game time. In fact, the coaches got pissed at the starters after they jerked around to a close win that it's their job to make sure they play so well everybody gets to get in.

The coaching staff is full of guys who didn't play much as freshmen and sophomores, but ended up playing a lot as varsity. So they know at the lower level, you have to develop EVERY player as best you can, because you never know when a knee injury/bad grades/girlfriend pregnant/move out of town will take away any of your players. Nor do you want to take the chance that you've ignored the kid who suddenly grow six inches or puts on 40 pounds. The coaches were playing to win (my son's sophomore class hasn't lost a game), but they know as the sophs move up to varsity, every one of them has gotten over the butterflies of actually appearing on a high school football field.

But beside that, a lot of those blowouts get very chippy at the end, especially if there's no sign the winning coach is calling off the dogs. You've got to watch out for cheap injuries.

 

MTM thanks for the update. Glad your son stuck it out and had a relatively positive experience.
As far as next year I would say don't over think and defer to what your son wants to do. If he wants to play and his grades are good I would just leave it at that . No need for a major pow wow.
There is nothing wrong with working hard to earn playing time. As that great philosopher Frank Costello once said: "No one gives it to you, You have to take it" He will learn a good lesson in life.

 

That is some brilliant parenting.

The way it played out, the kid was on the team the whole year; may or may not have been noticed by some girls, or gained a notch in social status; maybe improved his skills; was part of a team; but most importantly, he worked through adversity, and completed the season from beginning to end. A great sense of accomplishment for the kid.


Let's look at the Starman way.

Kid would have come home from the 69-0 game, and his dad, Starman, would have told him he had to quit. I am envisioning it playing out like a scene from The Great Santini, with Starman as Robert Duvall, browbeating the kid into going into school next day and quitting a team he doesn't want to quit. There's an argument at the house, precisely the time the 15 year old is feeling crappy about getting a DNP in a blowout.

Or else Santini is going to go to school next day and create a scene, because GODDAMMIT THAT COACH IS A DICK AND NO SON OF MINE IS GOING TO PLAY FOR THIS ASSHOLE COACH. Unfortunately, this incident is going to take place in front of the whole 3rd period gym class, so now the kid is the talk of the school, the boy with "that dad". Dad Starman has no clue that freshman want to just be part of the pack, they don't want to stick out.

He's no longer part of the team, he's lost part of his social group, he isn't going to get better, and he failed to complete the season, because no son of Starman is going to play for a dick like that. That part of the college resume is empty as well.

Starman feels better, but the kid sure as hell doesn't.

 

You'd advocate quitting just because the person in charge is a jerk?

That's potentially a whole lot of quitting in a lifetime. Life's full of jerks.

 

That's true, you can't really avoid activities or pursuits because of unlikeable, unpleasant, stupid, petty or mean people.
That's the entire population.