Moms Should Let Their Kids Play Football!

Growing up, my mom was my biggest fan. She still is! But she also used a wooden spoon on my smart a** butt – A LOT! She was a cheerleader back in the day, but today, the way things are going, she might have been able to suit up and hit the gridiron instead of cheering alongside it!!! Thank God my mom came from a different era and was cut from a different cloth than some of the moms I see today!

Something occurred on Friday night that I still can’t comprehend, despite it becoming more the norm these days! A star player for my son’s high school football team got ejected from the game after his second personal foul. I wasn’t there, but I was watching the game online and I grimaced when I saw the offending “play” happen. After the whistle blew, this kid flew in and hit the opposing team’s QB as he was about to get up. It was a classic cheap-shot most certainly born out of frustration of getting blown out!

It’s wrong, but I get it. Football is a game of emotions. BUT there’s consequences to those emotions on the field – and, newsflash, in REAL LIFE, too!!! Being that this was the offending player’s second personal foul, the officials, per the rules, booted our star player from the game. AND THAT’S WHEN, IN MY OPINION, THE REAL “OFFENSE” OCCURRED AND WHY I’M SHARING MY PERSPECTIVE NOW!

As the frustrated kid trotted to the sidelines our coach ran over, grabbed him by the face mask, and literally “got up in his grill!” My buddy was sitting in the stands next to two moms observing this entire scene. If you’re a mom reading this and this does NOT describe you, I apologize for what I’m going to explode about next!

Both of these moms (of other players on our team) were “shocked” that the coach grabbed the kid by his face mask and lit into him! In fact, they went on and on about it even proclaiming that what the coach did could be deemed an assault! O.M.G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I suppose I should not be surprised, given that we’re living in an era where moms still pack their high school kid’s lunches and try to arrange “play dates” for their kids in college! You see, I once was a football player who made the occasional spur of the moment, born out of frustration bonehead move. But fortunately for me, I had coaches who had no problem grabbing me by the face mask, “getting up in my grill,” and not so kindly letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that he wouldn’t tolerate that kind of conduct on our TEAM. And you better believe my mom was up in the stands clapping her wooden spoons together in her support of them!

My buddy, a high school and college football player himself, couldn’t listen to these two offended moms and not offer an alternate perspective. He politely informed these helicopter moms that that’s EXACTLY what a competent and caring coach does when a player does something like that!!!

Someday, all these kids will stop being their coach’s problem and be mine or yours instead! Trust me when I say that when they get hired to do whatever it is they are going to do with their life, NO COMPANY is going to hire their mom along with them! Our job as parents is not to protect our kids from the world. It’s to PREPARE THEM FOR THE WORLD!!! Thank God for football, for good coaches, and the rare mom who still uses wooden spoons on their kid’s behind!