Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) has voted on and passed a new rule that will severely change how high school football teams practice.
Last year, teams were allowed to have 90 minutes of full contact practice per week, that now drops down to 30 minutes at the beginning of 2019.
The new rules seem to be hampering coaches ability to teach their players and that’s something that Mike Valenti has an issue with.
“I don't know how you coach high school football,” Valenti said, “when you are only allowed, in the preseason, to have 30 minutes of contact a week. I don’t know how that works, I don’t know how you produce football players with 30 minutes a week.”
Mike Sullivan echoed much of what Valenti preached.
“I firmly believe,” Sullivan stated, “that if you’re going to be practicing and not be practicing how to properly hit and coaching kids, instructing kids the proper technique of tackling, you’re going to run into more injuries. You’re going to run into someone getting into a game and being timid or checking up and not knowing how to hit. That’s more of an issue than someone getting hit in practice and getting hurt.”
The fear of injuries has caused drastic changes to the way the football is played and practiced throughout the year, but Valenti thinks we’ve reached the point of overcorrection.
“Clearly we have spent a lot of time on this radio show talking about safety,” Valenti said, “or lack thereof of the sport of football. Obviously, I care about kids safety, I care about NFL players safety. However, there has to be a discussion about at what point does limiting contact actually bring the level of injuries up because kids don’t know how to play the game. You know how you get hurt? Tackle inappropriately. You know how you get hurt? Have your first taste of actually physical contact be in live game action.”
Valenti fells that cutting the amount of full contact a full hour was an overreaction and that there could have been a better alternative that would benefit both the coaches and players.
“They already cut it to 90. No one is forcing you to have full contact for 90 minutes a week, you have the option. You reduce it to 30. You’ve taken a lot of flexibility away from coaches. And for players, I don’t know. I do begin to wonder when we start to go to far and unintended consequences happen. If you cut it down so much, you wonder if it begins to go the other way.”
Sullivan doesn’t like the path that football is currently on, and predicts that the fear the sport induces will lead to a bleak future.
“This is a bunch of BS, its total garbage and it’s soft. We are already to the point where we’re scared to have kids in sports. Scared for them to get hurt. Why don’t you just bubblewrap on everybody? Would that help? How about, instead of shoulder pads and helmets, lets just bubble wrap the kids and have them run around practice.”