Youth Sports - Eternally Screwed Up

(I wrote this blog post in August and held off posting this just in case this year was different. it wasn't so I am now releasing this blog post with an update at the bottom)

     I'm not even going to talk about the parents of kids in sports. That is a blog post all on it's own. They are the worst people to be around or associate with. Parents promise to promote teamwork and to kee their mouth shut when it comes to coaching......until it comes to their little shining star of a son or daughter. Then all HELL breaks loose.

I am here to discuss the business/political side. Let's talk pop warner football as a great example, even though this blog relates to all sports.

For those of you who don't know what goes on, I will give you a peek at the insanity.

1. you pay anywhere from $300-$400 to play.  That includes your equipment which the last 10 years has been worn by pop warner kids and seriously needs to be burned and replaced. But the league continues to sew, tape, and screw back together the football gear. You also have to give them a $50 snack bar check, in case you don't do your snack bar duty.

2. you also are required to work the snack bar for two days, which raises money for Pop Warner. Pop warner works you, doesn't pay you and keeps all the money for themselves. Surprised the gov't doesn't grab on to that money.

3. you also must do 2 fund raisers which raises more money for Pop Warner. They don't pay you anything and keep all the money for themselves. At this point your asking what is the $350 I paid going toward if I am raising all this money.

4. your team is also required to get 2 sponsors for $250 each. Now this part I understand. This money is for the kids pizza parties, gear bags or jackets. This is totally cool, unless you get a coach that decides to keep the money and not spend it on the kids.

5. you also get to sit for 2 hours a day at practice and watch your son practice......Um......let me rephrase that. You get to watch the predetermined stars practice and your son either stands there and gets hit over and over or just watches plays he will never get to do.  Then your son gets yelled out for not paying attention to plays he will never get to experience.

6. Then the team schedules a a parents road trip to raise more money. Every kid's parent is required to pay in money even if they can't go on this trip, because......I don't know why. Sorry.

So now it's game day and if your president of the league or sit on the board or are a coach, then it's going to be a great day. Your going to see your son play the whole game in a position he may or may not know how to play well. The other kids are what we call "minimum player kids" This means that they have to play at least 8-12 plays depending on your league. Those are the kids that are not shown anything about football other than how to hit a player or how to avoid getting hit.

As in professional sports, you lose as a team, but when you win, it's a certain player that gets the game ball.

So if you are the parent of a minimum player you have spent about $1000 when it's all said and done and spent about 100 hours on the practice field watching your son practice to play 10 plays in a real game. Each play in a game is on average about 15 seconds long unless it's that special breakaway play when the guy runs the length of the field. So a minimum player plays a total of 25 minutes the whole season.

I know I don't have to write another word about this, but let's review:

$1000 + 100 hours of your time = 25 minutes of football for you kid.

go back a reread the above equation until your head explodes.

You swear it won't happen again next year and yet every summer your kids starts whining how he wants to play football, again.

So starting Aug 1st, 2012  if anyone needs me, I will be on the grass field, with my laptop, a mobile hotspot, and a TV tray blogging about how my son isn't learning a DAMN thing about football or how to play the game.

There! I said it and every parent feels it. What are your feelings or experiences with the insane world of unorganized youth sports?

UPDATE: 11/19/12:
So this year's football has come to an end and THANK GOD. Another year of the same crap. I thought it was different. I thought I wasn't even going to post this blog that I wrote months ago, but the same thing happened. The league is completely unorganized, they talk about teamwork and having fun and you still see the favoritism and it's all about winning. My son is so discouraged from standing on the sideline game after game being a minimum player. He never wants to do pop warner again. His team couldn't score 1 point in many of their games and yet for some reason they thought Jack was not good enough to play. My son can lose as good as any of those starters. LOL

If my son does change his mind like last year, I promise you I will not be apart...... okay, I WILL be apart of my son's life and support him in this stupid, unorganized, completely money driven and political event called Youth Sports.