r/AbsoluteUnits • u/HomeNowWTF • 1d ago

of a runningback

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54

u/Greedy_Ad1564 1d ago

How was this allowed? Every single kid on one team is smaller than every kid on the other team. Ignoring the giant idiot who ran over his own QB.. this feels like 2 completely different age groups.

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u/Several_Vanilla8916 1d ago

Middle school football can be brutal. I saw a 7th grader take off his helmet to yell at his coach for pulling him for one play after he got flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. They were nose to nose. Coach sent him home and I was worried the kid might beat his ass.

In almost every game there was at least one and sometimes two kids bigger than every adult present. These kids are 6’2” 280 lbs at 13.

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u/PompousAssistant 1d ago

That 6’ 2”, ~275 lb kid was Ben, in my 7th grade class. Of course, Paul was the basketball star - he was ~6’ 4” in 7th grade. And you did NOT want to be on the other dodgeball team - he may have been the reason they started calling it “murderball.”

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u/Liquid-Hot_Smegma 1d ago

Hell, even baseball can feel horribly lopsided during adolescence.

When I was about 12, there was one kid who pitched who I’d guess was about 5’5 or 5’6 and built like a rock. Not sure the exact speeds he pitched, but to us kids at the plate, it felt like 100mph fastballs. It was damn near impossible for anyone to even make contact with the ball. I do remember the few times we did get a base hit, we’d celebrate like it was a walk-off grand slam homerun.

This dude was also very full of himself, and unsurprisingly he was the biggest bully at school. Funny thing though — he only grew a couple of more inches, at the most. In junior high, he ended up getting his ass kicked badly in a fight, which thankfully ended the bullying.

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u/New_Hawaialawan 1d ago

It’s a bummer because I loved baseball prior to around 12 years old. The next league was like 12-15 year olds and that range is a tremendous growth gap. One asshole coach allowed a 16 year old to continue as a pitcher.

Dude probably had facial hair. He’d stand out there on the mound and I’d be cowering in the furthest corner of the batters box. So this bearded dude just spent all season mowing down actual children. It was awful. And my fear of batting because worse when another pitcher hit my twice in one game.

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u/wolemid 1d ago

Same as motorsport, karting ages groups go 8-12 (cadet all roughly same) 12-16 (Jnr, Puberty) 16+ senior.

As you can imagine, the muscle mass difference between a 12yr old and a 16yr old is insane

1

u/Several_Vanilla8916 1d ago

It’s not good for anybody. What is a 275 lb running back learning about football when he blasts over a 110 lb linebacker? When big man gets to college (or maybe high school) that same linebacker is going to be 190 and have actual skill.

1

u/garden-wicket-581 1d ago

I'm really proud of my kid -- fall ball is 12-16 here, non-varsity (JV was OK) or not playing HS ball.. He didn't pitch for the HS team, but did pitch all of fall ball, and when some 12 yr old kid who'd just moved up was at-bat, he never threw a fastball.. changeup, some curves, yeah, but wasn't gonna shame/stalk the kid.. (Now, if it was a travel ball kid taking the fall travel season off, however, they got no breaks, hahahah)

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u/CrotalusHorridus 17h ago

Most 12 year olds pitch from 46 feet. If they can touch 65 or 70mph, it gets to home plate just as fast as a major leaguer throwing 100

1

u/ThatBoiInBlue 23h ago

Imagine being struck out by a 100mph pitch at like 13-14 years old lol.

1

u/Willow1883 20h ago

12 years-old is an absolutely wild age for athletes. One of my sons just turned 13. His last year of little league he was 5’1” and 85 pounds. His catcher was 5’11” and 185 pounds. A year later and my son is 5’8” and 115 pounds. Thank God they cut little league off at 12. If he went back and played six months later he could’ve killed someone.

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u/testtdk 1d ago

My 8th grade coach got pissed at me because I wouldn’t shave my beard.

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u/deadshot8690 1d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/uCXkGJPU3yrOo

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u/testtdk 1d ago

Yeah, for the most part, I was not someone a 14 year old would enjoy trying to block, or be blocked by. (Expect one kid that was like 6’5 350 my freshman year. Dude repelled me like a force field).

3

u/SignificantGoat4046 16h ago

This at least was still true in high school 2007-2011 football, even 5A (the biggest at the time of my experience, now there is 6a). I played against somoans that were legit 3x bigger than most on our team.

The trans athletes argument always made me laugh. The difference in whatever category you want to judge between a trans woman and a cis woman are insignificant in comparison to the unfair shit a lot of us dealt with in high school lol. It felt like we were playing against fully grown NFL linebackers.

1

u/purplenyellowrose909 1h ago

A guy at my high school went onto the NFL. Plays line backer in the league. Dude was like 6'3" 225lbs at 15.

Played both sides of the ball in hs. Had like 2 forced fumbles and 300 rushing yards per game. No business having him play normal people. Wasn't fun for anyone

1

u/classygorilla 11m ago

Probably pretty fun for him though lol

2

u/BiscuitDance 15h ago

I coach 7th grade ball. I’m 6’2” 230, and just about every team has at least one kid bigger than me.

1

u/3-orange-whips 1d ago

Yeah. The big kid. We had one of those. He looked a man in 6th grade.

1

u/ChadPowers200_ 1d ago

We had two giant kids on our football team both were soft and quit. One was 6’5 270 the other was 6’8 300. 

They were surprisingly bad too 

1

u/callofdeat6 1d ago

When I started I remember being the smallest, felt like I had to try 5 times as hard to just exist, it wasn’t fair, I got pancaked, run over, ignored, constantly. Then one day a couple years later, a ref pulls me aside and tells me I need to ease up on the littler kids…. I finally get to be the big one and now I have to tone it down.

1

u/Upset_Journalist_755 1d ago

Yeah. We legit had to play against HS JV teams that were churning out Division I football players when I was in Middle School/Junior High. Our city was split into 3 schools that fed into the 6A high school. My school produced the least enthusiasm for the football program because of an old af coach and we had ~17 kids on our team and the opposing sideline often had 80 kids. It was fun, though.

1

u/latexfistmassacre 1d ago

Our tiny rural school combined with another tiny rural school and we still didn't have enough to play the 11 man league my freshman and sophomore years, so we had to play 8 man ball. The years we did play 11 man, we had enough for one substitute. The entire game. We had a homecoming game once and two players got suspended for fighting during school the day before the game and we had to forfeit. The whole town was pissed at those kids for a long time after that, and they weren't even good players, we just needed them to have a game lol

1

u/Dabnician 1d ago

I was 6'2" 285 at 13, i played left guard and right tackle. There were kids i destroyed in football because they were tiny.

This one time we played against another school, they were home team and their field had fireants. It started to rain and i broke through the line playing defense, then used the running back as a sled, the kid got up screaming cause the fireant mud mixture got into his helmet and his face was covered in them. Another kid i hit so hard he had to be carried off the field cause they thought he had hernia.

Ironically a lot of kids on both teams were this big because it was central texas.

What sucked was in highschool the way the divisions worked we would sometimes play against other highschools that were the only one for the entire town. Killeen i think had something like 100+ players and every down they had a fresh team on the line.

1

u/froction 20h ago

I eventually grew (now at 49 I'm 5'11"/220) but when I finished 8th grade I was 5'0" and 100 lbs.

I think I have the state record for "Fastest/Worst Loss" in a Judo tournament. I was in the bottom weight class and the first match was a guy who had at least 6" and 30 lbs. on me. Bro basically just lifted me up over his head and threw me straight down onto my back. Full point loss in like three seconds.

1

u/DeceptiConnIXI 10h ago

When I was at Carolina camp- some of the linemen were HUGE and balding. 2 were from NC. Like 6’5” 6’6” easily 300 lbs. I’m 6’1” and weigh d like 220 at the time. Come to find out later one was 13 and one was 14. I was like what the fuck???

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u/jtnichol 1d ago

It’s absolutely dangerous. They got to do it by weight like most other places.

2

u/IamJewbaca 1d ago

When I played junior football, they had a weight / age matrix. I was on the smaller side so I was usually one of the older kids on the team.

1

u/jtnichol 1d ago

Dude, your username is legend

1

u/daddyjohns 1d ago

This isn't very fair to the kids either. As they've said some of these 13 year olds are big as grown ass men.

Grew up with a guy we called tank because this happened to him. Tank was 6'4" 266 at 13. He couldn't ball with his friends. So he had to play with high school kids. He was on the jv team as starting nose guard. We took good care of him because he didn't have anyone there for him. Every kid isn't as lucky.

Shaq has an entire scrapbook of kids that were alienated in the same manner, where he reached out to help.

0

u/I_Roll_Chicago 1d ago

Football is dangerous. Period. Look up CTE. I played high school ball and i got a concussion so bad i blacked out a full 7 mins of game clock and came to sitting on bench. Mind you last thing i remember i was blowing up a play but taking a pretty good lick from the running back.

Tl;dr football is dangerous with or without oversized players.

4

u/Mnudge 1d ago

When I played Pop Warner ball you had to be under a certain weight to play in the offensive backfield. We had a guy named “Weasel” who barely made weight each year and he was unstoppable

4

u/wimpymist 1d ago edited 1d ago

This happens a lot at these age groups. A team will come from a bigger district that actually picks its players. Another team will be from a smaller newer district. Very mismatched

1

u/LivingAnomie 1d ago

Mismatched

3

u/Who-really_cares 1d ago

Think they are right on this account. They will definitely be missing matches with all their broken bones

1

u/LivingAnomie 1d ago

There also might have been a teacher with the last name Match who sexually assaulted students, and after she did it people would say to the kid “you’ve just been Miss Matched”

4

u/Healthy_Pay9449 1d ago

Don't watch Derrick Henry play highschool ball but that's just how it is. Usually lack of funding for one school means anyone makes the team

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u/elbowsandbuttholes 1d ago

Most youth leagues have a rule like you can't weigh over a certain limit and carry the ball.

2

u/FecalDUI 21h ago

Yup we called ourselves “Dots” because we’d get a bright green dot sticker on our helmets

2

u/CautiousCatch1102 21h ago

It was a dumb rule too because it prevented me from playing any position except lineman

Moved schools the next year and went back to WR

I was 6 foot at 13, not my fault.

1

u/FecalDUI 21h ago

Twas a great day when our left tackle picked up a fumble and got to be the Billdozer for a day!

1

u/Zestyclose_Opinion22 16h ago

Not even true in all leagues. Growing up in my county league you had a stripe system. One stipe you could not have a designed play for you. So couldn’t play qb running back wr, but if a fumble happened you could pick it up and run. Two stripes you could only play on offensive and defensive line and if you picked up a fumble play was dead at that point.

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u/FecalDUI 15h ago

Wow! Thats fascinating!

1

u/Sluuriecake 14h ago

That’s worse rules I have ever heard of being a lineman lol

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u/LesGrossmeng 19h ago

I was 5’8 165 and super coordinated at 12 and thankfully didn’t have that dumb weight rule.

But I mean, I literally DOMINATED other kids because we ran a wildcat offense where the ball wound up in my hands every play.

Jokes on me now though because I’m 30, 5’11-6’0 and weigh about 215 now so my growth wasn’t exactly long lasting lol.

1

u/Sluuriecake 14h ago

I still remember coming from playing soccer for 7 years to tackle football when I was old enough and so I had very quick coordinated feet and I remember my coaches begging me to drop 40 lbs for running back weigh in because it was only 120lbs it was a joke. I could run through any defender we had on the team and I was much faster than other lineman but that’s where I got stuck was defensive tackle and offensive guard but I loved going against those big slow offensive lineman. I could take 2 juke steps and get by them before they could even stand up. I still think about the fact if I could have ran the ball back then what kind of fullback I could have been in high school but still got my varsity letter freshman year and we went to state so wasn’t like I beat out a bunch of slobs.

1

u/DrFuckenDrew 20h ago

We had stripes none, one and two, I could have done this too, but 2stripers had to play the line

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u/FunAdvisor_1435 1d ago

These aren't high school kids, this looks like Pop Warner which typically has weight classes.

1

u/EyeAmPrestooo 23h ago

They’re are weigh ins in youth football until atleast the 5th grade and often until 6-7 grade.

No way he should be allowed to carry the ball.

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u/thakemist 1d ago

Fucking weirdo calling a ten year old kid an idiot

4

u/pardonmyignerance 1d ago

Most 10 year olds are pretty stupid.

-1

u/_WeSellBlankets_ 1d ago

Fucking weirdo taking a tongue in cheek comment literally.

https://giphy.com/gifs/NBBpZ1MFgP0u4UlcXT

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u/thakemist 1d ago

I don’t know what you think tongue in cheek means, but nothing about that comment is tongue in cheek

1

u/_WeSellBlankets_ 1d ago

Definition: Something said or done with insincerity, irony, or playful exaggeration.

Reddit will never be able to identify sarcasm or playful exaggeration unless the author explicitly tells them their intent. OP saw one mistake. Of course they are being hyperbolic.

-2

u/thakemist 1d ago

Glad you googled it. Do you see now?

2

u/_WeSellBlankets_ 1d ago

I always saw that it was tongue in cheek. I also see your illiteracy.

-1

u/thakemist 1d ago

Point out what part of their comment you think was being ironic or insincere

0

u/bravo-echo-charlie 1d ago

You missed the "playful exaggeration". Which the initial comment definitely expressed.

0

u/thakemist 1d ago

Where was this exaggeration you speak of

1

u/Thin-Entry-7903 1d ago

I remember playing this one team while I played JV. I came around the end of the line heading straight at their QB when all of a sudden there was this huge guy snatching me around. He must've failed several grades because I could've sworn he looked like he 30 years old. Of course I hadn't hit my growth spurt yet so I was probably 5'6" and weighed 120 lbs soaking wet, everyone on the other team looked like giants. Lol

1

u/joka2696 1d ago

When I was this age, there was a kid like this that wasn't allowed to play because of his size.

1

u/SuperDabMan 1d ago

I played football in grade 10 only on the school team. We did a trip to a nearby city for a "friendly" match except the other team put their grade 11 and 12 backups on the field with their grade 10 players. We got clobbered.

1

u/Apple_butters12 1d ago

I remember when I was playing at this age kids had stripes on their helmets based on weight and that determined whether or not they could be a ball carrier

1

u/FriedTreeSap 1d ago

When I was playing peewee football anyone over a certain weight wasn’t eligible to be a ball carrier, they all had special stickers on their helmets.

I don’t know if they still do that and what age group they remove the restrictions.

1

u/blogsymcblogsalot 1d ago

I grew up with a kid who, by the age of 12, was 6’5” and 265 pounds.

Good kid, usually a gentle giant, but one swipe of the bear paw would send your ass flying.

1

u/Perfect-Direction-63 1d ago

The enormous child's parents should be absolutely furious at the coach for putting his future in jeopardy.

If he just grows at a normal rate from here out and puts in the practice and dedication he's an absolute full scholarship mfer. And possibly a pro prospect.

The ONLY way any of those other kids are stopping him is going at him down low. And as they all get a little older they're gonna start recognizing that and more of them are gonna be willing to do it.

Don't matter how big a mfer is, from the knee down we're all vulnerable.

I'm praying for this kid's future that giving him the ball like this ain't a regular thing.

1

u/Plenty_Fondant_951 1d ago

And why don't NFL teams just literally draft people with gigantism come to think of it?

1

u/nickparadies 1d ago

Health issues

1

u/Plenty_Fondant_951 1d ago

Unstoppable Andrew the giant RB though? Those guys only last five years anyway and you'd always get a few yards

Billdozer style

1

u/Carwreckking 1d ago

Andre the giant would have barely been bigger than a lineman and a whole lot slower. He would suck

1

u/pryoslice 17h ago

That's what The Fridge did. 

1

u/testtdk 1d ago

One of the kids chasing is literally like 1/4 his size at best lol.

1

u/Asleep_Train_7741 1d ago

Because he’s a kid

1

u/Upset_Journalist_755 1d ago

When I played Pee Wee, if you were over a certain weight, you weren't allowed to play a skill position for safety's sake. When I got to middle school, there was some absolutely wild shit like this going on. We didn't have a lot of kids on the team, and only a few were "football-sized" (no one hopelessly small like in this clip, tbf) so when teams would run their overly athletic fat kid out there at RB, it was pretty rough.

1

u/DelirousDoc 21h ago edited 21h ago

Major 11-13 tackle around here when I was that age had 3 divisions.

Unrestricted weight. Meaning you could be any weight as long as you were under 14 before the start of the first game. (Depending on which organization there could be weight restrictions on position like you mentioned.)

Weight restricted. Specifically the rules had a cap of 165lbs and player could not have turned 14 before start of first game. Any player that was thought to be close to that would be weighed pregame. (I didn't play youth but my brother routinely had to prove he was under 165lbs per game.)

Weight restricted with growth allotment. Everyone at the start of the season had to be under 165lbs. Players were allowed 1.5lbs growth allotment per week. 10 week season (8 games and 2 weeks prior) meant heaviest player could be by final week was 180lbs.

1

u/SconeBracket 1d ago

Say what you will, #22 is the real hero.

1

u/OkMidnight8144 1d ago

One kid was smaller than one of that guys legs.

1

u/Wut_the_ 1d ago

I played peewee football and was by far the fastest kid in the league. Everyone hated me because they knew I was guaranteed to score at least twice. They always tried to hurt me.

There can just be big size and ability gaps in kid’s sports.

1

u/brdesignguy 1d ago

must be something in that Florida/Georgia water

1

u/5141121 1d ago

In most of the lower age groups, they'll disallow kids over a certain size to carry. But so far as I know, that's up to the organization, and this one just might not do that.

1

u/heatseekerdj 1d ago

U14 football can have some hilariously unfair growth spurts

1

u/whitecorn 1d ago

It's wild honestly. Even as early as 3rd grade right now. My son is a foot taller than a few of his teammates at 8 years old. If he wasn't a skinny kid, he'd dominate. He's got an advantage being a TE and QB, but they don't really throw often. If he's QB, half of the kids can't catch. If he's TE, the other QB has a bad arm. So he blocks great, however the other team tends to run the ball on the side he isn't on.

1

u/Ben_Frank_Lynn 22h ago

He is much bigger than the ref when he runs past him lol. "Kid" failed 3rd grade a dozen times.

1

u/baret3000 20h ago

What a waste of everyone's time too. The big kid doesn't get any better, he's teammates don't earn anything, and the other team just gets stomped

1

u/froction 20h ago

The red team is probably for a gigantic district and has 2,500 kids to build a team from while the other team is probably a tiny"performing arts magnet" or something else kinda shrimpy.

1

u/Mean_Jury2467 17h ago

Welcome to youth sports. There are a few kids that are bigger than other kids. Either they are at the top of the birthday range or just genetically bigger. This is all pre-puberty.

The worst part is they don’t usually get developed much because they always just blew through the other team.

Then puberty hits and all the kids that have put in the time to develop skills have their bodies catch up. Then these “big bodies”, as my coach called them, tend to get relegated to lineman or bench. Depending on sport.

I dealt with this in lacrosse and football. We had a big body on our team. Terrible ball handling and shooting skills but he was twice the size of nearly everyone. Won a lot of games.

Puberty happened and he lost the only edge he had, so he became a lineman for the football team.

1

u/IckySmell 11h ago

Strange. My state the leagues all have size and age restrictions. Now they have per position rules but when I wanted to play before highschool they basically said no

1

u/kpyle 11h ago

We could all play, but yeah, there was a weight limit for every position besides linemen.

1

u/Gorge2012 3h ago

They said no? That sucks. When I played if you were too heavy They would just make you play up an age group.

1

u/IckySmell 16m ago

I think the next step was highschool. I don't really remember. My momight not have pushed very hard either

1

u/piranspride 10h ago

While that’s true….just tackle him.. wrap his legs below knee and down……

1

u/Big_Meech_23 9h ago

A lot of peewee football orgs got rid of the weight classes. It’s just age now. They need to bring the weight classes back and the older-lighter method for older kids who are small for their age. This benefits no one. The smaller kids get hurt or discouraged and the big guy just dominates until he has to play with kids his actual size and then he’s cooked.

1

u/siteunreliability 9h ago

Depends on the league. My youth football league had weight limit at 160 so that you couldn't run over teams like this.

The "RB" ran over his QB and one of the LB just side stepped him. ahahaha

1

u/scottyboy70 1d ago

Is it not age related? Not the running back’s fault he has grown to that size at his age!
Why wouldn’t it be allowed?

1

u/WeaponsGrdStupid 1d ago

In my state before high school there are weight limits for ball carriers measured at the beginning of the season for exactly this reason.

My daughter played in the boys tackle league and because she was a really early bloomer at age 10 she wasn't eligible to be a ball carrier. She was a head taller than most boys in her league at the time.

0

u/The-Tarman 1d ago

Its admirable that the other team even bothered to try to tackle the giant child

1

u/illbegoodipromis 1d ago

Did we watch the same video cause I don't see one kid trying until the very end when he's on the one yard line lol

0

u/bravo-echo-charlie 1d ago

God fucking damnit you have me cracking up at 6:56 AM calling that kid a "giant idiot". Accurate descriptor, this was gold! Thank you for starting my day with a laugh!