4 hours ago, New Colonel said:

Ok, so why do you have varsity, jv, and freshmen teams if you don't have enough kids to actually field those teams.  There is ZERO reason to have even a single player play in 3 games in a week.  

Either you have enough players or you don't.  As I stated this is wreckless and not safe for players involved.  USA football recommends 1 full contact game or scrimmage per week, and here there are people advocating for kids playing 3x a week?  So much for player safety.

Good thing literally zero kids play three full football games a week. I don't understand what is so hard to understand about 6 minute quarters.

Let's probably trust the judgement of some very experienced high school football coaches before we blast their practices as reckless and not safe for players, just a thought.

1 hour ago, New Colonel said:

Ok, so why do you have varsity, jv, and freshmen teams if you don't have enough kids to actually field those teams.  There is ZERO reason to have even a single player play in 3 games in a week.  

Either you have enough players or you don't.  As I stated this is wreckless and not safe for players involved.  USA football recommends 1 full contact game or scrimmage per week, and here there are people advocating for kids playing 3x a week?  So much for player safety.

This structure would be the equivalent of playing JV the first half and Freshman the second half of a game. They are just calling it a double header and shortening the quarters. KHSAA Limits participation to "8 Quarters" per week. I think this is a misunderstanding of the structure provided. I would actually argue it is safer than trying to mix in weak freshman vs developed juniors. This also allows staying out one school night rather than two. 

 

Zero difference between a single JV game and a single Varsity game per week. They're are just designating that ability levels play against each other. 

This isn't about minutes. It's about number of days with full contact.  I don't know what's so hard to understand about that.  

And  again, why is there a need for this.  If you don't have the numbers for a separte freshmen team, you don't have one.  It really is that simple.  If you don't have enough players for a separate JV, then again, you roll Varsity only.  Nobody should be playing 8 quarters, ever.  But hey, USA football must not know anything.

52 minutes ago, New Colonel said:

This isn't about minutes. It's about number of days with full contact.  I don't know what's so hard to understand about that.  

And  again, why is there a need for this.  If you don't have the numbers for a separte freshmen team, you don't have one.  It really is that simple.  If you don't have enough players for a separate JV, then again, you roll Varsity only.  Nobody should be playing 8 quarters, ever.  But hey, USA football must not know anything.

So, 3 days of “full contact” is too much? Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday? When hardly anybody actually goes to the ground during practice?

So you have 30/40 kids that don’t start varsity, they just shouldn’t get a game to play in? Yikes.

5 hours ago, New Colonel said:

This isn't about minutes. It's about number of days with full contact.  I don't know what's so hard to understand about that.  

And  again, why is there a need for this.  If you don't have the numbers for a separte freshmen team, you don't have one.  It really is that simple.  If you don't have enough players for a separate JV, then again, you roll Varsity only.  Nobody should be playing 8 quarters, ever.  But hey, USA football must not know anything.

“Hey Coach, we have about 40 of our 60 kids who should be playing JV/Freshman ball, we want all of them to get reps, not just the best 22, how do you feel about about playing the first half with the best 20 and the second half with the bottom 20?”

“We could come back and play you guys freshman level on Thursday, but why don’t we just make one trip on Monday instead, we’ll shorten the quarters also so we aren’t out all night”

The extreme situation that I think you are implying creates 3 games a week:

One thing coach, our junior QB rolled his ankle walking his dog Sunday, if we play our freshman QB in both games, only on offense, getting about 40 snaps, would he be eligible if our starting QB goes down for any reason Friday? Oh, and he’s our holder on special teams, if he’s not eligible on Friday, our other 19 kids may not get work in cause they don’t have a QB”

yes, by KY bylaw he is eligible if your varsity starter gets hurt and your backup isn’t good to go back in. 

this is basically what this league  is saying. It’s not proposing “3 games a week” it’s just making it possible for the programs who are in between having 3 levels get extra work in for everyone. 

I didn’t realize it was causing such a fuss, it’s a pretty good solution to having 3 separate nights where freshman are out late. 
 

coaches get well-being of the players and let’s be clear- most of the time “quarters” are playing offense during JV and kickoff return on Friday, that literally counts as 8 quarters. One snap per quarter counts. 
 

many times, a varsity backup who goes in on third down as a corner may play offense during JV so round out their game. This is the what the 8 quarter rule is for.
 

it’s been like this for as long as I’ve been around the game. 

19 hours ago, wingt51 said:

So you have 30/40 kids that don’t start varsity, they just shouldn’t get a game to play in? Yikes.

When did I say they shouldn't get a game?  If you have 30-40 kids that don't start varsity, I believe that is precisely what JV is for.  Sounds like a great opportunity to play in that game.  

If we are bringing together JV and freshmen to be played on same day to save on travel / to make field availablity better / to better accommodate referee shortage then I'm all for it.

What I'm not for is having kids play in 3 separate games. Even with shorter quarters.  It doesn't make any sense.  If you have the numbers to justify 3 separate teams (varsity, jv, and frosh) then you play those kids in 3 separate games accordingly.  If you have that many kids playing between let's say frosh and jv, then 1 of the teams needs to go.  

If you are a coach who is playing a stud frosh kid in both frosh and jv games because he is good enough to play jv, then you as a coach are a problem.  Either that kid should be just playing on the jv team, or just the frosh team.  If that means "less talented" jv kids have to play, so be it.  That's kind of the entire point of jv.

I didn't realize I was causing such an uproar about this, but player safety should be #1 and no player should be playing in 3 games regardless.  No player should be playing in 8 quarters either for that matter unless it is a weird situation where like Appalachian said, our jv QB happens to the varsity holder. 

On 4/23/2026 at 9:11 PM, ChiefSmoke said:

Quarters are six minutes. Legally, they can play every single minute. But, that has never happened. The guys that play on Monday play limited reps on Friday.

Going to be interesting, wow. 

20 minutes ago, DiamondGator23 said:

Going to be interesting, wow. 

This is not some new upstart thing. Been happening for a couple years now with raving reviews. As @ChiefSmoke said, even more schools are adopting it.

4 minutes ago, wingt51 said:

This is not some new upstart thing. Been happening for a couple years now with raving reviews. As @ChiefSmoke said, even more schools are adopting it.

I have never heard of it until reading about it this morning, I get the idea of it if it works it works, I'm just all about player safety and everyone playing to the highest level. 

3 hours ago, DiamondGator23 said:

I have never heard of it until reading about it this morning, I get the idea of it if it works it works, I'm just all about player safety and everyone playing to the highest level. 

I have tried to bite my tongue on this entire topic however the uneducated comments about player safety directed at our programs have crossed the line. I am proud of our player development model, safety is always the priority.   

We put kids who are in the developmental phase of football against others who are developing. It allows them to get reps against kids of like skill level.  We have coaches who get along with each other and have like goals. I can only speak for our program none of the kids in the "developmental" game get reps on Friday. JV games on Monday are more competitive but very limited/if any participation from the "developmental kids".

We will coach our program, our numbers are growing in our program and this model has helped tremendously. I take it personally to help grow the game of football. We have close to 50 kids participating in spring practice currently, with a large group of incoming freshman coming in next year. 

I will also add in our case, most times in these games kids are only playing one side of the ball. Again developing kids!

So I am proud of what we are doing!

On 4/30/2026 at 9:22 AM, SC Fball HC said:

I have tried to bite my tongue on this entire topic however the uneducated comments about player safety directed at our programs have crossed the line. I am proud of our player development model, safety is always the priority.   

We put kids who are in the developmental phase of football against others who are developing. It allows them to get reps against kids of like skill level.  We have coaches who get along with each other and have like goals. I can only speak for our program none of the kids in the "developmental" game get reps on Friday. JV games on Monday are more competitive but very limited/if any participation from the "developmental kids".

We will coach our program, our numbers are growing in our program and this model has helped tremendously. I take it personally to help grow the game of football. We have close to 50 kids participating in spring practice currently, with a large group of incoming freshman coming in next year. 

I will also add in our case, most times in these games kids are only playing one side of the ball. Again developing kids!

So I am proud of what we are doing!

I like it. 

@ChiefSmoke is there anywhere that the results from the games in the leather helmet league are being posted? I haven't seen any final scores from either of the first two weeks of games showing up on Arbiter as of yet.

5 hours ago, Colonels_Wear_Blue said:

@ChiefSmoke is there anywhere that the results from the games in the leather helmet league are being posted? I haven't seen any final scores from either of the first two weeks of games showing up on Arbiter as of yet.

Here you go! The results are not what we want. But our young guys have played a boatload of live reps. Of the 88 clips from last night, we put notes on 44 and sent to the young guys. That helps to make those live reps more productive. Those young guys LOVE watching themselves on video and they are hungry for feedback on how they can improve.

We have 70 guys on our total roster. With 3 games a week, almost all of them are getting live quality reps.