American Football has been a beloved sport by the U.S.A. since 1920. It is celebrated among many, is often viewed at holiday events with family members, and is valued for its tradition and honorable comradery; however, recently there has been a change in the rules that follow the sport.

“There is a committee called the SMAC committee made up of doctors and athletic trainers that brought forth the new rules. The new rules are that you can play in two games per week, but not within 24 hours of each other. You can’t have contact the day before or after the game,” said varsity football coach Sam Baker.
While some argue that football should not be changed due to its history among homes and families in America, others argued that precautions for safety had to be put into place.

“The rules were intended to help prevent the amount of contact a player has in a given week. The rules have not been successful, and we have seen the same amount of injuries,” Baker said.
Some of the players disagree with the new rules. They argue that it prohibits them from getting enough contact in for practice and affects their game plan.

“I don’t like them because we aren’t able to get a lot of contact into our practices, and it also doesn’t allow junior varsity to get the whole week for practice,” said varsity football player Matt Staudt.
Despite the lack of contact and the changes in practices, some players believe that there are benefits to the new rules.

“In some ways it’s beneficial because it prevents us from getting injured frequently,” said varsity football player junior Noah Green.

Due to the rule that does not allow two days of contact in a row, the schedule for the football games has been altered this year. Junior varsity will no longer be playing on Saturdays.

“We have switched our JV games from Saturday mornings to Mondays. With JV games on Mondays, it has affected our Monday practices because we can only do film and walk throughs. We can’t get as much done compared to when we have the JV players. On Tuesdays, we get affected as well because the JV players can’t participate in contact, ” Baker said.

The football team has just started their season with a win against Waukegan and has struggled the last four weeks losing against Deerfield, Antioch, Lakes and North Chicago. The team looks forward to the season ahead of them.

“We are currently 1-4. We are a young team that has a lot of talent. We need to continue to get better every week to accomplish our goals. If we can take care of the football and continue to play great defense, we can make the playoffs,” Baker said.