2009 NFHS Football Questionnaire

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by ajmc

Just a personal observation, but the flexibility and reliance on individual judgment adapting to circumstance, inherent to the NFHS code, seems more adaptable to the general skill level and execution capability of the middle and high school general population....

Having rules codes designed specifically for these different levels, with their different capabilities, generally makes sense and has worked pretty well for multiple generations of student athletes. The current system certainly "ain't broke".

True, but many of the differences between Fed & NCAA came about just thru separate judgments of what each thought was good for football in general, rather than because of the players' maturity. (And sometimes there've been other considerations, like cost.) Penalty enforcement differences, for instance -- Fed has been most conservative -- have nothing to do that I can tell with the player skill or maturity levels, thought they might have a little to do with the mental burden on the greater number of officials.

Originally Posted by Welpe

I don't necessarily disagree though Texas and Massachusetts have both adapted NCAA rules for their middle school and high school football programs and it seems to work fine for them.

Texas always has. Mass. was the last state HSA to join Fed for football, and later left.

Various state HSAAs and local leagues had started to make separate adaptations of NCAA rules before Fed developed their own adaptation of same. So it was really a matter of developing 2 codes in widespread use rather than many more in narrower use.

For years Fed & NCAA had a liaison committee for football, yet they didn't achieve a significant net reduction in their rules differences. Not that they were necessarily trying for that; it was more like, let's look over these things together.