Halford & Brough in the Morning - The Decline Of Kids In Football

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

In hour one, Mike and Jason reunite look back at what happened in sports over the weekend. They talk to Seth Emerson about the decline of participation numbers in football.  This podcast is produced by Andy Cole and Greg Balloch. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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50 home runs. Aaron Judge has done it again. You're off to an awesome start, buddy. Good morning, Vancouver. 6.01 on a Monday. Happy Monday, everybody. It's Alfred. It is Brough. It is Sportsnet 650.

We are coming to you live from the Kintex Studios in beautiful Fairview Slopes in Vancouver. Jason, good morning. Good morning. A-Dog is on vacation. We're back. We are back morning. Good morning. A-Dog is on vacation. We're back. We are back. Lena's in for A-Dog. Good morning, Lena.

I'm sorry in advance, everybody. It's okay. It's okay. Lena's in and Laddie's in as well. Good morning, Laddie. Hello, hello. Halford & Ruffin in the Morning is brought to you by Vancouver Honda. Vancouver Honda is Vancouver's premier destination for Honda customers.

They have a friendly, knowledgeable staff that can help with anything you're looking for, be it sales, financing, service, or parts. We are coming to you live from the Kintec Studio. Kintec, Canada's favorite orthotics provider, powered by thousands of five-star Google reviews. So, Arfie, what are you waiting for? Kintec, that's what you're waiting for. We talked about this.

We talked about this. I told Halford that Josh was valiantly trying to copy everything he did, including screwing up reads. Well, he did that a few times early on, and he also still did the Kintec. That's what you're waiting for. And I was like, the whole idea behind you just saying Kintec is that you would just hit the Kintec. Just hit it. Just be just saying Kintec is that you were like, just like hit the Kintec.

Just hit it. Just be like Kintec. And then you had to move on. That's what you're waiting for. Kintec. That's what you're waiting for. And I told him, told him not to do that anymore. God, I miss Jamie Dodd and Josh.

They listened. I do know. Welcome back, buddy. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks. I'm excited to be back. Guest list today begins at 6.30. Seth Everson is going to join the program.

He is a senior writer for The Athletic, and his new piece is, football has never been more popular to watch, but are there fewer players? He covers the SEC, and he covers Kirby, Smart, and Georgia in particular. And there's a big decline in high school, and then even at the collegiate level.

There's less people playing football than ever. You know what're playing flag football oh okay they're all trying to get into the olympics in 2028 so i feel like it's just gonna be like it's injuries it's yeah the crippling concussions are usually what is keeping people it's not it's not the same as well maybe there's some reasons i don't know it's not the same as like hockey where i know some parents are worried about concussions and that sort of thing. But it's more like we cannot afford to mortgage our home again. So there is so expensive. There is a cost.

Running a high school football program is a very expensive enterprise for the school. And then it just sort of becomes one of those things where there's not a huge decline. But it's actually the ages that kids are getting into football is later and later is they don't really want kids playing at 11 and 12. A lot of the parents. So we'll talk to Seth about that at six 30. We've got a football heavy show. He has a seven o'clock Mike Tannier,

our NFL insider from the two deep zone is going to join us. We'll go around some of the stories that came from the weekend. There's a couple quarterback jobs still up for grabs. He wrote something really interesting on where russell wilson is at and talking about how his hall of fame candidacy has just completely plummeted over the last few years and he said he said at one point it was like almost a foregone conclusion that russ was going to be in the hall of fame like two years ago and now all of a sudden you're looking at a totally different guy who may not be the day one starter

uh for the pittsburgh am i the day one starter for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Am I the only one that gets guys like Jared Stidham and Jacoby Brissett mixed up? I'm like, they're the same person to me. Yeah, no. Do you know what I mean? Like, they're the same player. Those two are a little different. No, but do you know what I mean?

Like, their names, it's like, who's Bo Nix trying to beat out? Is it Stidham or Jacoby Brissett? And Drake May is trying to beat out. That one's fair because they both kind of all played for the same team. Well, they start with Jay, too, right? But they're kind of like they're quarterbacks in the NFL, but they're not really starting quarterbacks. Right.

So the one that's still up for grabs with Jacoby Brissett is Jacoby Brissett and Drake May. Bo Nix has beaten out Jarrett Stidham. Yes. And Jarrett Stidham's upset about that. Drake May's going to get it, though. It seems like it. Because which one is it good?

Again, Jacoby Brissett kind of got roughed up on the weekend. So we can talk to Mike Tanier about that at 7 o'clock, 7.30. Brendan Batchelor, play-by-play voice of the Vancouver Canucks, is going to join the program. More news as Frege got in on the Thatcher Demko and Ian Clark and Vancouver Canucks goaltending discussion in his most recent 32 Thoughts over the weekend. So Batch will join us at 7.30 to talk about all that and more.

Now, I missed, apparently, the hit of the century with Moj on Friday. Yeah. Last of the grand total of two and a half, three minutes. He's like, how's it going? The Lions, it's gut check time. We're taking off. Bye. And then they lost again. Yes. Five in taking off. Bye. And then they lost again.

Yes. Five in a row. Yeah. Season might be slipping away. That was so frustrating to watch. It was just like, so we had Ryan Phillips on earlier in the week, and he was the defensive coordinator. And he was like, yeah, we got to do a better job of tackling.

And then the Lions did a worse job of tackling against Ottawa. I mean, it can't have been the same or it certainly wasn't better. It was bad. And yet, at the same time, they were still in it for most of the game. Right. Despite all the bad play on defense

and the three turnovers by Nathan Roark because Roark did manage to make a few plays. And now we got this game coming up in Victoria on Saturday. Touchdown Pacificific they call it the rematch against the pacific ocean they do another one called touchdown atlantic that's a different do that someday yeah they didn't do that it shows how big canada is uh so um you know ahead of that there is a looming quarterback controversy. And also, the team isn't very good right now.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. When I went on vacation, everything seemed like it was fine. Hunky-dory for the British Columbia Lions, who are now 5-6 and in third place in the West Division. So we'll talk to Moj about that at 8. Brandon Batchelor at 7.30. Mike Tanney at 7.00. Seth Emerson at 6.30.

That's the show on a Monday. Laddie, let's tell everybody what happened. Hey, did you guys see the game last night? No. What happened? I missed all the action because I was... We know how busy your life can be. What happened?

You missed that? What happened? What Happened is brought to you by the BC Construction Safety Alliance. Making safety simpler by giving construction companies the best in tools, resources, and safety training. Visit them online at bccsa.ca So I'll try not to do too much navel gazing about the month that I had off, but before I went on vacation, the

British Columbia Lions were in a completely different position than they are right now. Losers of five straight, now five and six on the year, this after a 34-27 loss to the Red Blacks of Ottawa on Saturday night. A loss so damaging that it forced sideline reporter Farhan Lalji into a 10-minute uninterrupted Twitter recap analysis video

in which he broke down everything that's gone wrong for this team and everything has gone wrong for this team. Well, here's the thing. You know me. I love a good scapegoat. I don't know who to scapegoat for this team. Well, here's the thing. You know me. I love a good scapegoat. I don't know who to scapegoat for this team. There's so much going on. You can't pin Saturday's loss on any one part of this nose-diving team.

Nathan Roark did make some plays, especially with his legs, but he didn't take care of the ball. Had another interception, a couple fumbles, and the defense continued to struggle with missed tackles. And I mentioned that that was something that Ryan Phillips spoke about last week on the show, and you could see his frustration on the sideline when they were trying to get a stop,

especially late in the game, because they wanted to get the ball back. And it wasn't even close to getting a stop at times. There were these second-long opportunities, which the Red Black blacks easily converted. And it was, uh, yeah, it was tough. So Saturday in Victoria where Nathan Mark was born, by the way, he grew up in Oakville, but he was born, uh, in Victoria. It's a rematch of the lions and the red blacks.

And I guess we'll see if Vernon Adams is healthy enough to come off the bench at the very least. We can talk to Moj about that. I can't imagine they're going to name a new starter. Even if Vernon Adams was 100% healthy, I don't think they're going to go into the Victoria game, especially and be like... Right.

And I also don't think Nathan Mark has been... We all expected some rust. And there's been some rust. But I don't think he was so bad on Saturday that you were like, we can't play this guy. He needs to take care of the ball better. He knows that. He hasn't played meaningful football for a long time. He was bad in the first game.

He was mediocre in the second game. So hopefully he continues to improve. In two games played since signing with the Lions on August 13th, Rourke has thrown for 360 passing yards, one touchdown, and three interceptions with the Lions. So that's not great, although that stat line didn't include some of the great plays he's made with his feet. Yep.

Here's the good news for the Lions. Is there good news? Yeah, there is. At 5-6, winning the West is still in the cards for the Lions because the West is the new East. Yeah, I saw that. The East is the new West. The East is the new West.

So Saskatchewan that lost on a walk-off rouge the other day in Toronto. I wasn't paying attention to a lot of sports on vacation. And then when there was a walk-off rouge, I was like, ah, I'm back. Got the alert on your phone. What was better? I have a walk-off rouge alert. What was better, the walk-off rouge in the CFL or the walk-off bunt in the Little League World Series?

We'll get to that in a sec. We'll get to that later. I broke down the video with Laddy this morning talking about poor bunt defense. He's like screaming at these children on the screen. Staples of Little League Baseball. So you're blaming the second baseman, right? He wasn't there? So, all

I'm saying is that when you have a bunt defense put in place, if it's down the first baseline, general rule of thumb is the pitcher goes in fields and the first baseman goes and covers. Then the second baseman goes behind first base in case there's an overthrow. This one, the pitcher goes in fields, the first baseman goes and covers. Then the second baseman goes behind first base in case there's an overthrow. This one, the pitcher and

the first baseman bombed into field the bunt. I don't know what the second baseman was doing. The second baseman was like, look at those guys go. Hey guys, go get the ball. And then the right fielder just stood in right field. Anyway, it was not... You could tell the pitcher was like, someone will be there. We've practiced this millions of times.

You know what? I bet they didn't because no one bunts anymore. Right. At any rate. These pathetic children couldn't pull off a bunt play. Come on. Come on. Like a small ball, right? I mean, you're in a What are they even doing in Taiwan? What are they doing? Figure it out! Anyway, we were talking about the Lions.

Here's the good news for the Lions. They're 5-6. They used to be 5-1. Ah, those were good days good news for the Lions. They're 5-6. They used to be 5-1. Ah, those were good days. So is Winnipeg, 5-6. And in first place in the division, 5-5-1, the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Now, you probably expect Winnipeg to win this division. They had a bad start. They're better than their record suggests.

But Calgary's 4-6, Edmonton's 3-8, the division stinks. So the division is still there. Two problems for the Lions, and this is the bad news. First of all, they keep losing. Yeah, that's bad. So that's a problem. The second problem is their next three games are against the three best teams in the league. And it's weird to say this, but the three best teams in the league,

at least based on their record, is Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. They got to run the gauntlet of the Eastern teams. Yeah. So I feel bad that this is another sort of offshoot of the Halford and Brough jinx where we get excited about something going into either a season or a game or a weekend, and then it only falls incredibly flat. So prior to this season we were pretty

excited about the bc lions prospects for what was on the horizon there was the touchdown pacific game which was going to be very cool of course hosting the gray cup then the narrative i thought when rort came back was i was like oh this is perfect like sports writer's dream you know the the prodigal son returns he's gonna take the team over at a moment where they needed a quarterback because Vernon Adams was hurt. They can't play defense a lick. Like, I went back and watched a couple of the lowlights from how bad the tackling was. Yeah, it was awful, man.

And I alluded to Farhan's video analysis on Twitter. And it was a scathing review from him. It was a scathing review from all of the pundits and journalists that were watching the game, like saying things like, it's not professional grade football. Like, that's damning, not just for any team, but for a team that has aspirations of being the host and also being in the Grey Cup.

I mean, right now. And I saw some people on Twitter. It's like, you got to fire Ryan Phillips. I'm like, what? What's he going to teach him to tackle? You know, one of the interesting things. One of the interesting things. I mean, Rick Campbell, we can have a conversation about Ryan Phillips.

That conversation might be happening right now. I think everyone's focused on the Rourke angle and story and situation. To me, that's almost secondary at this point. Because you just kind of assume that he'll figure it out like he hasn't played games i'm not worried about rark what everyone should a little bit worried about rark not 100% where there was another off-season departure that was maybe even bigger and that was when matthew betts went to the the nfl and it's funny because if you talk to what what's plaguing the lions on defense right now one they can't tackle and two they don't have any playmakers well your best playmaker who had 18

sacks last year is now trying to make the destroy i love i love when people justified that too it's like i took a lot of penalties i was like yeah you got less sacks yeah i'll take the penalties he got 18 sacks in 18 games and you you can't rush the quarterback right now the only way you can do it is by dialing up blitz yeah you remember, you remember how we talked about the Seahawks at times over the last few years, and we were like, who are the guys on defense that you're like, that guy's going to make a play, or that guy's going to blow up a play in a good way?

That was the whole reason they went out and got Jamal Adams, was he supposed to be this hybrid playmaker that was just going to do things all over, and it never materialized. Did it work? It did not. But he was a good guy, though, right? He was great.

Everyone loved him. Okay, let's talk about Freedj entering the Demco discussion in 32 Thoughts. I'm just going to read this verbatim because you missed all this stuff. And Freedj writes, and if you want to read his latest 32 Thoughts, it's up on sportsnet.ca.

And he writes, the thing that surprised most about Ian Clark stepping away from day-to-day Vancouver goalie duties was the timing. Usually those decisions are made earlier in the summer. And then he used the Rangers as an example. The Rangers announced Benoit Allaire's replacement this week, but they knew it was a foregone conclusion during the season. This one, Vancouver, unfolded pretty recently and pretty quickly. What to watch for will be how or if

Thatcher Demko's workload, both on and off the ice, changes under new supervision. No one is really sure about his timeline. That's bad. No one is really sure about his timeline. That's bad. No one is really sure about his timeline. The Canucks wanted Demko, who was recovering from injury, to play preferably twice before last year's playoffs. Remember this?

I do. End of the season. Are we going to see Demko shake off the rust? And then he'll be ready for the playoffs. That's exactly how it went. And they wanted him to play so they knew if they could count on him. He made those two appearances and then won game one versus Nashville. Then he broke down and did not return in the playoffs.

It wasn't an unreasonable request, but Freed poses this question. Did Demko, like any athlete would, push himself too hard to hit that target? And what does that mean for the future? Okay. So let's break down what Freed wrote a little bit. And by the way, I know a lot of people might roll their eyes when the goalie coach becomes a star of the soap opera. It's a goalie coach in August, but that's the market we're in.

And if you do care about this story, you do have to wonder what happened that this announcement came out so late in the offseason. And the reason people like to know this is because we like to think that everything's running pretty smoothly. Right? Behind the scenes, they're not going to get to, you know, it's less than one month now to training camp. We'd be like, wait a minute, who's our goalie coach anyway? Right? Well, there's also a course of action historically for NHL teams and how things are done and when they're done.

And there's a sort of protocol. It's just out there, right? Teams often don't make fairly significant staffing decisions in late August. We have a little bit of market-related PTSD here with the last management group where things didn't always run smoothly behind the scenes and things like this would crop up a little too often. They kept running out of time. Now I'm not trying to suggest that there was some big blowout fight between,

you know, Jim Rutherford and Patrick Alveen and Ian Clark, but you know, maybe there was. Who's to say? Halford's back now. So we can just get right into like this base of speculation. Josh wasn't really willing to play that game. He was terrified for his game. We are.

Yeah, he was. Mine's half over. More than half, buddy. Anyway, I'm sure Demko is just dying to talk about all of this when he meets with the media, whenever that may be. You know who else I'd like to hear from? Ian Clark. Yep.

He didn't get a quote in the press release which is sometimes telling because sometimes when they uh when when someone of ian clark's stature moves on they'll do the quote from the general manager and there was a very long quote from patrick alveen explaining this situation you're kind of like you're really explaining this seems like you have something to like, you're really explaining this. It seems like you have something to explain here, but nothing from Ian Clark and Ian Clark hasn't spoken to anyone, at least on the record. And I'll also be curious to see if any other team approaches Clark to join

their organization as director of goaltending. Right. And then he would leave the Canucks because that would be a promotion for him. And Dolly Wall and Drance wrote about this in The Athletic. Now, he will, I'm sure, feel some loyalty. I'm talking about Ian Clark to Thatcher Demko and Marco Terranes, where he might want to remain with the organization, right? Mm-hmm.

But something happened here, guys. Like this isn't just like there's nothing to see here. There's nothing to see here. There's something a little bit to see here. And hanging over all of this, and this is the really important thing, is like we don't know when Thatcher Demko is going to be ready to play. And I think there's probably a lot of you out there that are worried about Thatcher Demko's just overall health and whether or not the Canucks are going to be

able to rely on this guy going forward. Don't forget, two years left on his contract. So it's next offseason when they could theoretically make their decision on the future of Thatcher Demko in Vancouver. Yeah. And I think, you know, the Clark story is one that we might never get full clarity on. We might never get the peek behind the curtain as to what exactly happened. And that's fine. Goalie coaches move on. Organizations manage to overcome the losses of even highly acclaimed ones because there's a bunch of other guys out there that are looking to make their mark in a similar fashion. That's not the issue.

The issue is a hundred percent. The Demco's health moving forward. The timing of this as free pointed out was curious because one, it was so late in the summer and two, it was almost like the two narratives were lining up on the highway against one another racing for like, well, you got the Ian Clark situation.

You got the Demco health. Well, uncertainty is always interesting, right? Right. So you've got the Demco health uncertain um you've got how will demko perform without ian clark helping him out on a day-to-day basis without ian clark being out on the ice i'm sure marco terenius is a good goalie coach one of my favorite goalie coaches of all time. I've had my eye on him for a while.

Love the work that he's done. I was watching him in the KHL. And so, but we don't know. We don't know. Like, the bar, that's high for Ian Clark. Ian Clark's considered one of the best goalie coaches in the league, if not the history of the game. He's a very good goalie coach.

I know there's probably, like, one Canuck fan out there. you know the canucks fans that'll refuse to worry about anything sure like nothing is worth worrying about i bet there's at least one canuck fan that has said in the past don't worry about this goalie or don't worry about the goalie situation we've got ian clark so might have said that in the past but now is saying don't worry about this situation. Ian Clark is still with the organization. He's just hanging around. He's having a good time. The other thing,

and you brought up where Demko's at in his career arc in terms of contracting. Yeah, that would be the other uncertainty part, right? Yeah, I'm locked up. No, one of the things that I always bring up with Demko isn't necessarily that he's like one of the elite goalies in the NHL and you need him in the lineup

because he's part of that core. He's also it with on a five million dollar a year hit like when that contract's up that cap hit escalates totally i mean you're looking at go look at some of the other elite goalies in the nhl and i mean look at what shisterkin will eventually cash in there's going to be a big ticket unless his health completely falls off which is another conversation for a long time and then that's not good though but i mean you look at demco great we get him for a bargain i mean you've got demco who's a vesna finalist and hughes who's a norris trophy winner so the elite of the lead at two very important positions and they're on terrific cap hits which is again when you go back to well this is when you need to cash in when these guys aren't making

egregious sums of money and you fit them in nicely under the cap. Getting them in under $13 million combined, I mean, how many other teams can say that they've got a Norris-caliber guy and a Vezna-caliber guy locked up for that little money? Not many teams. Tambo in East Van with an early What We Learned. And he's texting into the Dunbar-Lumber text line at 650-650. The Bridge Street Dunbar-Lumber in Ladner has moved to Progress Way in Tilbury's Industrial Park.

You knew about that. My favorite industrial park. It's a good one. More room, more product, more awesome. Details at DunbarLumber.com. Tambo with an early what we learned. I learned that when Halford is away, Brough actually sounds calm, positive, and happy. Shake my head.

Amazing. Halford leaves, and we get bizarro brough yeah now you're back and i'm kind of like on edge again like you you started it out with like you couldn't even say your good morning i poked the bear a little bit you couldn't even say your good morning uh the microphone i hit the wrong button you hit the wrong button so your first move back was to hit the off button. Was hitting the off button on your microphone. And then you looked at Laddie like something was wrong technically. And then I turned his mic on and he muttered, something's wrong with the button.

Immediately blaming someone else. Oh, it's the on button. That's the one. Laddie did see me with Josh. I was encouraging. I was encouraging. I was positive. Josh, you just did such a great job. Everyone who fills in for you just does such a great job.

And then you come back and it's like, okay, welcome back. But we only have two and a half hours to go. Back to this. And there's only four days until Friday. So that's exciting. Okay. We and a half hours to go. Back to this. And there's only four days until Friday, so that's exciting. We're going to go to break. When we come back, Seth Emerson, senior writer from The Athletic is going to join us. A lot of football

talk today. We got Emerson, we got Tanier, and we got Moj, Brendan Batchelor as well at 7.30. You're listening to the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. Is this Knock Off Van Halen? I've played this one before. I just built Halford. I haven't done this in a while.

Oh, yeah. Bring it back. It's nice. Spelled Van Halen with a six. Might as well. I don't know. Not jump. Bounce.

Leap. 6.31 on a Monday. Happy Monday, everybody. Halford Brough, Sportsnet 650. Halford and Brough in the morning is brought to you by Vancouver Honda, Vancouver's premier destination for Honda customers. They have a friendly, knowledgeable staff that can help with anything you're looking for, be it sales, financing, service, or parts.

Big football show today on the Halford and Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. Mike Tanier is going to join us at 7 o'clock for some NFL talk as we get closer and closer to the start of the regular season. Moj is going to join us at 8 to talk about the floundering BC Lions as they continue their descent down the standings in the CFL's West Division. And then joining us

now, Seth Emerson, senior writer from The Athletic, on a piece that just came out over the weekend. Football has never been more popular to watch, but are there fewer players? Seth joins us now on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. Morning, Seth. How are you? I'm doing well. Good morning. Thanks for taking the time to do this. We really appreciate it.

Okay, so the question is, football has never been more popular to watch, but are there fewer players? Did your findings, in fact, find that there are fewer kids playing organized football? Well, statistically, there are less than about 10 years ago, especially when you figure in population growth. But the numbers are starting to tick up the last couple of years. And that's according to the National Federation of High Schools, which keeps these numbers for football and for all sports. So the conclusion that can be drawn is that efforts over the last 10 years

to make the game safer, and I spoke to the NCAA's director of officiating, who has been a big part of making these rules, that a lot of these efforts are starting to get through to some parents that are saying, OK, now I think the game is getting safer. But I think they have a lot of work to do still. And there's going to be just a constant worry about, like, you can make this rule, you can make that rule. But, you know, it's still a tackling game and there's still going to be head injuries and cte concerns and so they're they're

talking about helmet technology and that kind of stuff but yeah it's going to be something that is just continuous because there's just so much more awareness about the the dangers of playing and then the trickle-up effect because in the lead for the piece, you had an anecdote from Kirby Smart, who, of course, people don't know, the head football coach at University of Georgia, talking about how fewer kids playing football is translated into a poorer quality of player when they get to that collegiate level. How dramatic has it been in terms of quality of players and then, I guess, depth of players as well

that you need to run a collegiate football program? Yeah, and I think Kirby was talking mostly about depth. I know he was talking mostly about depth because I was there when he said it. I used that as the springboard to doing this piece and delving into it in that he and comparing it with some other coaches have said that, like, we look around and we've got less players now when we're, you know, our typical team has about 120 players. But you have 85 on scholarship numbers that are changing as of next year. But, you know, I'm just kind of throwing this number out. They probably felt like before they counting their scholarship and their walk-on players, they had like 90 players that were good.

And maybe it's now down to like 70 per team. And there's probably an overall quality in it, too, because there have been the combination of less kids playing. But also there may be less kids playing tackle football until high school. So there's parents that are letting their kids play, maybe even middle school or high school. And that's even in like football hotbeds, like where I am in Georgia and in Texas. But there's a lot more reluctance to let kids play starting in Pop Warner,

first grade, and work their way up. And you could see where that would be contributing to just less skill involved in the game. Now, if it's widespread, if everybody's still playing from the same talent pool, then you kind of don't notice it at the college level. But that's what Kirby was talking about in terms of the triple, trickle up effect and talking to high school coaches. They do say also the same thing.

They say there's less kids playing. And so you're probably also losing some athletes football as a sport that are probably going into other sports instead. And that is probably contributing to a drop in the quality of play that we don't really notice because people love to watch the sport. But you kind of also have to wonder, like, how many viewers are discerning viewers? As in, how many can tell, oh, the sport's not as good as it was? Other than the old man yelling at the cloud who always thinks that things were better. Well, yeah, how much of an element of old man yelling at the cloud who always thinks that things were better. Well, yeah. How much of an element of old man yelling at the cloud is this?

I know Tom Brady, for example, recently made some comments about the quality of quarterbacks in the NFL. And people are like, have you seen Patrick Mahomes play? Pretty good player. Yeah. Yeah. I think you would. We're coming off the Olympics, okay? And obviously, I, we're coming off the Olympics. Okay. And obviously tackle football, not part of the Olympics,

but I look at basketball and I'm 48 years old and the skill level in basketball now versus in the 92 Olympics, like how much better, I hate to say it, the U S gold medal winning team was then the 92 team. Like, you know, Jordan is great, but man, like LeBron just on another level skill wise than most people at that time. But also internationally, how much it's grown, like how much more competitive everyone is with the U.S. And everyone's talked about that in football. it'd be interesting to take a 2024 team and compare it to like 1992.

Now, I do think there is some like old man yelling at cloud stuff going on with what Kirby said and what some other people are saying. But the other part of it is to get back to kids not playing tackle football as early as they used to. Or also, more high schools are doing spread offenses. So there's more passing, you know, you don't have the physical running, just, you know, wishbone, that kind of stuff. Like when I was in the nineties, even the early two thousands,

you know, there were so many high schools that are running the single wing just because it was easier because teams didn't tend to have quarterbacks that could throw the ball 50 yards downfield. They didn't have the athletes at wide receiver. But now so many more high schools are playing spread. That has a trickle-up effect. And what Kirby is probably saying and the other coaches are probably saying

is you probably have as good an athlete at wide receiver. And I think even a quarterback, no matter what Tom Brady is saying, you especially have more quarterbacks who can run. That's kind of the Michael Vick. Like that's just that part is translated. But you probably are. And you have bigger linemen than it used to be but are they as good are defensive players as good at tackling are linebackers as good at tackling anymore are offensive linemen as good as as bigger as they are are they as good at blocking anymore and that's probably what the college coaches are seeing um Seth you're talking to couple of guys that spend most of their time talking about hockey and hockey in Canada, the numbers are declining and there are similar

concerns about the future of the game in this country and getting overtaken by the United States, for example, is a big concern because we got hockey. One of the factors in hockey, in fact, one of the major factors is cost. There are so many added costs to playing hockey, and a lot of it includes private coaching, spring leagues. The list goes on. Equipment. Is cost a factor in football? It's interesting because the demographics of who is playing football

are probably going to the lower end of the economic sphere. I get the impression that when you see when the recruiting people in high schools, when they see that, oh, this guy can play, they're kind of making it work. The fact that it's a team game, you know, you don't go to many camps like as just yourself, you know, the way basketball players do and baseball players, you know, with just your mom or your dad are both just taking you to camps. You go to these seven on seven camps as teams. And so if the high school has money, then you have the ability to go to these seven on seven camps as teams. And so if the high school

has money, then you have the ability to go to a lot of these things. So I haven't encountered that as much. It could be what is kind of weeding out people from baseball and some other sports because travel ball is expensive. And that goes for a lot of things. I'm not sure I would worry up there about the U.S. catching Canada in hockey. I mean, I've seen some, you know, you're starting to see it become popularized in some of the warm weather areas, like maybe as much of a disaster as the Arizona Coyotes were as a franchise. You know, you did get a very good player out of that, apparently. But players, if they're not going into football,

we're seeing steps, a little bit soccer. Like in America, you go to any, even here in Georgia, on a Saturday morning, you go by a rec field, and it's just teaming with soccer teams because it's just the easiest sport to go play um but lacrosse is starting to inch up in those numbers um you know it's and there are some still going into baseball and so many people go into basketball too uh but you know hockey is still you need a rink and you need equipment um so yeah it's interesting to see that from the canadian perspective from the Canadian perspective.

From the U.S. perspective, there's nobody around here playing, here in Athens, Georgia, playing hockey. What about soccer, though? I'm curious about that. Have attitudes changed about soccer? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, and this is probably a very oversimplified way

of looking at it, 20 years ago, a lot of people considered soccer almost un-American. Do you know what I mean? Like that was not a sport that we play. That is not a sport we care about. Now you look at the crowds that, for example, some teams like Atlanta get in MLS. I think this World Cup coming up is going to be incredible.

I know the 94 one was well attended. I think this one is going to blow it out of the water. Just wondering about the attitudes of soccer where you live. Yeah, 94 created the MLS. The MLS came out of that, and you wonder if 2028 or 2026 is going to make it actual major league soccer and um participation wise yeah the numbers have gone up but i still think the best potential soccer players not all of us like but a lot of the best potential soccer players are football players in the u.s Like, that's still where the money is seen as going. Like, you look at, and some basketball players,

like, you know, shooting guards and small forwards and point guards would make great soccer players, but I look at wide receivers, I look at defensive backs, and I see guys that would make great soccer players if they had grown up playing and running backs. But it's because it's the most popular sport. It is still the most visible sport. And as a result, even though participation numbers, I would say, are static because of safety concerns. I still think that when the best athletes are pinpointed,

they tend to go into football, unless they really like soccer. And I think it's becoming a little more cool to get into soccer, but it also still doesn't help when you have players rising on the ground, looking for a penalty, and then get up five seconds later and can play that that part of it does not sell well on television here uh the article is football has never been more popular to watch but are there fewer players the author is seth emerson seth thank you very much for taking the time to do this today we really appreciate it enjoyed the piece uh enjoy college football season all right thank you enjoyed it thanks Enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, thanks for coming on. That's Seth Emerson from The Athletic here on the Halford & Ruff Show on Sportsnet 650.

I don't know about you, but I'd be concerned about my kid playing tackle football, especially early on. Yeah, I mean... Especially, it's... I don't think people... I think people that play it would appreciate how physical it is and how much your head is involved in the contact like there's a reason they but you know here's an uneducated thing you have to be way tougher to play rugby because they don't even wear pads fundamentally different sport yeah um

the the helmet in football is a weapon as much as it is a protective device. There's blocking in football. You don't have blocking in rugby. Rugby's tackling. Football is still, there's still a hit mentality. And there's a difference between that. Did you watch the CFL? Did you watch the Lions-Red Blacks game?

Yeah. When, who was it it was uh Jalen uh Acklin of the Red Blacks was tackled I think TJ Lee got him in the end zone and hit him low he was up catching the ball um would have made the would have made the catch but he came down so hard on the ground I don't know what happened to him if he was knocked out or if he had a back injury. Apparently he's doing fine, but you know, the ambulance had to come onto the field. It was like a 20 minute delay and the ambulance

came onto the field and took him off. And that actually happened in the first CFL game I ever went to in the 80s. There was a guy on the Eskimos named, I think his name was James Bell. Okay. And he was paralyzed in my first ever game that I watched. And there have been steps taken in football.

Obviously, the quarterbacks are protected a lot better. There have been safety steps taken, but the game, unless it fundamentally changes, like it's still a very very violent sport where there's head contact on every play yeah and that's where they say you know it's not a contact sport it's a collision sport and that singular phrase probably freaks out a lot of parents that

don't necessarily want to uh register or enroll a young maturing brain and put it into that kind of harm. Like I get that part of it. I have countless friends that played high school football, junior football. Some played at the university level and they would like to have their kids play football because it was something that they did and they enjoyed it and they understood all the positive benefits of it. They're just not willing to take the health risks. So that's one thing that's abundantly clear with it

when you're talking about, I mean, I don't want to draw a point A to point B with like, this is why the Lions can't tackle. But the reason I went down that road with Seth about the quality of play is that if kids do get into football now, they get in later. They're playing tackle football probably later than you normally would have seen like seven eight nine ten no fourteen fifteen sixteen yeah maybe those are the ages

well ryan phillips was also saying that because of the rules and these rules have been in place for a number of years now you can't do a lot of tackling in practice if anything there's limits on how many times you can actually wear your pads in a practice so it's not like the lions and rick campbell and ryan phillips can go out of practice like this sure we're working on tackling today guys it doesn't happen you're to show up at camp as a ready-made tackler like we can't teach you how to tackle because we don't have one the time the bandwidth and like regulations don't allow it. You can't go out and do a thousand tackles on a Tuesday afternoon.

Like it doesn't work that way. We got a bunch of texts into the Dunbar-Limber text line here. Unsigned text here. As someone who had multiple concussions by the age of 19, I would never allow my kid to play football. The game taught me so much about being part of a team and leadership, but that doesn't matter when you don't function the same after suffering concussions.

Yeah, there's a lot of value to team sports. I mean, it is, I think every kid, you know, if they're interested in it and they want to play, I hope that every kid is able to play a team sport if they're interested in it and they want to play, I hope that every kid is able to play a team sport if they can. It doesn't have to be football though. It doesn't have to be hockey. Soccer, you can learn the same lessons.

And I'm not saying there's no concussion concerns in soccer. There is. You go up and compete for a header? Yeah, yeah. There is. Clash heads, there's concussion issues there. you know i think a lot of people are like i want my child to play sports and i want it to be in a team environment but it doesn't have to be football right and the

concussion thing is it's a big issue and i think what you're seeing now like you've seen the uh guardian caps right you've seen them kind of make their way and i think a cfl player of saskatchewan war one the other day and you've seen them countless times throughout the preseason there's that large soft shell pad that they put on the helmet i mean that's just one step that football has taken collectively to try and get safer right and but they've had to do a bunch like kickoffs it's funny we'll have tannier on the show in about 10 minutes' time, Mike Tanier, our NFL insider from the 2 Deep Zone. He talks about how radically different kickoffs look now as opposed to— I was wondering about that. I'm watching TV and I'm like, what's going on here?

They've had to change— What's that big zone they've got there? Because the kickoff, and he brought up a good point in his most recent article. If you think that it was violent at the pro level, imagine it at the high school level where kids are more reckless and not as well coached, size disparities, all of it. That's where the majority of the injuries happen. So if you want to talk about radical changes to the game,

non-equipment division, like changing kickoffs has been a direct correlation where football says, where are most of our injuries happening? How do we try and prevent that? And the number one with a bullet was kickoffs. Text in, so explain the rise in popularity of MMA then. My friend's son fights semi-professionally, and even though he's an independent young adult, I still can't understand his dad's approval of it.

I think everyone's different, right? I mean, there's still going to be some people that go into these sports, boxing included. MMA is a growing popularity sport. And I think that sport also teaches discipline and it teaches focus. And maybe it is good for some kids to go into something like MMA.

And that is an individual sport. There's not really a team aspect to it. You're fighting as an individual and sometimes you make choices. Would I rather my son doing MMA or something else, right? And other parents just have different risk profiles for their kids. And they're just more willing to expose them to risk. So how do I explain it? I can't, really.

But I know that when you're a young kid and you're going to an MMA class, you're not starting with, like, all right, let's get in there. This is going gonna be a real there's gonna be a real brawl yeah i mean i can't probably speak well enough to the intricacies of mixed martial arts i could probably say that there's something to be said about uh the introduction of it in terms of a a cost benefit in terms of you don't have to join a team it's an individual sport so there's more entry points and access. I mean, part of the issue with,

go try and find a lot of fully active running youth tackle football leagues in the lower mainland. There's not a ton of it floating around. It exists. I don't think any of them play tackle until you're much older. Right, and then it becomes a high school thing too, right? And then we kind of talked about that with Seth.

It becomes a cost too, right? And then we kind of talked about that with Seth. It becomes a cost issue, right? The more well-to-do, financially flush schools are going to be able to run better and more sophisticated programs than ones that are recycling pads from 10 years ago, right? And all these things probably play into it. But the other thing too with the rise of MMA is when you go back to the early days of the UFC 1, 2, and 3. Yeah. That was still like.

A lot of ball shots. Yeah. Remember John McCain calling it human cockfighting, right? Like that was the sort of, it was considered something that was almost taken from like behind closed doors or the basement fight club and then put on television. Do you remember some of the athletes? Yeah. I mean, they weren't really athletes. they were just brawlers right and it was kind of designed to be like this guy is a street fighter this guy does jujitsu let's see which one is better right

and and now it's obviously evolved were there even categories god i don't remember i think it honestly was more about the disciplines going up against one another yeah right right yeah like this guy did boxing this guy did karate those sorts Right. Yeah, like this guy did boxing. This guy did karate. Those sorts of things. But it was... This guy did 20 years in Sing Sing. Right. And this guy didn't.

Who will win? But yeah, it would be interesting to do a deeper dive into that. Hey, it's still the summer, so maybe we've got an opportunity to do it. We do have to move along, though. Hour one of a Monday show in the books. Coming up, as mentioned, Mike Tanier, our NFL insider from the Two Deep Zone, is

going to join the program on the other side. We'll whip around some of the bigger stories from the NFL, dive into a couple things that he's touched on at the Two Deep Zone sub stack. 7.30 Brendan Batchelor is going to join the program. Goalie and goalie coach talk from the Vancouver Canucks with the play by play voice of the Vancouver Canucks.

And then at 8 o'clock, we got Moj. A friendly reminder, if you want to weigh in to the show, Dunbar Lumber text line is 650-650. Send us a note. Get your What We Learns in now.

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