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Football Follies

October 7, 2014

Notice reached the MHSAA office of a so-called “2014 Michigan Youth Football Classic” that invites youth league teams to “a great weekend of youth tackle football.” For $450 per team, youth football teams will bang bodies for two days – Nov. 8 and 9 – with each team guaranteed at least three games. Three!
No level of football but this – for the youngest players who have the most vulnerable skulls – allows the idiocy of three games in a weekend. Most limit competition to a maximum of one game in a week!
In my opinion, this isn’t a football classic. It’s child abuse.
I wish the foolishness would stop there, but even an organization called USA Football seems to have lost its head. Initially and mostly with funding from the NFL, USA Football was focused on teaching youth football coaches and players safe blocking and tackling techniques. Good.
But now this pseudo-national governing body for amateur football is planning events for various age groups that will extend tackle football practices and games throughout what used to be an off-season. Multiple competitions in tackle football are scheduled for high school age players in January, February and July of 2015.
At a time when professional, college, school and Pop Warner football are all reducing contact during practices in-season, USA Football wants to expand the contact experience out of season. It makes about as much sense as three games in a weekend.

Moment: 100-Yard TD Lifts Pennfield

September 17, 2020

By John Johnson
MHSAA Director of Broadcast Properties

NOTE: This week we begin a series of MHSAA Moments from Football Playoff Finals of years past. Over the coming weeks, we’ll offer video highlights including some of the longest plays and game-deciding moments from 1988 to the present.

In high school football, there are only two plays where you can score a 100-yard touchdown – both by the defense bringing the ball out of the end zone on a turnover.

For Battle Creek Pennfield in the 1991 Class CC Football Playoff Final at the Pontiac Silverdome, such a big defensive play got the Panthers out of the hole in a 14-8 victory over Negaunee.

A bad snap on a Pennfield punt resulted in a safety for a 2-0 Miners lead in the first quarter, and they had driven into the red zone after the ensuing free kick. But on a fourth-down play, the Cereal City contingent came up big.

Negaunee quarterback Ron Logan rolled left and threw to the end zone, where Pennfield linebacker Jason Livengood stepped in front of the intended receiver for the interception. Two yards deep in the end zone, Livengood found an alley and was off to the races for a 100-yard return. (High school statistics rules do not count end zone yardage.)

“I couldn’t believe it,” Livengood told the Battle Creek Enquirer after the game.  “All I had to do was fake one guy and then it was open the rest of the way.”

The big play steadied the Panthers after their shaky start.

“It showed us we could do something,” running back Jim Martens told the Enquirer. “We needed a stop and we got more than that.  We got six points.”

Still, the Panthers had to come up with a big drive in the third quarter – 67 yards in 17 plays taking 9:58 off the clock, with three fourth-down conversions – to take the lead to stay on Martens’ five-yard scoring run.

Negaunee mounted a drive from its own 37 to the Pennfield 18 during the final two minutes of the game. But after they completed a pass to the 11, the clock ran out on the Miners.