Mar 16, 2016 4 min read

The Ivy League’s football coaches raised eyebrows across the country last month when they voted to eliminate all full-contact hitting from regular-season practices.

As head injuries continue to be a hot-button topic around America’s most popular sport, the league’s eight head coaches decided to take an unorthodox approach. Will it trickle down to the lower levels?

The Pennsylavania Interscholastic Athletic Association currently limits contact in regular-season practices to a maximum of three days and 90 minutes per week. Though Dr. Bob Lombardi, the PIAA’s executive director, said the league might tweak its limitations on contact, eliminating all tackling from high school football practices could do more harm than good.

“We’re a little bit different than that because we have people who are just learning the game,” Lombardi said. “I don’t think our varsity teams hit very much. We have a 90-minute limit. I think that’s helpful because there has to be contact to teach technique, especially line play. They are two different levels. We aren’t comparing apples and apples at all.”

The Ivy League’s decision is the latest move to re-evaluate how football players are practicing. The National Football League allows 14 full-contact practices during the 18-week regular season, and the NCAA’s rules are a bit different.

Teams that hold two-a-day preseason practices can tackle in one of them. Full-contact practices are allowed up to four times a week, and a maximum of 12 times during the preseason. During the regular season, teams can hold full-contact practices no more than twice a week.

Garry Cathell, executive director of the Pennsylvania Scholastic Football Coaches Association, was the head coach at Peters Township when there were no limitations on contact in practice and believes the current 90-minute limit is adequate.

“Knowing our body of coaches throughout the state, it’s definitely something I can’t see coming down to the high school level,” Cathell said. “There will be people who will try to push it. The only way you’re going to be able to teach your kids how to tackle is to have them do it and make that contact. You are playing a contact game.”

Though the Ivy League’s decision reignited conversation regarding practice guidelines at every level, the coaches’ decision might be deceiving. Though they are eliminating live-action tackling, which is defined by USA Football as a drill run in game-like conditions that is the only time players are taken to the ground, the league is not putting a limit on thud contact, where players run at full speed at one another but do not tackle an opponent to the ground.

Though some medical experts believe such a move would limit lower-body injuries, head-to-head contact is likely with thud and the decision could allow thud drills in every practice leading up to game day.

“We hope this initiative will permeate to other collegiate conferences, as well as the high school and youth levels,” said Robin Harris, Ivy League executive director. “This change makes sense and enhances student-athlete safety.”

The PIAA has taken several safety steps in recent years, including the heat acclimatization period, which is five consecutive days before actual contact practices begin. Coaches believe progress has been made in player safety and stress the importance of teaching live tackling in practices.

“You have to be taught and you have to be able to understand what it feels like and what the muscle fibers feel like when they fire and they do something correctly,” Cathell said. “I see those limitations as being fair, but then again, who’s there to monitor anything?”

It’s a question that leagues at every level, including the Ivy League, don’t have an answer for. According to Steve Alic, senior director of communications at USA Football, 70 percent of youth leagues across the country joined USA Football’s Heads Up Football program in 2015, which offers safety training and certification for youth coaches. But it is up to each league to encourage such a move from its coaches and to monitor the organization’s three 30-minute contact practices during a week.

In the PIAA, coaches and athletic directors are tasked with self-policing contact in practices and the same goes for college programs.

“I think our coaches and athletic administration are doing a great job,” Lombardi said. “They want to keep their kids healthy and they want to keep them safe.”