Football fall practice begins with new regulations

WEST ORANGE Although the effects won’t truly be felt until players put on pads beginning Saturday, Monday’s first day of fall camp for high-school football marked the beginning of a new chapter for the sport in Florida.

New guidelines set in June for live contact during practices went into effect Monday, further regulating how often teams can engage in live contact and for how long.

The rules restrict live contact to 40 minutes each day through the Monday of the first game of the regular season and to 30 minutes each day after that. 

Live-contact drills — defined as drills with game-like conditions where players are taken to the ground — also cannot occur on more than two consecutive days and will be capped at 80 minutes in a given week.

The updated rules — with the stated intention to reduce injuries — have received mixed reactions. Despite that, Ocoee head coach Ben Bullock said the regulations are part of a larger movement that coaches must adopt.

“We’ve got to advance the game,” Bullock said. “If we don’t do that, I don’t think we’re going to have a game to coach. … It’s not going backwards — this is not going to change.”

The FHSAA partnered with Practice Like Pros founder Terry O’Neil to develop the new rules.

“As a trendsetter and a top-three football state, Florida sends this message nationally: In order to preserve the game we love on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, let’s mitigate risk Monday through Thursday,” O’Neil said in a statement for the FHSAA. “Ultimately, high-school teams can and will practice like pros.” 

Some of the criticism of the new regulations comes at a time when the teaching of proper tackling techniques is a hot-button issue. Media reports suggest some coaches worry that reduced live contact time will compromise those efforts.

Bullock said Monday he believes that — although it can require some creativity at times — teaching proper tackling can be done in spite of less live-contact time.

“The way we teach tackling — we don’t need to take guys to the ground to teach them how to tackle properly,” Bullock said.

For smaller programs, the effects may be wholly negligible, thanks to the realities of a smaller depth chart.

“I don’t think the tackling regulations are a huge deal for us,” Windermere Prep coach Jacob Doss said. “With our depth as it is — we don’t have a ton of it.”

Doss also believes his staff can teach proper tackling, citing success the Lakers had during the spring season while using moving tackling dummies and other innovative methods.

“The best we ever tackled was in the spring this year — by far,” Doss said. “Obviously (tackling dummies are) not ideal, because it’s not a human, but I think you can teach a lot of the fundamentals there.”

Contact Steven Ryzewski at [email protected].