Bob Zoss
About FUFFL®
What is FUFFL®? (Rhymes with "duffel" bag). It is an exciting new concept which seamlessly blends flag football and gradually introduces the basics of tackle football. There has long been a debate about what is the appropriate age at which to start tackle football. Some leagues start tackle football as early as kindergarten, while others wait until the 3rd or 4th grade.
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Children who are introduced too early to tackle football may not like the contact and as soon as they have the opportunity, they quit playing football for life. However, there are also advantages to introducing children to football at a younger age. That’s where FUFFL® comes in. FUFFL® stands for Full Uniform Flag Football League and is designed for 1st and 2nd graders. Our FUFFL® league consists of 8 teams with from 8-9 players on a team, with 6 players per team on the field at a time. Players are fully outfitted with Riddell helmets, shoulder pads, a practice jersey and a game jersey, and one pair of football pants with intragrated pads (in our case, black for all teams).
Because we use AFC and NFC team names in the upper tackle leagues, team names for the FUFFL® teams are names for colleges. In order to establish comradery and a sense of unity, all teams use the same helmets, practice jerseys, and black pants. Each child receives a team jersey with the number and team name on the front and number on the back. For an additional charge, we have each child’s name or nickname (no taunting or suggestive nicknames allowed), put on the back of the game jerseys. All equipment is returned at the end of the season with the exception of the game jerseys, which the children are free to keep. The children are encouraged to wear their game jerseys to school the day before games. Since our games are on Saturdays (and if necessary, Sunday afternoon), the children normally wear their jerseys to school on
Fridays before each game weekend for the whole league.
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Just as its name implies, this is a "flag" league. We have found through experimentation that the belts with 3 flags on the belt that makes a pop when the flag is grabbed and pulled off are the best. It is too difficult to stop an opposing player when they only have 2 flags on their belt, and if the flags are velcroed on the belt, then there is undue delay in trying to reattach the flags to the belt. This also takes any question out of when the flag was pulled.
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Our official ball is the Champro PeeWee sized ball.
Because of the smaller size of the field used, we utilize cones to mark the boundaries (hashmarks to sideline), and we are thus able to have 4
games going at one time, with 8 teams participating simultaneously. Since the halves are 20 minutes long and each team gets a 1 minute
time out and a 30 second time out per half, we simply use a 23 minute running stadium clock for all teams per half and we use a 3 minute half
time. Games start promptly on the hour and the time from start to finish should equal just slightly more than 49 minutes. Even with a
minor delay after the games in getting the children off the field, there is normally enough time to have the coin toss and start fairly promptly on
the hour for the tackle games. We routinely have the FUFFL® games at 8:00 a.m. because it is not as hot out, it frees up the parents for the rest of the day, it is consistent week in and week out, and it is easier to prepare for FUFFL® games (which do not require weigh-ins before the game).
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Additional advantages are that all of the FUFFL® parents are there at one time and they generally sit in the stands in the corner of the stadium where their child is playing, but all of the games can be observed at one time as well. Also, it helps concessions by not having games strung out.
For more information and pricing, please contact Bob Zoss at bobzoss49@gmail.com or by phone at (812) 449-8572.
