Paying For Flags?

[Johnp2 21]

After our second game yesterday, I noticed something quite interesting. The coach sat in the middle of the field with his team, and was handing out money to the players. It turns out he pays them a dollar for every flag they get. I kept wondering why the players were saying to one another, "That's five dollars." and such to each other---but now I know. ;-)

Of course, my team was standing right there and they all went nuts when they saw it. I told them, "Oh no. We can't do that. If I do, that means you are being paid to play and you can't get a scholarship to play in college. You have to wait until you get to the NFL before you can take money."

I personally don't have an issue with it. I would not do it, mainly because I would be concerned with lesser skilled players who rarely get flags having to watch all that money being dished out, but I think it's an interesting concept nonetheless.

I'm curious if you have ever seen this before.

[Vegas Coach 0]

LOL... no I have never witnessed this myself from another team or anything of any sorts! However with my son this year right before the 2nd or 3rd game asked if he could make a deal with every TD he scores or INT he would earn a ice cream sundae from anywhere he choose! I bit and said its a deal thinking it would help his motivation. That next game he had 2 INTs and a TD, thus I owed him 3 Sundae's right off the bat! Whats funny too is he also tried and make a deal of me paying him $1 for every flag he pulled, but I said no to that one. I would never pay money to the kids for reasons you gave John in that the lesser skilled kids would feel left out. Also the deal betwen my son and I was our deal and the other kids knew nothing about it.

[Coach Rob 26]

I'll pay $5 per flag if I'm playing against "I'll call a time out with 50 seconds to go even though I'm winning 19-0 and think I need to score one more TD" guy. I've never seen the cash deal, but we've given out a small prize to everyone on the team for X amount of flag pulls in a game before. Usually do it if I've been working on a concept in practice and want them to really get it in a game.

CRob

[Orange 26]

I'll pay $5 per flag if I'm playing against "I'll call a time out with 50 seconds to go even though I'm winning 19-0 and think I need to score one more TD" guy. I've never seen the cash deal, but we've given out a small prize to everyone on the team for X amount of flag pulls in a game before. Usually do it if I've been working on a concept in practice and want them to really get it in a game.

CRob

Hey, I played that guy! And it was 27-7 with under a minute and when they did score they went for two on the extra point...

I once remarked that I'd give out a dollar if someone could run the gauntlet of my flag pulling drill and not miss a single flag. One kid out of 11 made it. I was happy to pay but it was a one time thing.

I was an assistant coach on my son's baseball team and one of the other assistants got conned into agreeing to buy a coke for any kid who hit a homer. We didn't have many but they made him pay when they did.

[Johnp2 21]

I once remarked that I'd give out a dollar if someone could run the gauntlet of my flag pulling drill and not miss a single flag. One kid out of 11 made it. I was happy to pay but it was a one time thing.

I bet it was. If those kids were anything like my 7-9 year olds, they would not think of anything more than doing the "gauntlet" and getting a dollar. "Dinner? Who wants to go home, mom? I want another shot at getting a dollar." :-)

I was doing some light math, and figure that there are an average of 25 flags pulled (give or take 5). Thus that is $25.00 per game. Not too bad for a pretty slick idea if you have the money to blow.

I will tell you one thing---those kids were getting after it on defense. As mentioned, I kept wondering why they were talking about money on the field, but it obviously motivated the heck out of them.

[Texas_D_Coach 14]

OK, my team is not that talented this season, and the last couple of games they have not been very motivated either, despite my efforts to get them going. There is one exception though, this last game I had a kid flying all over the field on defense, and getting flags left and right. I noticed at one point near the beginning of the game he looked over at his parents and held up 2 fingers. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but after the game I went up to the dad and asked him what the 2 fingers meant, and he told me that he told his son that for every flag after 2 he would give him a dollar. Well that kid made about $10 in that game.

So it got me thinking about motivation techniques again. We are playing the best team in our league this weekend, and since we are near the bottom of the league, I figured I would give them something to play for besides a win (since a win is highly unlikely).

I thought about giving them candy or something, but that didn't seem like a big enough deal. Then I thought back to my youth and one of my favorite hobbies back then was collecting football cards, and I thought "how appropriate".

So I went out and bought a box of individual foil packs, and I'm going to give them out for certain acheivements. What I'm thinking right now is to give out a pack for every 1st down, TD, and interception they make. And also give out a pack for every 3 flags each kid makes.

Hopefully that'll keep em motivated to play hard all game even if we do get blown out.

What do you guys think?

[Coach Rob 26]

I've done this kind of stuff in the past with motivators for the whole team. In basketball if they passed it X amount of times as a team they all received the bag of goodies. Football - if you get X flag pulls as a team everyone gets the bag of goodies. Then we'd also give out a few individual rewards for most flag pulls.

Or??? You could just skip all this and just hold up five fingers.

[Johnp2 21]

Interesting that this thread came back up again. I was just thinking about this (the coach who paid a dollar for each flag a player got).

I've had players tell me in the past, "My parents told me if I get an interception today they will take me to a movie" (or something). The danger here---what happens if the player does NOT get an interception? Is he punished by not being able to go to a movie? Even if we win, he'll feel dejected.

Please don't misunderstand me---I completely agree with the concept of motivational tactics. I LIKE to think their motivation is to simply be the best they can be (but we know this is not always true).

With that said---I am making a promise to my team this season. IF we go undefeated this season---they can shave my head at the End of Season Party. Cheesy, I know. ;-)

I think the chances are quite slim we'll go undefeated--but who knows. It's a fun concept for the players however.

[Texas_D_Coach 14]

Or??? You could just skip all this and just hold up five fingers.

Well I've tried emphasizing the team aspect over and over, but it really doesn't seem to be working for motivation. I'm trying this as a temporary measure to get their attention.

I know cash motivates kids, and I think a worthy prize will too.

When my son first was learning to catch a couple years ago, he was having motivational issues with wanting to go out and practice everyday. I used to make it fun for him by throwing in a $5 bomb every practice. Sometimes we would throw 5 or 10 til he caught one. IT got him excited about going out everyday to catch, and eventually he started liking it just for the fun of it.

That is the effect I am hoping this prize thing has for the kids. We haven't won but 1 game this season and I think the kids are missing the "fun" aspect of football, so I want to re-energize them with this and hope it works.

[Tide_Fan 0]

I started the football trading card reward this season in hopes of motivating them to swarm to the ball carrier on D. It seems to be working pretty well. I initially planned on giving a pack of cards to every kid that had 5 flag pulls in a game. After 3 games this season, I've discovered that we usually have 1 kid that can make it to 5-6 pulls, and the rest are in the 1-3 pull category. So now we usually reward the top 2-3 flag pullers each game. They all get pretty pumped about the trading cards (and bummed if they don't get enough flag pulls ot earn them that week).