"Friday Night Tykes" Makes its Triumphant Return with the Worst Adults in the World and a Vicious Earholing
Last night was the premier of Season 4 of “Friday Night Tykes.” And to know me it to know that it’s my favorite reality show because it encapsulates so many of the things I love the most in this world. It someone manages to combine football, parenting, youth sports and insane human trainwrecks into one amazing package. Seriously, if FNT could somehow work in laser beams, swords, superheroes and bewbs, I’d never have to watch anything else.
I coached youth football through two sons over 11 years. In that time I saw a cop have to step in to stop a dad from killing a coach. A head coach/bookie who used to take college football bets on his phone on the sideline in the middle of games. A guy motivate his team of 9-year-olds by calling them “pussies.” One year the whole town program showed up for mandatory preseason weigh-ins to find every kid’s name had been deleted from the database. When they traced the hacker’s IP address, it belonged to a coach who was fired the year before for being an asshole. All true stories. And FNT is so great because the Texas Youth Football Association makes my old league look like Powder Puff.
And the season premiere did not disappoint. By way of a brief rundown, with limited spoilers:
*The Outlaws, who are to TYFA what the Celtics were to the NBA in the Sixties, are back. Only this time, the most dominant team in the country has moved up to the Snoop League.
*The Outlaws coaching staff is back, including Marecus Goodloe, who was the breakout star of Season 1 when he got suspended for leading his 8-year-olds in a chant of “Fuck the Rockets!”
*The Outlaws met their first opponent, some newbies from an army base called the Olympians, who’s average size was that of the Outlaws unborn baby brothers. Final score: 55-0.
*We get introduced to Jeremy Trujillo, a 12-year-old in the body of an NFL Combine recruit, who’s dad shells out for a personal trainer and is prepared to take him from his middle school practice to Outlaws practice, four hours away.
*We meet Chris Davis, the TYFA commissioner and assistant coach of Venom. Watching this self-described Alpha Male’s ass pucker when his laid back, Vince Wilfork-like head coach shows up to practice 15 minutes late was a golden moment.
*Also back are Paul and Lori Hurt, to coach the Storm. Once again, these two delicate flowers are like kids playing on the highway, with zero shot to ever field a competitive team in this league filled with rageholics. But we did get to watch Lori try to have input in practice, as the other coaches try desperately to not mansplain football to her, and decide just to ignore her instead.
*As the Storm are getting predictably crushed by Venom, Lori goes to her husband with exactly the kind of insightful, analytical football advice any coach would welcome: “Paul, we need to do … something.” His eyeroll would have been the highlight of the episode if it wasn’t for this, the most vicious hit of 2017, if not the millenium. In any league:
Sweet mother of God. The kid from the Storm gets drilled in the skullbucket harder than any kid I ever saw. He’s writhing in agony. Poor, hapless Lori thinks he’s having a seizure. And the hardass commissioner is calling the Venom parents a bunch of whiners. Was it a dirty hit? Should it have been a penalty? Will the kid learn to keep his head on a swivel? Or eat solid food ever again?
Who cares? This is TYFA. All that matters is this season is going to end on an inevitable showdown between the Outlaws and Venom, and it’s going to be one holy hell of a season building up to it.