Massive 12-Year-Old Too Big For Pee Wee Football, Too Bad At Football For Middle School Football

KDFW reports on the story of Elijah Earnheart, who at the tender age of 12 is already six feet tall and weighs nearly 300 pounds. Elijah wants to play football, but because of his size, he's been banned from his Mequite (Texas) Pee Wee team. Once you get the giggles out over the Fox screengrab of poor Elijah sitting forlornly on the curb, staring longingly at a football, it's actually a really sad story.

There are legitimate safety reasons for keeping Elijah out of games where he'd be playing tackle football with kids less than half his size (the league's weight limit is 135 pounds.) Someone's going to get flattened, completely accidentally, and someone's going to get sued. But Elijah shouldn't have to turn to his only other option, a school league, because that's full of experienced players, and he'd probably get hurt, or at least never get off the bench. Elijah has never played competitive football before, and just likes playing around with his friends.

This is one of those situations that sucks because there's no easy solution to champion or clear villain to decry. Just a big kid, who through no fault of his own is stuck in a no-man's-land. Stupid moral opacity.

[ MyFoxDFW]