One boy and his football team in suburban Dallas are protesting a ruling by a pee wee league that he is too big to play. The league's response? Size matters.
Elijah Earnheart is 12 years old, stands more than 6 feet tall and weighs nearly 300 pounds. That's too much for the Mesquite Pee Wee Football Association, which limits its players to 135 pounds.
So after practicing with his team for the past few weeks, Elijah is sidelined indefinitely.
"For him to come home and just cry and go to his room and say, ‘I give up.' I'm not going to let him give up," said Elijah's mother, Cindy. "This is his dream. This is what he wants to do. And I'm going to make it happen."
If Elijah were one year younger, he could play with the team as long as he wore a decal on his helmet that signified that he was over the weight limit. But because he is in seventh grade, he must play with a junior high team.
Elijah said he is reluctant to play with teammates with whom he is unfamiliar.
"I just want to play because most of my teammates are my friends," he said. "So I know them, I don't want to go play for somebody else I don't know."
Apparently, when it comes to football, bigger is not always better.
-- Follow Robbie Levin on Twitter @RobbieLevin.
