[Beetle01]

I'mnot as much of a fan as the 4 teams of players mixed evenly and only play eachother for the middle school.

I think that hurts the 6th graders or 11's. As for the most part they will only see 1 quarter of action per game. Sure there might be a couple kids who play the whole game or 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters.
However, the 6th has 19 games this year with tons of PT for all. Which is awesome and I think they gain more from that.

However, if a 6th was to play up, maybe not with the 8th, but with the 7th, the size difference there is not as drastic.

Does a kid gain more by running for a TD every time they get the ball, or playing with kids who may be older and equal or close ability. Making them have to fight for every yard. I would think they gain more by playing up. There will be few of those kids, but they come through and I think they should be able to play up, if the parents and kids want them to. If you just have 4 JFL teams who play eachother, they may be playing against 8th graders anyways.