I don't follow you. I was never a starter but I have no problem saying I played. Liked it too. I was at the time undersized. The coaches were idiots who only looked at your size.
I didn’t go out for football after my Sophomore year, not for lack of "size of the dog in the fight,” but really for lack of “size of the fight in the dog.” As a senior starter, my brother was so seriously injured in a HS game (during my Sophomore year) that no one ever raised the idea of my playing football, ever again. No one - coach or even fellow student - would have dared to ask my parents to sign a consent form for it, or even to suggest it to me.There wasn’t a formal difference between members of the JV and the varsity; there were just members of the team who played on Saturday, and those who didn’t - a.k.a., “the JV." And there was a little variability of people in those categories during the season. As a sophomore I was a starter on the JV team, making only the one appearance on the varsity field that I described previously.
Absent my brother’s injury, I would presumably have started as a senior. As matters played out, that wasn’t in the cards.