"You have to play this game like somebody just hit your mother with a two-by-four."
Dan Birdwell
"I like to believe that my best hits border on felonious assault."
Jack Tatum
We watched a bunch of big men wearing 20 pounds of equipment pummel each other on a Sunday afternoon.
I know a stadium is not the Colisee in Italy, where gladiators fought to the death to entertain for their blood-thirsty Roman masters, but in football there are career-ending injuries and a lifetime of pain that comes with being slapped around like a heavy bag in a sweaty gym.
Large men play this game for big money and all the trappings that come with wearing a uniform in the National Football League. There are lucrative contracts and stardom for NFL players. The perks are numerous and that is why daring young men don shoulder pads to joust with opponents on artificial turf. They know there is danger, but these guys still suit up for Sunday.
In the course of four quarters, men with no necks slam into each other at a velocity that frequently does great harm to the body. This is organized violence on huge scale and it is also why I am grateful my son had no interest in putting on a football helmet.
He told me he was not interested in knocking around other human beings on Saturday afternoons and Friday nights.
My response: “Good! You will live longer. That makes you smarter than me.”
I told him that if you don’t enjoy hitting people or getting hit, don’t play a game that requires brawn and the desire turn yourself into a human battering ram. So he became a swimmer, a thrower in track and a ski patroller during high school, and I am still so damn proud of him. He is his own entity and he exercised sound judgement.
I, on the other hand, loved the game and I found it fun to make a good, clean hit and knock the other guy to the ground with a huge smile on my face.
There is cautionary tale here for parents who might feel disappointed if their child is interested in the soccer or the swim team.
Any parent who makes the misguided attempt to live through their children is an idiot. It really is that simple. Push a kid into a certain sport and I guarantee you that your child will rebel in kind and his or her frustrations will manifest itself in many ugly ways.
Not every kid is cut out to throw around a pigskin or get down in the trenches with linemen who are hell bent on opening up holes with brute force.
Football, whether it is Pop Warner or high school, is a punishing sport, where the timid have no place on the gridiron. Sure, there a lot of nice guys who play football. As a sportswriter, I have met boxers and Mixed Martial Arts fighters who are kind and affable, but athletes of this caliber also understand there is an aggressive instinct — or grit — that is required to participate in these rough-and-tumble sports.
If dad thinks his son is wimp because he shunned football to play golf or baseball, then dad needs to see a shrink.
There are a risky moments in all sports, but the percentage is higher in all contact sports. Still, with the raging debate over concussions in football, parents should think twice about their children’s participation in the sport.
As a lineman, I suffered two concussions, a bad sprain and a broken thumb playing football. The second head injury came when I played for the Norwich University football team. A swollen brain convinced me that it was not worth the punishment anymore, so I gave it up in college.
Do I have any regrets?
Absolutely none!
It was an easy choice for me to walk away when it came to preserving my health, knowing all along I would never be an NFL lineman. I was quick and tough, but I didn’t have the speed or the bulk.
As for my son, I never second-guessed him about his decision. He is comfortable in his own skin and we avoided those trips to the emergency room that I often made as member of a football team.
