I played high school football, and I’m a better man because of it.
I also have chronic shoulder problems from playing, and research about CTE makes question every angry interaction I’ve ever had.
I also had options. I was a decent student, and came from a stable two-parent household that was going to pay for college. But I still had quite a rocky academic career, behavior wise, all the way until high school. My mother wouldn’t let me play football, and only football, because she always thought it was too dangerous. Mind you were are a football family, watching college football on Saturday and NFL on Sunday for my entire life and to this day. I didn’t mind not playing football, because I have passion for a lot of sports. But high school football offered me something different, at least where I lived in Florida, it was a big deal.
I told my mother that if she didn’t sign the permission waiver I was going to forge her signature, that I understood the risks and was okay with it. I wanted to play football, and had even started lifting weights and training on my own to prepare for tryouts. I also made sure to bring my grades up, and no troubles at school. I honestly did all that so I could play. Says something about how I felt about school, but school hadn’t been too kind to me (as it can be for a lot of feisty boys). Football was the turning point for me.
I’m pretty sure I could get that same effect from a different sport, but it’s that it was football is what made it special for me.
You ask my mother today (paging Dr. CasPaz), and she tells the story the same way. From her perspective, though, the story is less glamorous and far scarier. She would watch me get throw about and smashed (I wasn’t very good) and come up the last from so many dog piles that she could barely stand to watch. She still doesn’t disagree that it changed my life for the better. And my entire family is proud of my varsity letter in football (she still wears my 110% award shirt I earned in Spring training).
I don’t know the answers for how to make it safer, and it shouldn’t be the only thing for boys to do. But since we don’t seem able to stop caring about it, let’s make it as safe as we can, and celebrate while it’s still here.
(I also love soccer, and think these boys should have that option as well!)
