I have two boys who play football and an entire family who enjoys football. Football consumes multiple nights of my life this time of year and is often on our television. I love the game and I’m happy my boys play.
I used to talk about all the lessons I learned playing football. But, in retrospect, I’m pretty sure football never taught me anything. At least not anything of lasting value.
I never learned anything from getting stomped or blocked or tackled. I didn’t learn anything from tackling or recovering fumbles or sacking a quarterback. Nothing. I didn’t learn anything from two-a-days or early morning practices except maybe how to play football a little better.
Football never taught me a thing, but the men who coached me helped me to learn life.
This is where we mess up in sports and other extra-curricular activities. We believe the activity is the teacher.
The activity is the medium through which teaching takes place.
Football didn’t teach me anything, but football coaches helped me to learn to be a man. Coaches taught me to work hard, to have goals, and to be disciplined.
Too many parents and coaches have bought the lie that sports create great humans. Kids don’t become great adults because they are on an athletic team (or the band or a dance team). Kids don’t really learn anything on an athletic field except how to play a sport, unless there are coaches who are interested in more.
Further, it really doesn’t matter if you create great athletes (the adult obesity rate for high school football players is higher than the rate for non-players, for instance) if we aren’t focused on more. I’m 41 years old. I haven’t put on football pads since I was a freshman in college, but I still remember what I learned from good coaches.
Football didn’t teach me anything, but the lessons I learned from my parents and my coaches through the medium of football and other sports have shaped and molded me.
Coaches and parents, don’t buy the lie. The sport isn’t teaching a thing.
But you are shaping young men and women. You shape them into the adults they are going to become. The great question to answer is whether you are shaping them into better adults or worse?
I like winning, but winning games doesn’t make better kids or better adults. Discipline, love, character, those things shape kids. Tell kids the truth. They aren’t going to play beyond high school. If they beat the curve and they get four more years, great, but be honest with them. Sports is not going to pay their bills (and neither is a guitar or a clarinet).
Sports should be a medium to mold and shape kids, but we only mold and shape them into better kids and adults when we have the right kinds of coaches and adults speaking into their lives.
Coaches, prioritize academics and discipline and respect. Teach your kids more than the game. Teach them about life and success and service. Teach them to be contributors to their community, not just spectacles on a field. Your players won’t play for you after they graduate, but they may just improve society because you helped them be better people.
I didn’t learn anything from football, but coaches taught me how to fall forward, how to get up after I fail, and how to be disciplined and hard-working. I played for men who showed me how to strive for greatness on the field and in the classroom (I had several high school coaches who taught honors and AP classes). I learned how to live out my faith in public and healthy ways to manage stress and deal with aggression (I still lift weights and workout today because of those lessons from one of my favorite coaches). I saw men show affection to each other and their players and I learned to be comfortable doing the same thing.
When I was seventeen years old, a friend died in a car-wreck. One of my coaches gave me advice I still share with grieving people today.
Today I called an old high school teammate. He’s going through a really difficult time in his life. He told me that he ran into one of our old coaches last week who enveloped him in a bear hug. That same coach has given me that same hug at a couple of difficult times in my life. He taught me to squat heavy and to work hard, he also taught me the power of a hug.
It is football season. I’m thrilled. I love it. Football can’t be our idol and it will not be the savior of our kids. But good adults in lives of our kids might just change a generation.
Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash
