Why Football Matters

Submitted by Space Coyote on

John Harbaugh wrote a piece for the Baltimore Ravens website about why football matters, particularly at the youth and High School level. I think it's well stated and something I very much agree with. Our coach, Jim, also agrees with it, and recently posted it to his twitter account. But I thought it was important enough to bring here.

LINK

That, in my opinion, tells an important part of the story, but not the whole story. It tells a fundamental aspect of the player and coach perspective of football. But football means a lot of important things to a lot of people.

One of the things that I have done throughout the past few years is ask people "why is football important to you?" I have my story which has its time and place to tell, about how even the portion when I wasn't playing, profoundly changed and shaped my life. I've talked to pro football players, from the stars to the guys that have hung around the league in special teams roles for a half-dozen years. I've talked to daughters who bonded with their fathers and entire families through tailgating and going to Spartan Stadium (or whichever stadium) ever Fall Saturday when the home team was in town. And I've talked to dozens of coaches and fathers that prove that football is very important in our society. Think of Chris Spielman, a husband that lost his wife to cancer, and ask him what football means to him, and I promise he'll bring up family and support and an avenue to change lives.

That is why football matters. That is why football is important. "The concussion issue is real and we have to face it," as John Harbaugh said. But we shouldn't turn and run from it. Football is too important to do that.

julesh

April 23rd, 2015 at 11:06 AM ^

I don't know. While Michigan has certainly led to much drinking, it hasn't been that fun to watch. The Lions are always fun to watch, whether from "OMG HOW THE FUCK DID THEY JUST LOSE THIS GAME???" or "OMG HOW THE FUCK DID THEY JUST WIN THIS GAME???" while also leading to much drinking.

SMart WolveFan

April 23rd, 2015 at 11:43 AM ^

However, I think JH's point was more about toughening up our youth in general so that when they have to do those really tough jobs, especially defending freedom, they are tough enough to get the job done.

Also on a side note I don't see many young people choosing mining as a career these days, cell phone reception is just terrrible down there. /s

What we must hope for is tough enough engineers so we can get some robot workers up in here.

wahooverine

April 23rd, 2015 at 3:37 PM ^

Your taking his statement too literally. JH is prone to hyperbole but not out of ignorance, it's just his style of rhetoric (EUTM).   Doubt JH thinks football is literally the only source of tough people in the US.  In fact he regularly highlights and praises over his twitter feed those who he admires for the virtues he respects most: toughness, perserversnce, hard work, resiliency, will to win, and the like.  Think Judge Judy among many others.

DonAZ

April 23rd, 2015 at 12:47 PM ^

Wrestling, boxing ... those are individual sports.  Tough, yes; but the teamwork component is not there as much* as football.

Of all the mainline sports, hockey might approach football in terms of physicality and teamwork requirements.

Rowing is a sport that is *all* about coordinated teamwork.  It requires a great deal of physical endurance.  But to my knowledge they do not require protective gear. ;-)

* I understand wrestling is a team sport in terms of scoring. 

The Mad Hatter

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:04 AM ^

One of the main reasons I like football is that it's violent.  An outlet for anger and aggression that society encourages you to suppress, by any means necessary.

 

LJ

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:13 AM ^

I don't really disagree with much of what Harbaugh said, and I agree that football almost certainly has a more positive overall effect on our society than negative.  

But what both Harbaughs fail to recognize, in my view, that all of the values they're talking about can be instilled in many other ways too, and ways that are less dangerous.  I think all those same lessons can be learned on a soccer field, or the basketball court, or the tennis court, or the classroom.  Non-football coaches can be father figures.  Teachers can.  Neighbors can.  And that's why I'd rather my son play a sport other than football (though if he wants to play, I won't stop him -- I'll just educate him).

I love me some Harbaugh, but I don't think it's true that football teaches uniquely valuable "toughness."  Toughness is learned everywhere there is challenge: on the football field, in the classroom, in the laboratory, on the ballet dance floor.  Football does not have a monopoly.

Blue and Joe

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:29 AM ^

Came here to say exactly this. As someone who played basketball and baseball in high school it rubs me the wrong way when someone says football is the only way to learn those values. I hate to break it to the Harbaughs, but football is just another sport. It's fun as hell to watch, but there are plenty of ways to learn the value of hard work without getting a concussion.

Here2CWoodson

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:44 AM ^

I agree that these lessons can certainly be taught in other sports and activities, but I think football takes it to another level. The extreme pain of full contact two a days beats a guy down physically and mentally beyond any other sport, and makes them dig deep to stick it out. I know that there were many times that I wanted to quit playing because it was so grueling but I stuck to it and I feel like I am a much better man today because of it.

In character and value building I compare football to other sports as I would being a Navy SEAL to playing football. You are going to be pushed physically and mentally in soccer, but the pain and punishment is taken to the next level with football, causing a kid to learn even more about himself and his character. To the same point, you are pushed in hard football but being a Navy SEAL takes it all even further and instills even deeper discipline and values in a person. My point being that these lessons can be taught in many ways but I think of all sports football teaches a kid the most.




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LJ

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:11 AM ^

Why do we always talk about toughness in only the physical sense?  My wife is in medical school right now.  I tell you, she's learning toughness and perserverence as much as any football player does.

I think we should encourage kids to work hard, push their limits, and achieve as much as they are capable of.  They can do that in any field.

Here2CWoodson

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:28 AM ^

My point is that in football you are tested in BOTH aspects, physically and mentally. Studying film and a playbook and having to use that knowledge while being exhausted mentally and physically is incredibly tough. And I only did it at the high school level, college and pro football is 100x harder. It goes back to my point that you can learn these skills in many different fields but football just takes it to another level.




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DonAZ

April 23rd, 2015 at 12:25 PM ^

This reminds me of a debate I had with my cousin many years ago.

If mental toughness is the key attribute of competitive endeavor, does that mean chess players are athletes?

When compared to, say, football, the argument seems silly.  But compare it to golf.  Golf is in large measure (not exclusively) a mental game.  Who's the better athlete, a championship chess player or a championship golfer?

Things get really interesting when one brings technology into the question.  Computers can play chess better than most humans.  I'd be willing to bet the technology is there to make a robot swing a golf club with more precision than a human.  (Getting a robot into position in a tough bunker shot is another matter, though presumably if the robot is really good they wouldn't be in the bunker in the first place.)

Which is why I come back to football.

Football is gloriously rough, physical, yet almost poetic.  NFL Films did the right thing by slowing down the action and putting classical music under the scene.  It's just a beautiful thing to watch a well-executed football play. 

harmon40

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:19 AM ^

Like most who have played youth sports I was on the winning and losing side of blowout defeats.  It is painful to be on a team that gets crushed - a baseball team that gives up 20 runs, or a basketball team that loses by 50 - but mostly the pain is psychological.

A football team that gets blown out is being physically beaten up in the process. That has got to be demoralizing - looking up at the scoreboard, being down by 30-40 points, AND knowing that you are about to get run over AGAIN on the next play. The only way to have a chance at preventing that is for coaches to take (drive?) players beyond where they think their limits are.

As a former baseball and marching band guy, I have absolutely no clue what it means to suffer through a two-a-day, go past my limits in a weight room, or get ready to compete against the physically toughest team in our conference. Gotta respect those guys that do...

SMart WolveFan

April 23rd, 2015 at 12:25 PM ^

Specifically that in football it's so much about "the Team, the Team, the Team".

From 11 men orchestrating the 20 second ballet of violence over and over to the torture of being on the sideline while the other side of the ball is wasting all your good work, football not only tests skill, strength and toughness but the ability to suppress ego for the good of the whole.

Space Coyote

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:45 AM ^

I played multiple sports growing up (basketball, soccer, track), and all shaped me in some way. If a kid is in band, a lot of those elements are there. The classroom, boy scouts, any other club or organization, there are lessons there. But I do believe football is unique in how well it teaches many of the things Harbaugh stated, and that it teaches it better than anything else.

Kids need to be well rounded, and I certainly encourage them to do other things. And kids that don't want to play football I'm by no means saying they should play football. But while soccer and basketball are more free-flowing (almost an art form), football (similar to wrestling) is impertive to perform down to the finest detail, or you lose. You lose that play, and it's obvious. But each play gives you a new opportunity to succeed as well, and to improve yourself. Yes, that's there in other sports, but I do believe football is unique in how well it teaches many of those things.

So again, by no means am I saying football has a monopoly on some of these lessons, but I do think it is important. I think it is important that we don't lose sight of it because we fear concussions. Concussions are serious, head issues are serious, repetative hits, even non-concussions, are serious. But for thousands upon thousands of kids, football provided something that I don't think kids get in many other places, and I believe it does it better than just about anything else.

backusduo

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:50 AM ^

I agree with you. As a former basketball player you are right on, but I think the other sports aren't under attack (yet) and so that is why football was the greater point. I also think that coaching today babies kids. When we grew up noone was tracking water consumption (living in AZ I agree with this one) and energy breaks. They were pushing you until your point of breaking and then showing you, you could exceed what you thought was your previous limitation. I never had that happen in my time on a baseball field but I did in basketball and I know it is a stalwart of football as well as our Seal training.

On a personal note I just had a niece complete Basic and she said it was the toughest thing she ever did. Why? Because in all her highschool sports she had never been pushed past her perceived limits. I think football does that regularly and while some coaches in other sports may also, it is not as regular an occurence anymore. I am for teaching our kids there are hard things, they don't want to do, that they can accomplish so when they get to the hardest things in life they have past physical or mental trophies to remind them that they can Overcome.

Football is one way we still do that in our kids. There aren't many others left.

LJ

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:09 AM ^

I agree.  I don't think there's anything inherently about football that is tougher than other sports.  It could be the case, however, that football coaches tend to push their players beyond what coaches of other sports do.  At the highest levels I strongly doubt that is the case, but I bet it is the case in high school.

harmon40

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:05 AM ^

If you weren't, then football players and former football players would be the only people on earth with any toughness at all.

However, JnH states: "I believe there's practically no other place where a young man is held to a higher standard."

I think he has a point there.

Toughness can be learned through other, safer activities but not quite like football.  Maybe hockey would come the closest - so much off-season prep needed just to be able to compete at what is not really a "contact sport" but rather a violent hitting game.

I never played organized football. As a baseball player, it was hard for me to shake off a strikeout or an error and not let it affect my performance going forward. But can you imagine getting lit up, or making a mistake that gets someone else lit up, and shaking that off and performing on the next play?  Teammates depend on one another in any sport, but it seems that in football they depend on each other a lot more.

I was in the marching band in high school. It was definitely the best choice for me, as I was a much better musician than I was an athlete (I was also 156 lbs soaking wet). I had great friendships and great bonding experiences with other kids. But marching band has no equivalent to "going to war for the guy next to you." I don't regret my decision but I do envy my friends who put the time in lifting weights and were able to play football.  I've always wondered what that would have been like.

SMart WolveFan

April 23rd, 2015 at 12:10 PM ^

From what I gleaned his point was that, since most kids would like to participate in organized football, it has enough interest to pull the youth away from texting, videogames and making emo rock in their parents basement.

 

That way we can raise the toughness level of the whole generation and they can start making prog rock in the garage like it should be.

DonAZ

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:21 AM ^

There's another thread about Maurice Hurst and his visit to a patient at Mott's.  It's a wonderful story ... and it speaks volumes about Hurst's character.

I don't know for certain, but I'd guess football is a part of what shaped Hurst into the kind of young man he is.  Football provides structure that allows young men to play out their natural aggressive and competitive natures.  Properly run, it provides young men the opportunity to understand the role athletic aggression plays separate from young adult life off the field.

Not everyone has the talent and ability to play football at the college level.  But being a fan of the game can provide other young men the opportunity to experience the focus on teamwork and camraderie by proxy. 

Finally, football is an incredible game ... the closer one looks, the more one sees the intense individual competitions, which pair up with position teamwork, with matches up with overall teamwork.  It is a game with moments of action with delays between ... and the potential for incredible drama as a competitive game unfolds and the clock ticks down.

I love college football.  It is one of my few true passions in life.

harmon40

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:32 AM ^

I am going to ask my wife to read this. As a native Ecuadorian, she has never really understood the greater cosmological significance of American football - that it is in fact the glue of the universe, affecting lunar cycles, tides, global warming...and of course ultimately world peace.

She did watch a Super Bowl with me many years ago. On one play the team we were rooting for lost a fumble, and the replay showed that the runner's knee had clearly touched the ground prior to the ball coming out. My wife became indignant. "That's a terrible call!" she fumed. "They can't let that stand, that's not right, ¡árbitro sucio y comprado!"

I turned to stare at her with a glazed-over look on my face and blankly said, "You have become one of us..."

 

GoWings2008

April 23rd, 2015 at 9:37 AM ^

Football is technological; baseball is pastoral. 



Football is played in a stadium; baseball is played in the park. 



In football, you wear a helmet; in baseball, you wear a cap. 



Football is played on an enclosed, rectangular grid, and everyone of them is the same size; baseball is played on an ever-widening angle that reaches to inifinity, and every park is different! 



Football is rigidly timed; baseball has no time limit, we don't know when it's gonna end! We might even have extra innings! 



In football, you get a penalty; in baseball, you make an error - whoops! 



The object in football is to march downfield and penetrate enemy territory, and get into the end zone; in baseball, the object is to go home! "I'm going home!" 



And, in football, they have the clip, the hit, the block, the tackle, the blitz, the bomb, the offense and the defense; in baseball, they have.. the sacrifice. 

Hotel Putingrad

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:04 AM ^

so we both played soccer through high school. I understand his reasoning, but I wonder what it would have been like and if I would've become tougher and more successful than I am now. I guess my 16 hours of watching from the couch every weekend is pushing only my wife's limits.

Prince Lover

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:06 AM ^

I talk to a lot of my friends and family during football season with trash talking texts. Even if our teams aren't playing each other. Then when seasons end, life loses that temporary respite from the grind, and it's once again back to routines. And the texts eventually stop. Until the new season starts and again we have our common connection, our common break from life, our common pastime. And we collectively take time to smell the roses, or in this case, time to enjoy the game. Without football Saturdays, we would still be friends, we would still be relatives, we would just have one less common thread that ties us together.

taistreetsmyhero

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:21 AM ^

and we have too much information. we know too many different things that are all related in subtle and complicated ways and some things are bad and others are good.

how do you make a decision for your child that might only possibily have a negative impact, and if it does, it would be 40-50 years down the road?

LSAClassOf2000

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:44 AM ^

They are proud of playing the game. Have you ever met anybody who accomplished playing four years of high school football, and at the end of that run said, ‘Man, I wish I wouldn’t have played’? It doesn’t get said.

You know, I thought about this statement for a moment earlier this morning when the thread first appeared and yeah, of all the people I know who have played the game at some level or another, not one has ever regretted it that I can remember. Although others here have pointed out - and rightly so - that many of the lessons being discussed in the article can spring from other sources (teamwork, pushing yourself to do better and so on), football is a very good place to learn them all the same. 

DonAZ

April 23rd, 2015 at 12:17 PM ^

Agree ... though to pick-the-nit a little, anyone who was inclined to not like football would quit long before doing four years of it.  So those who survive four years are those by definition who wanted to do it. 

Nit thoroughly picked.

In a similar way, I've yet to meet a Marine who regretting choosing the Marines for their military service.  Further, of the Marines I've met in the business world, all are outstanding at what they do.  The lessons learned as a Marine carry over.

It's the same with football.  I think football is unique among sports in that it's so thoroughly a team sport.  One great talent on an otherwise poor football team won't carry the whole team like a great baseball pitcher can, or a great basketball player.  A phenomenal QB requires a lot of supporting players to excel; the supporting players require a teamwork-oriented QB for their efforts to pay off.  Layer on that the extreme physical nature of football, and it becomes a sport and an endeavor unique among sports.

JFW

April 23rd, 2015 at 10:56 AM ^

and for me, Wrestling, are all about teaching broader life lessons. They are conveneint vehicles for important messages, and they are fun to watch.

All through my childhood when people talked about Bo, (or my HS coach who emulated him), it was all about how his teams stood for discipline, unity, and execution. They never said the next, but I always somehow inferred 'Honor and integrity' in there too.

If you have a bunch of young kid or young men, full of P&V, full contact sports like that are a great way to curb that frenetic energy to positive things. Football requires joint execution. That requires teamwork and communication. It also requires that you hold up your end of the stick and find a way to get it done. Or, if you are really struggling, the honesty to admit it to your teammates and ask for help, subordinating your pride for the good of the team.

Football and Wrestling both teach discipline. Y ou can't be a good teammate without it. In order to do your job for the team, you have to be disciplined enough to train for it; to have the grit to deal with adversity. You have to have the discipline to push yourself beyond where you thought you could go.

Finally, you have to have some sense of honor and integrity. If you are a liar, or you cheat, you can undermine your team's trust in you. You can learn honor by defeating someone without humiliating them.

I know all of these are ideals. I know that no football or wrestling team is perfect. But its not about the product necessarily, its about the journey. If you have 3 kids on your team who end up getting involved in a MIP or something, you have their accountabiltiy to the team to help bring them back. That is the true value of those sports to me. 

I coached little kid wrestling for a bit. I loved it. Absolutely loved it. You could take young kids and watch them grow in huge ways in terms of self discipline and confidence. It was amazing. Very gratifying.

These sports can be abused. And that ticks me off.

My wife teaches HS. When she was at an (unnamed) school downstate, the star RB on a Thursday looked at her, tossed the quiz she'd just handed to him to the floor, and said 'I ain't takin' your f*ckin quiz'. She sent him to the office, but on the way his coach intercepted him and held him in his office so he wouldn't get in trouble that day, so he could play the next.

When I found out about that I was furious. I realized later to me that was like a mortal sin of sports. They'd taken something that could be used to teach good things and instead taught the exact opposite. I'd rather have no program than a program like that.

 

Oh well, I know this may sound a little to mayberry. But its my opinion.

 

TESOE

April 23rd, 2015 at 11:13 AM ^

This creates a problem for HS, College and Pro in terms of talent.

Tom Brady didn't play youth football, but if no one plays then skills are taught later and talent finds other venues.

There still isn't enough data to plot a safe course for football, but there is no risk free path in life.  The issue is with kids who are too young to understand the risk.  Already the demographics are skewed to the disadvantaged (which is another lesson of football BTW - everyone is equal on the field of play.)

No one person in my opinion understands the risks... only parts.  The rewards for youth football can be garnered in other less risky sports.  HS can be played safely... I think...but I honestly don't know.  The vast majority of all players are injury free in HS and College...again I think.  

The toughness meme is passe.  It's time to play smart.  Tagliabue set us on this course with a decade of denial.  I'm not sure it can be righted in the manner it should.  Things are changing quickly now on all fronts.

Crisler 71

April 23rd, 2015 at 12:01 PM ^

Football or any other athletics doesn't build character, it shows what kind of character you have.  It, like anything else worthwhile, does teach that hard work pays off and that if you don't work hard others will do better.  It teaches that it is what you do when nobody is looking (as in the offseason) is what will make you successful.