All regards to your strong feelings, Peter. Your point-of-view & resolve here in dbis tribe precedes this post. Having watched the video and some that followed, it’s not easy to speak on behalf o the contrary. But I intend to. From HotStove to Pop Warner pee-wee to college degrees, boys who find a family there on the football field, in the company of an excellent coach, a home away from home where camaraderie and accountability and depths of athleticism in the midst of primal force-upon-force patriarchal contact arises in a young man an ancient ceremony of the hunter & gatherer in cells that course though much of our beings. Those who rush from the day’s classes to the locker room to suit up and get out on the field are, for the most part, finding out-there the core aspect of Earth that makes sense to them. Sure, some become buttheads and force their machismo outwards onto physically or emotionally weaker youth or even more horribly into harming females—these jerks will be this way with or without football, but far more youth find chivalry & self-esteem as well as civic respect for people and opponent in the process of training & learning the craft of football.

I (we) raised two boys. They began very young in gymnastics because we hoped the focus on flexibility and core strength & balance would give them a head- start. Thanks to an excellent trainer and hours of throw & catch in the yard, they were buff pee-wee-ready athletes by their first day on the field. By the time they were pee-wee age they were team leaders in football, basketball, & baseball. AND they loved it. Jake was a ranked player as football QB and basketball shooting guard. Benny wasn’t ranked but that’s more because has had a quiet personality, but he rocked the games. By 9th grade, although both outstanding players, they lost interest in baseball—Jake (2nd son) said: Moma/Dad, any game where I can both nap & snack while playing is not for me. Benny agreed. And that was the year Jake decided that his love was basketball. He owned the game, joining the ranks of 1,000 Point Club in his senior year and other records. Benny went on with basketball & football, going on to captain the basketball team that he & Jake would play on together for Benny’s junior & senior year. Benny played running back on the football team in his sophomore year then QB in his junior & senior year. But they weren’t only jocks. Sports gave them focus, speed, balance of body, hand-eye- coordination & flexibility, art/music & academics gave them balance of being. Benny is a classically trained in timpani, snare, drum kit and autodidact in piano & synth. Jake is a classically trained alto sax player and is video- teaching himself guitar as a junior in college absolutely immersed in Exercise Science & Nutrition. Benny has played lounge sets on baby grand to supplement his work in a kitchen and to keep his hand in music & music recording. His recorded music is way out there these days but his sense of rhythm & arrangement is uncanny. Jake was class valedictorian and was given a full-ride scholarship at an exclusive private liberal arts college. & I’m telling you this is fact, Peter, m’ friend, it ALL began with football on the side of the house, catch & throw of any kind of ball (& Frisbee), and blossomed from there. We’re basketball fanatics in this house …but football has & will always be an earthly activity. Whether or not you ever tried it, that kind of physical expression is life-affirming. AND usually you get up, brush yourself off, and line up to push another few yards closer to the goal. It’s just a thing that erupts inside good blood.

Firemen get burned putting out fires. Racecar drivers die in crashes. Career soldiers get their limbs blown-off and their hearts hardened. Police get shot or become maligned (if they didn’t already start out that way). Musicians die on the toilet with a needle in their arm..the sweet taste of sex on their palate. Teachers take their own lives in the wake of No Child Left Behind. Climbers die in a frozen crevasse. Doctors hook themselves on opioids. Animal adventurers skewer themselves on manta ray barbs. X Gamers break their hips & cost their rich parents thousands in medical insurance. Sex professionals get AIDS. Miners get black lung. Plumbers get butt-crack exposure. And others who live extraordinary lives as exemplary level-headed wives & mothers who excel at a career & never lose mutual adoration of their mate are somehow fated to die far too young from a rare & absurdly unforeseen blood disease. People pursue their passions and live as long as they can, then something gives them death to ponder.

Picture yourself a quarterback who takes the hike and drops back into a perfect pocket, 4 seconds later you let loose with a flawless throw, technically elegant from years of rehearsal, you follow through, side step a defender who goes face-first into rich sod, and you breathe a sigh of lifting spirit as you watch one football reach its apex and arc down perfectly just ahead of your receiver galloping as fast as he has ever run, as two skilled hands communicate an embrace upon spiraling football just as your receiver footfalls onto the 2 yard line and carries self & fulfilment over the goal- line. Everything had to be executed ideally for this one moment to occur. And it does occur. From pee-wee to high school to the NFL. AND many of these young men would not have had any other way to find such mentoring, had it not been for this barbaric sport (that teaches team, mind, body, spirit, clear vision, hope, heroism, love, and far more often than you may imagine: respect for one’s opponent). Far better than an M16 in Fallujah.