Two hours before kickoff, I’m getting amped up for the game. Back in Black by AC/DC is playing, and I can feel the rush of adrenaline and a little rage.
This is the first game of the season. But it’s not my season. It’s my son’s. He’s sleeping soundly in the back seat. His mom is currently deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so on top of all this, I’m navigating solo parenthood for the first time.
I’m excited for Dustin. Yet, I can’t understand why he’s asleep. Doesn’t he know how important it is to start mentally preparing?
And then I remember he’s barely seven years old. I’m not even sure he wants to play. That concerns me. Football taught me so many life lessons and I didn’t play until I was 14. I want him to get an early start.
A few months ago, Dustin said he’d like to try tackle football. At least that’s how I’d like to remember it. Most likely I told him he would like to try football.
On sign-up day, the Germantown Community Center was a bustling mass of men and boys. The older boys seemed excited. The youngest ones a little nervous. The dads on the other hand were a boisterous group. Especially the dads of first-time players. It was even crazier on equipment issue day. Dads were heavily involved, telling their kids exactly what equipment to choose, based no doubt on what they once wore. One even brought a bunch of plays he said he was giving to the coach.
“These are winning plays,” he insisted. The coach was less enthusiastic.
Dustin was assigned to the youngest group, the South Germantown Panthers Anklebiter “C” team which was coached by Scott “Big Dog” Frost. They play in the Capitol Beltway League, a competitive organization with teams from all over Maryland and Washington, DC.
Practice was held every night in August until school started, then three times a week from 6:00 – 8:00 with games on Saturday. Nearly all the parents brought lawn chairs to watch. Most of us would have given anything to be out there, even if it’s just practice.
As the first game approached, the starters were named. Dustin would be starting at left guard, my old position. I was so proud and excited for him.
But on this game day, he’s oblivious. We arrive at the field, and I wake him up. Coach Big Dog rounds up the players and I take a seat with other parents.
The Panthers won the game as well as most of the others that season. Dustin seems happy, but not nearly as enthusiastic as I hoped. When the season ends, he seems willing to play again so I’m happy.
The next season wasn’t as good. The coach of the Anklebiter “B” team was capable, but parents were becoming an issue. You must realize that dads all think their sons are the best players ever created (next to them of course) and insist they should be starting. It got so bad the league identified an ombudsman (whom we referred to as Sasquatch since he could have been a body double for one) to deal with angry parents. Now nobody was happy. The Panthers were losing their games, and the coach was getting frustrated. When the season ended, Dustin said he didn’t want to play anymore.
But I wouldn’t let it go that easy. I insisted he play one more season. Now he was on the Anklebiter “A” team, and this was a lot more intense. His new coach, Coach Jimmy was an angry little man who took out his frustrations over a recent divorce and a teenage son who was constantly in trouble, on our boys. I wasn’t happy either and was reluctantly ready to let him quit at the end of the season.
Then, one of the football dads I befriended suggested we look at an alternative league. The city of Rockville, MD, an affluent community outside of the Beltway had a league that was boosted by private businesses. It was competitive, but far less intense. All the games were played on one field so there was no more driving into scary neighborhoods in DC for games.
I asked Dustin if he wanted to give it one more try, and since his friend Chris was in, he decided to play.
I saw a big difference on the first day of practice. His coach was James Wilson, a federal government manager who was the type of coach I was hoping he’d have. He taught life lessons. He let kids try out for any position they wanted. Dustin adapted and thrived. He was named team captain. He liked football again. I was happy too.
The next season his team won the league championship on a snowy night in November. That left Dustin one more season to play before high school.
The last season in the RFL was a bad one. The quality of coaching slipped, and pushy parents again created chaos. The team lost most of their games and even though Dustin said he wanted to play high school football, I could sense his reluctance.
Dustin was accepted into Our Lady of Good Council High School in Olney, MD. You know it because it was attended by NFL stars such as Jelani Jenkins, Dorien O’Daniel, Kendall Fuller, and Stefon Diggs. Plus Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler Kyle Snyder.
Good Council is a football factory. The freshman team is essentially an all-star team of hand-picked youth talent from all over the DMV. Dustin might have weighed 170 lbs. The other true freshman linemen were all over 250 and these weren’t fat guys either. The freshman team hadn’t lost a game EVER and likely could have beaten the varsity teams of most of the public high schools.
Dustin hardly played. He was essentially a tackling dummy for the better players. In his sophomore year, he was relegated to the JV team, which was the equivalent of a football no-man’s land. The good players all rolled up to varsity so he and about 30 other guys were the JV.
The JV had less pressure and Dustin had a lot more fun. But we all knew that this was the end of Dustin’s football career. I wouldn’t let him go to varsity and get hurt. There’s no way he’d ever see the field anyway. In spite of all the talent on Good Council’s roster, the head coach Bob Milloy played the same 11 guys on both sides of the ball. Ironically, Dustin decided to try rugby and loved it. He played the last two years and then graduated in 2014.
And to this day, Dustin has zero interest in football. I’m responsible for that.
Why did I think football was important enough to force feed into my son so that eventually he would hate it?
It’s because I needed football.
By the time I was in 8th grade, I was feeling pressure from being bullied in the 7th grade plus my home situation wasn’t good. My dad suffered from a thyroid condition and depression that made us all walk around on eggshells around him. He was angry and brooding most of the time, and often mentally and physically abusive. Except at church or around my parent’s friends. I felt like a phony because everyone thought we had the perfect family.
Football allowed me to hit things. And people. It felt good. I wasn’t particularly fast or big, but I went to a small high school, so I started on JV my freshman year. By my sophomore year, I was pulled up to varsity. It was three years of futile, losing football, but I loved every moment of it.
Since we rarely won games, I saw football as 60 minutes of inflicting as much physical pain on the other team as I could. My NFL hero at the time was Conrad Dobler, an offensive lineman for the New Orleans Saints. He was recognized at the time as the dirtiest player in football, the perfect role model for me. Even though I was good, my temper often got the best of me. In the first game of my senior year, our running back fumbled the ball, and the other team recovered it. Under the pile of players, I could see the guy with the ball and reached out, taking his helmet and facemask in my hands and attempted to twist his head off his body like a bottle cap. I was thrown out of the game for that one.
But aside from the rage therapy, football taught me about resilience. I learned how to push though pain and not quit. Football showed me how to motivate people when I was team captain. I learned how to be a leader and how to influence others. My coach in some ways became a surrogate father and I graduated high school grateful for football. When I got to Navy boot camp in 1983, I thought it was a joke. Football was way more physically demanding and my company commanders had nothing on football coaches when it came to mind games.
I was so grateful for football that I knew my son needed to play. This sport would give him the life lessons he needed to succeed, just like it did for me.
Except that he didn’t. I didn’t realize it then, but what I missed growing up didn’t affect Dustin. Even though I traveled a lot for work, I did my best to be home and involved as much as possible. I taught life lessons by just being diligent, and working hard to start and build a business. I talked to my kids and listened to them. We exposed them to as much culture as we could. They knew from a young age they would go to college and would be expected to have good grades.
Football offered none of this. For Dustin, football was and is:
- A chance for dads to relive their glory through their sons.
- A sport that preys on the weak and has zero empathy.
- A place where overbearing parents do their best to engineer their son’s career, often for their own glory.
- A sport that at best will leave you with some nagging injuries, and at worst can kill you. Either now or years from now.
Football helped make me, but now I’ve even lost interest in it. Last season I shut off the Superbowl with two minutes left and the game in doubt. This season I have yet to watch a game.
It served me well, but like training wheels and rubber pants, I’ve outgrown it and what it gave me. Life has been a far better teacher and adjusts its curriculum in real time.
All of us are on a unique journey. We might have a roadmap that could be useful for someone else, but they are not going where we are.
What has served as the energy behind your success?
What happened when you tried to get someone else to use it?