I am about to attend my first football game in three years. This is only remarkable in that my grandfather recently passed away and I think he would like that his passing somehow results in more football in my life.

We take football very seriously in my family.

Football and my attitudes about it weren’t something I ever consciously thought about growing up; I knew that when Dad was watching football you left him alone, and that when I went to a game I could watch the marching band. I also learned fairly early that football was an out I didn’t have; I didn’t get out of chores because I was tired at football practice or anything else. Despite how that sentence sounds, however, I don’t carry any bitterness about that. And this is sort of the crux of my football musings here: football is, and always has been, another member of our family. I would say it was like a religion, but that implies some level of deification or worship and that’s not how we approach it at all. Football merely is to us; you do what needs to be done to get to the game, and you support the people who are involved in it whether they be coaching, playing, or part of the marching band.

We are not football snobs.

I muse over the role football has played, though, because I’ve discovered since leaving home there is no way to explain how I feel or what I expect to someone who wasn’t there every day. We don’t obsess over names of players and stats; we don’t watch the games avidly, and while we care no one would call us rabid fans. But, for me at least, unlike someone who likes football or has discovered they like football it has, quite simply, always been there. I never questioned it; I never felt bad about it. I never wondered why football got more attention than other activities. I never doubted my Dad loved me even though I couldn’t play football. You don’t harbor bitterness towards the member of your family that requires so much attention; you do what you can to fulfill that need and enjoy your time outside of it.
And I have decided talk about football now (I have decided that anyone cares about the role football plays for myself and others) because my grandfather really loved football. I don’t think I ever fully understood how much until I recently read some of his writings. It wasn’t just a game for him; his players were like family and the institution offered the chance for kids to learn something meaningful. What’s more, you could learn whether you played or not—if you knew how to listen anyway. Football was a lens through which he viewed life, and he wanted the us to see life through that lens as well.

Football is the only game where eleven bodies slam into eleven bodies with enough kinetic energy to kill someone; the ball is inconsequential to the physical aspect of it unless you are a quarterback or wide receiver. For the lineman and the defense especially the difficulty lies in finding a way to overpower one or two people as big or bigger than you are, running yourself into them as hard as you possibly can. But when it’s all over, when the game is done, and the score decided what matters isn’t whether you won or lost; what matters is whether you won or lost correctly. I know, sort of a weird concept isn’t it?

But the important part here is the struggle. The fight to move the ball and protect your team--the fight to obliterate the other team. That you have literally fought as hard as you could, as fairly as you could, and learned to accept either outcome. I don’t know of anything in life where that attitude does not serve one well. As think back over the discussions I've listend to between my grandfather, my dad, and my brother--and any discussion concerning our approach to extra curicular activities--I realize how embedded this idea is in our familial philosophy. You learn to fight through pain, physical and mental, to do what needs to be done, and you learn to deal with that pain when the job is over, not ignore it or repress it or boast about it, but to quietly heal so that you are prepared and healthy to fight another day. That’s what football, or in my case living with football, has taught me. As I think back over the conversations of recent years I think this is the concept Grandpa was really trying to emphasize. It doesn't only matter that you win, but that you struggle always the most ethically and nobly that you can.

I haven't learned that lesson fully yet; how can you? But my mind has been recycling these ideas over and over again for the past few days and this is an idea, a concept, that is important to revisit. This idea of ethical struggle is worth understanding. If football were a religion then only those of us who have played could follow it truly. But because it's a member of our family it is simply one more personality that shapes the family dynamic. That is why I can think about all of this in terms of football even though I haven't played a sanctioned game in my life. I think Grandpa would appreciate that.

Added on 9-14-09: This post arose as much out of a conversation with my brother as out of my own philosophical musings. I wanted to make sure I added that so that everyone would know that in this case, my ideas were not formulated in a vaccuum, but owe as much to him as to myself.