Catholic Dads

How To Talk To Your Son About His NFL Football Career

August 5th, 2009

For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. But if any man buildeth on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, stubble; each man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work shall abide which he built thereon, he shall receive a reward.
1Co 3:11-14

Football season is starting up for our local High School team. My son is on the team and practices have started hot and heavy. He loves the sport and has aspirations of college scholarships and NFL drafts.

He has the talent and will to do so. He also knows that in the NFL there is alot of money involved and I think that is a great motivator. That being so I have been considering a father son talk on wisdom and morals in the NFL.

What got me started down that track was the hearing on Plaxico Burress, who accidentally shot himself in the leg in a club. It seems to me if you are going to get in trouble it shouldn’t be for shooting yourself in the thigh in a nightclub… by accident, but that’s just me. It seems the NFL is riddled with such mysteries as, why get involved in a dogfighting ring when you have everything in the world at your feet(Michael Vick), or why cheat by video taping the other teams, and getting plays ahead of time when you have already won three Superbowl rings?(Bill Belichick).

While there are outstanding and upright players in the organization, the news we get from the media is all about the NFL’s badboys. And the system of justice doesn’t seem to be very fair when your or I can commit the same crimes and land in jail for a longtime. Celebrity commands leniency I suppose which makes their error and mine different somehow.

It comes down then to the foundation we lay. What does my son want from the fame and money inherent in an NFL career? More money fame and access…or financial security and the ability to live helping others of lesser state? This is a discussion we need to have with ourselves, first and foremost, and with our children at length because for the Christian it is what life in this world is about.

Brother Joe Speranzella is a husband, a father, a Third Order Franciscan, an author, a cartoonist and musician who writes for the Norfolk Examiner.

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