[Boozy: Today we welcome back Bill M. Hours, our erstwhile contributor, with another guest post to keep my goddamn queue from overflowing. Bill is an insurance defense attorney, a peon, a pleb, and an all around nice guy despite his work for the evil empire of Defense Attorneys. You can find him on Twitter at @billmhours.]
If someone you cared about asked for your opinion on whether they should play football; full contact, pads and helmets, grass-in-mouth football, what would you say?
Many of us today probably would caution against it. I know that when I run this scenario through my mind, my hypothetical self goes through various derivations of “fuck no” before deciding that phrases which aren’t broke don’t require fixing. I’d imagine that if one of my children ever asked me to let them play football, I’d most likely ask for a paternity test, but then also immediately lodge my opposition. In my case, this probably wouldn’t be too difficult to enforce because my spouse, while very interested in cooking, probably isn’t looking to be dealing with scrambled brains any time soon.
Perhaps I’ve tipped my hat too soon, in terms of expressing my opinion on the effects of football, but I don’t wish to make it sound like I hate ‘sportsball.’ In fact, where I come from, football in all its forms is a celebrated pastime. I even partook in the bashing of heads myself as a younger fellow (it was “Billy” back then), and I know from secondary experience that playing football can help young men in having an outlet to express hormonal emotions, and by helping them to develop discipline which can transfer into everyday life.