The Big Question

Today, we had The Talk.

Not the talk, though I suspect that one’s coming soon enough with my fifth-grade daughter.

No, the other talk. The one that has elbowed its way to the top of the menu of hot-button conversational topics, at least for parents of third-grade boys. At least around here.

I knew it was coming. Still, I was blindsided when it did.

The final minutes of the Chiefs’ season was ticking away, and with it my son’s eligibility to play flag football in our local league. He was out on the field, manning the middle of our defense – showing off the proper $5-foot-long two-handed flag-pulling technique we had coached into the kids for our two seasons in the Senior Flag Division – when my friend and fellow coach initiated The Talk.

“So . . . next year . . .” he asked, almost wrestling with the words that were coming next. “Is Dylan going to play tackle?”

And there it was. The topic was officially on the table.

A second-straight season-ending victory for the Chiefs was nearly secured, a second-straight 3-5 record just about in the books. There was time left for one more offensive series, if only a snap or two. But the 2014 season was, essentially, over. Married to that finality was the immediate uncertainty it brought regarding my son’s football future.

Will he play tackle next year?

That was the question, but it very well could have been phrased, “Are you going to let him play tackle next year?”

It’s a conundrum of a crossroads parents across the country are coming to sooner than any of us expected. The further down the path our sons go, we move closer to the inevitable decision: Do I want my son to play football?

Not too terribly long ago, it wasn’t a question that warranted asking. If it had been raised, the answer would have been the same as with any other sport he was involved in. “Sure. If he wants to play, he can play.” Football, baseball, soccer, hockey, basketball, lacrosse, tennis , swimming. . . what’s the difference? Who would ever tell a third-grader he couldn’t play a sport that he loved?

But football is different today. No different than it always has been, not in the way it’s played. Different only in the way it’s perceived. By parents. Which is to say the only way that matters.

Football always has been a challenging game to play, difficult and demanding both mentally and physically. That’s always been its primary appeal, to players and fans alike.

Football teaches discipline and teamwork and toughness and sacrifice in ways no other sport can. My father, a proud former quarterback of the Thomas Jefferson High School Big Orange Wave, credits much of his business success to leadership principles learned from two teachers: football and the United States Army.

There never has been a shortage of reasons to play football. All of those still apply.

Now, there’s a mounting argument against it.

The ledger sheet is no longer one-sided in football’s favor. If anything, the balance is starting to skew from credits toward debits.

The more the general public learns about the toll paid by the people who play football, the harder it becomes to see the price as acceptable. The more we hear about the devastating effects of concussions – the damage they do to the brain development of young athletes – the less willing we become to write it off as “part of the game.” Fighting in hockey isn’t inextricable from the game; it can (and should) be eliminated. But collisions in football cannot be legislated away, not without changing the game on a fundamental level.

Our sons love football. Our sons want to play football. They want to play tackle football. Just ask them.

As parents, though, how do we let them?

Even if we swallow hard, cross our fingers, hold our breath and sign them up for that first taste of tackle in fourth grade, what then? What happens if they show an aptitude for it? Or, God forbid, they like it and want to keep playing?

We know injuries are inevitable in such a physical sport (there is the potential for injury in, say, hockey or lacrosse or skiing, but not a probability), especially over extended exposure. Knees, necks, backs, bones . . . these are all vulnerable to injury during the regular course of play. But the brain is a game-changer. A recent study found that one-third of retired NFL players will develop some sort of cognitive impairment. We all know the damage doesn’t begin to incur only after they’re cashing paychecks to play.

So when do we pull the plug – before our kids have gotten the bug or after it’s already in their blood? Or do we let them play until they’re cut from a middle school roster or fail to make varsity or not have an offer from a college extended to them? Do we wait and let somebody else be the bad guy and take the game away? And what about the residual effects of the three or five or nine years of the game they will have been subjected to by that point? What price might they have paid before they shut it down?

When the question was posed to me on the sidelines, I wasn’t ready for it, even though the issue has been on my mind. How could it not be? I’ve had a book out this entire football season, Under Pressure, that shares the story of Ray Lucas, a former NFL quarterback whose body was broken by the game he gave everything to play and the addiction to painkillers that ensued. Hell, it’s been on everyone’s mind. How else do you explain the cover of The New York Times Magazine, delivered to my driveway this very weekend, wondering, “Is Football the Next Tobacco?”

This is no longer a theoretical debate for my family. It’s a practical decision we have to make now (well, soon . . . prior to next summer’s registration process).

We’re lucky. We know of a flag football league for fourth graders, just across the state line in Connecticut. It’s a league where other local parents have sought refuge, delaying their decision an extra year or two (hoping that their sons in the meantime would come to the conclusion not to play tackle on their own). I’m not sure any of the 10 third-graders on the Chiefs roster will play tackle next year; but we probably could take the team intact to Greenwich and spend another season together. It may be pulling flags, but they’d be playing football.

Clearly, there’s a lot left we need to talk about.