The Sport I Hate to Love

My personal journey with all things football

Photo by 33ft from Getty Images Pro on Canva Pro

I didn’t grow up even liking football.

I mean, sports were always a part of my life. I attended my first baseball game at Detroit Stadium before I was seven. We attended nearly every home football and basketball game at the high school where my dad taught until we moved from Detroit when I was nine. My mom, a Michigan State grad and former member of the Michigan State marching band, watched her alma mater play football and basketball on television whenever she could. My Nebraska fan father did the same with his team, but would cheer on MSU with my mom when necessary. As Detroit residents, we had an innate affinity for the Detroit Lions, although our family never reached the heartbreaking level of fandom as some of my friends.¹

The most active sport all four of us girls played was basketball, and while my three younger sisters continued playing through high school, my basketball career ended as soon as our family moved from Illinois to Wyoming. I went from playing competitive Midwestern Lutheran school ball as a fifth grader to a place where there were no opportunities for a sixth grader. And because I attended our church’s small Lutheran school in seventh and eighth grade, I missed out on any opportunities that would have been available to me at our local public middle school, eliminating any competitive edge I might have had against my junior high peers.

Despite my mom’s love for Michigan State football, I didn’t care about the college or the sport. Then my sophomore year of high school, my school made a run for the Wyoming state championship. I had a few friends on the JV team (including my best guy friend, who I had a massive crush on), and since we lived in a Wyoming town of 10,000 people, everyone who could showed up on Friday nights to watch the Wolverines play. We won that game on a cold November day. I remember my feet freezing in wet snow remaining from a recent storm, and then running out onto the field with my friends and classmates when we beat our rival for the 4A championship. During the season, I came to understand the sport a little, but I had no interest in making football viewing a regular part of my life.

Then I met my husband Jeff right before leaving for my freshman year of college. He made it clear that he loved football. He also made it clear that he was a die-hard Michigan fan, much to the chagrin of my Michigan State graduate mother. He attended his first game in the Big House with his youngest uncle before he was a teenager. He never missed a game on television. And when I came home for Christmas breaks, we would spend all of New Year’s Day watching bowl games.

Because I was a football agnostic, I was along for the ride. I didn’t really care about the games, I cared about hanging out with my boyfriend. So I tolerated the football fanaticism. And then I started to learn the rules beyond the basic understanding that I had needed for four years of attending Friday night football games, first in Wyoming and then in Michigan. The more I understood, the more I wanted to watch.

I still couldn’t match Jeff’s level of excitement and often found myself rolling my eyes when watching a Saturday afternoon football game took precedence over other tasks that I found more important. His aunt made the mistake of planning a couples shower for us a month before our wedding, during the Michigan/Ohio State game.² I lost my fiance and she lost her husband and sons during the majority of the shower. (Note: Her husband was the one who took my husband to his very first Michigan game.)

The first high school I taught at was so small it couldn’t field a football team, so when I started looking for a new job, Jeff told me that he was fine with moving, they just had to have a football team. When I was interviewing for the position I would eventually take, the principal informed me that they would be starting a football team the following year; I almost laughed during the interview. When we moved to Indianapolis, we put aside our lackluster Bears and Lions appreciation and became true Colts fans. It was the Manning era and it was difficult to not get swept up in the excitement. Jeff convinced me to cough up the money for a playoff game; watching Bob Sanders come back in the RCA dome to beat the Chiefs in the Wildcard game might have sealed my fate as a football lover.

But college football is my real love.

I have enjoyed watching the Colts play over the years and I have fun when plopped in front of a good professional game, but college football is just…different. It’s different because everything connected with college is different. I know I’m not the only one who believes they wouldn’t relive high school for any amount of money, but they would probably relive college for free.³ College football (and basketball, for that matter) captures school spirit and community and individuals united in a common purpose. I love the tradition and ritual that happens when you bring together generations of people who have a long history with an institution. Wisconsin fans “Jump Around,” Iowa fans turn around to wave to kids in the Children’s Hospital, and now Michigan students have added “Mr. Brightside” during the fourth quarter, a new tradition that weirdly makes me choke up every time. It might have something to do with how organically it happens during moments of celebration, including what we witnessed after the Big 10 championship win in 2021.⁴

Like many other spouses of University of Michigan fans, I was a long-suffering partner through the Rodriguez/Hoke years. After years of celebrating Michigan wins, I had to deal with a twenty-something, then thirty-something husband who still tortured himself to watch every single game when it was possible. During that terrible period, we attended the surprise victory over Wisconsin in 2008, our daughter still safely hidden in my first-trimester uterus.

The year before we moved to Texas, we had a strong feeling that this might be our last season to take our two and four-year-old to a game, and we jumped at the free tickets. They were both completely oblivious to the disappointing loss and just enjoyed the family time. (They were also slightly confused when we said we weren’t leaving after the marching band finished their halftime show. We always left high school games at halftime because they had to go to bed. They were convinced the marching band was the finale.)

Our first trip as a family to the Big House - September 2014

Much to Jeff’s chagrin, it took a few years for our son to join him in his love for the sport. Our son lost his father’s doting attention on Saturdays during the fall. He didn’t understand this game that stole away precious time with his dad every weekend.

But once he finally sat down to watch with Jeff, he too fell in love. I spent years hoping that I could direct our son to pursue soccer (which he enjoys playing) or basketball (which we still argue is his best sport), but he wants to play football most of all. I thought we could get away with just playing flag football, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted more. And so, despite my heart being torn in half because of my love for the sport and my desire to keep my son safe, I finally relented this past fall.

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It was a beautiful fall day. Our son was playing in his first tackle football tournament. Our daughter and I arrived two minutes late, just in time to see our son limping off to the sideline, holding his side. He got hit in the back in the first play of the game and he was in pain. Convinced it was any standard physical pain from getting a helmet in the back, he kept playing in a game that his team won. (We were shocked. They had not played well all season and we did not expect that win.) Then he joined his school soccer team in two soccer games during their Lutheran school soccer tournament, playing most of both games and running hard. The next day, he played one more football game, which his team lost.

Tuesday morning, while Jeff was working in Connecticut, I got a phone call from school. I never answer my cell phone in school, especially if it goes off during the six periods that I’m teaching, but the call was coming from our son’s school, so I knew I should probably take it. Our son complained of severe stomach pain during his social studies class and was lying down in the nurse’s office. I quickly got the rest of my day covered and rushed to get him, taking him to urgent care, where they told us he probably had a stomach bug.

The pain didn’t go away. I spent the rest of the day debating the emergency room, as all stomach remedies didn’t help. Jeff rearranged flights so he could be home by the next morning. I went to school and then Jeff told me that we should get an appointment with our primary care doctor. He took him into the office and told the physician’s assistant that when our son was five, he had walked around with a broken arm for three days and we didn’t know. She promptly scheduled an ultrasound appointment. After an hour-long ultrasound, the technician sent Jeff and our son to Riley Children’s Hospital and I raced to meet them there, convinced that we were dealing with appendicitis.

It wasn’t. It was a lacerated spleen, most likely from the first hit of the first out of four sports games he had played the previous weekend. Seven hours later, the surgeons decided that the MRI showed it was just oozing, so therefore they could wait and see if it healed itself.⁵ We just had to put our overly active 12-year-old on inactive duty.

And yet, he still wants to play football.

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I love football, and I hate that I love football.

It is a brutal, violent sport that robs its players of youth and vitality before they turn thirty. When I listened to the book Concussion on a trip to New Orleans with my husband, I swore my son would never put himself at risk for CTE, and yet here we are with a soon-to-be junior high school student who wants nothing more than to don a helmet and pads and be the next JJ McCarthy.⁶

Sports bring us together. The Greeks knew this. That is why they started the Olympics. That is why we still participate in the Olympics of the modern age, contests that bring together warring and feuding nations in an attempt to settle differences in the pool, on the pitch, or on the ice. It’s why we love sports movies that make us feel good as we watch individuals and teams overcome adversity. And it’s why, in the United States, there is a collective love for football, regardless of race, religion, political affiliation, or even gender.

That love comes out in youth leagues and family games of touch football after Thanksgiving dinner. We see it on Friday nights when entire communities come out to watch the hometown team play and the marching band perform. We see it in December and January as college students and alumni cheer on their teams in bowl games. And we see it with February Super Bowl parties that bring together die-hard fans and those who are just there for the food and fellowship.

Do I believe that we should do more to protect the young men (and some young women) who risk their health and sometimes their lives for a sport that asks far too much of them? Yes. But I also understand the allure. It’s more than pomp and pageantry, it’s grit and brotherhood. And the culture around the sport is changing.

This past college football season I watched grown men cry tears of joy and boys in man-sized bodies hug and comfort their opponents. Women officials are making an appearance and there is an increasing distaste for protecting the boys club for their treatment of women on and off of the field.

In truth, football has become as much a part of our family’s story as camping has. We’ve made family memories and in the last two years as season ticket holders, Jeff has taken both of our kids up to Michigan for full days with Dad. Our daughter even got a Dad weekend when he took her up for a day of work before they went to see Michigan play Purdue, her current top choice for college. They even got a bonus basketball game out of the weekend. Jeff and I have celebrated wedding anniversaries watching the Colts play and even joked about going to the Rose Bowl this year for our anniversary, but we weren’t willing to give up our family’s summer vacation for a two-day trip to California. (And that was before the tickets skyrocketed a second time.)

And while I wish there were ways to make it safer and less brutal, truth be told, I still love it. It’s just one of many contradictions I have had to learn to embrace in my life.

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You also might be interested in this piece that criticizes the way we gender fandom. I remember thinking a year ago that it was just brilliant, and even more so now that Taylor Swift is dating a professional football player.

Supporting your football team vs stanning your fav musician

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1. Note: I have always been a Red Wings fan, however. Once I decided I liked hockey (thank you, The Mighty Ducks), I have never wavered from my hometown team.

2. In case you weren’t aware, that has been the most important game of the year for decades. Twenty years of marriage have taught me just how important this game really is to fans and players alike.

3. Considering how much college costs today, I know that this is laughable.

4. Jeff and I went with our son. Our daughter stayed at home. It was another reason to be thankful for our recent move back to Indianapolis.

5. Note, the surgeons were not happy with us, because apparently we should have known that our son had sustained a severe internal injury that would have sidelined most people within hours, but we still let him play three more games and waited four days to bring him into the hospital. Dear reader, he gave us no indication that he needed to see a doctor and only ever reported a pain level of 7/10. Also worthy of note: do not ask a 12-year-old who wants to be a quarterback if his pain is a 1-10, with 10 being you would be willing to cut off your arm to make the pain stop.

6. There are far worse role models for my son, and I’m glad he admires young men who are remarkable on and off the field.