The NFL is here and my kids finally care

The NFL is here and my kids finally care

Posted on September 27th, 2024 by Scott Warnock

When I started writing in this space, my kids were small. I knew nothing about parenting. While I still don’t know much, when people with younger kids seek advice, I offer this: It’s a long road, so be patient.

I know this from hard-won experience. Let’s use a really important example. Every Fall I’d make the effort. I’d keep trying. I’d keep encouraging. I’d go through cycles of hope and disappointment. I stayed at it, and now here we are.

The “here”?: We’re talking important matters. We’re talking about the NFL. We’re talking Eagles. As I admit to all, the NFL is my guilty pleasure. But for years, I soldiered on alone in a house full of football apathy and soccer nuts. For years, my three kids (I gave up on my wife ages ago) would rebuff my invitations to watch a mere quarter of Eagles football on a Sunday. I tried it all. I was even not above overt, although fruitless, emotional manipulation, saying things like, “[Sigh] You know, at some point dear old Dad will be gone, and you’ll regret not watching the game with him.”

That worked exactly not at all.

But over the past couple years, as they’ve cruised into their 20s, my kids and their seven cousins, because they’re geographically dispersed, have decided to assemble a fantasy football league. Year one the spark was igniting.

Then came Thursday night, September 5, 2024. The boys and I had been talking football all summer. I know stuff. Remember, I was one of those kids who grew up in the 70s obsessed with the sport. I spent extensive time playing electric football. I collected these amazing Super Bowl magazines from McDonald’s and can still relate most facts from the first 15 (ahem, XV) Super Bowls.

We played football almost every day in the yards or on the streets of Berlin. I played high school ball, and then I got in with a bunch of dudes and (stupidly) played tackle pick-up for over fifteen years: I played my last game as a doddering 40-year-old on an icy late-Fall field in Echelon, NJ.

The author and Zachary battling it out last Christmas on the metal gridiron of electric football.

Well, that Thursday, both sons, Nate and Zachary, happened to be home, and they came bounding down the stairs. They were hopping around. They were chanting “football, football.” Finally the younger brother, Zachary, exclaimed, “I’m more excited than Christmas Eve!”

A sense of pride and happiness welled up inside me. I had to turn to the side to clear some dust out of my eye. As we settled in to watch the Ravens-Chiefs that night, I reveled in their growing knowledge of the game and got to add in, explaining gridiron arcana like dime packages and shovel passes. My daughter would patch in from Texas–it was a family affair!

Salman Rushdie, the great man himself, once wrote in Quichotte, “But there’s a thing you don’t know about parenthood. It’s mostly about showing up.” I kept showing up: Right on that couch, present, eager, all “did you see that amazing play?!” For years, they scurried by, ignoring my pleas, avoiding my gaze. For years, every Fall, I was rebuffed. But I showed up again the next year. And now we’re all on the same page, talking trash, talking football, talking…

Coda: After Nate and I sat up and watched the miserable end of the Eagles-Falcons game on Monday night, I must admit that I thought, What have I done?

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.