What the Game Took from Us

There was a time when I believed football had been "good" to our family. But that was a very long time ago. The more I watched my father's post-NFL life develop, the more I realized that rather than "giving" him or our family anything, it had taken much more. In exchange for playing four years on the college level and eight in the NFL, it had given him meager wages, no transferable job skills for life afterward, a list of injuries, no health insurance or medical care for conditions resulting from his time playing, and something more hidden, insidious, and permanent, that would begin to reveal itself shortly after he retired. And these are the same things the sport takes from the rest of those who play it for a significant period of time and their families.