I thought my post on football might bring my father, with his careful reasoning, out of the woodwork; he didn't disappoint. I asked his permission to post the email he sent me, and it was granted: I’ve followed your football blog posts and respect your thoughtful approach.  🙂 Then, too, the wisdom that (hopefully) comes with age can acknowledge how times change: 1. When I was growing up in the 1960s, football was the only fall sport for boys. There were no soccer leagues and no fall...

I used to watch a lot of football growing up. It was our family thing on Sunday afternoons. I played football, too, with pads and everything, for three years in junior high: left guard, defensive end, kicker, punter, even quarterback. There is an honorable tradition of American toughness that I see in football. And though its community-uniting power was gone in my town by the time I began to play, I know that power still exists in some places in the country, and that it existed as a very...