I believe in football. The bright lights and wet grass on Friday nights,  the work you put in, and the brotherhood you are apart of, for the love of the game. Sure there are always sports people enjoy more than others, but after your high school career of sports is over, you can still enjoy almost every other sport in some way, except football. You can join a slow pitch softball team, throw a baseball around in the yard,  kick a soccer ball, go for a run, and ball up on city league basketball team.  But football is different. You can’t recreate football when you can no longer play it.

All life comes to an end. If you were told you only had a few weeks left to live, what would you do? You would flat out live it up I’m sure.  Well your football life is gonna end too. Yeah you can always play catch with a football, but ask any of us who have played, there is nothing like playing in an actual football game.  Your football life is only so long,  so why wouldn’t you give everything you have when you are on the field? Maybe some of us will be lucky enough to go on and play college football or even go pro, but it will always come to an end eventually. 
My entire summer was spent in the weight room and on the football field, from 6:30 am until 10 am everyday. Not to mention all of the 7 on 7s and scrimmages I played in.   To be honest with you, I didn’t sleep in one day this summer.   I couldn’t be happier about it, because that means I was playing football.   I bet every one of my teammates felt the same way. There is nothing like it.   Grueling practices are fun to me. I love all of the work I get to put in because I know it could be a short lived opportunity.

A football team is not just any other team. It is a family. You work your butts off with all of the guys in the family.  You spend so much time with them, they all become your second family. You become brothers with every person on the team.  You can trust and count on the guy next to you, the guy you line up with on every play.   You know they put in as much hard work as you have and will be there when you really need them.  Whether it’s making a tackle with you or being by your side as you tackle some of the hardest things life has to deal you.
Football is a sport where you learn hard work and dedication pays off. In all sports this is relevant, but in football, it shows that much more in every game, every play, and every down. Throughout the game you can tell which team conditioned the hardest during the summer as one team is more tired than the other. You can tell which team lifted harder during the summer as one team is physically stronger than the other. But, maybe the most important thing you can see is which team put in the most all-around work in the offseason on their mental game as one team wants to win more and has shown the most heart. From personal experience, I can tell you, when you put as much work as you possibly could have into preparing, and you lose a tight game, it’s heartbreaking. On the same note, when you win a big game, and you are able see all the blood, sweat, tears, and hard work pay off, you feel like you could walk on air.

I feel there are so many life lessons you can learn from the game of football.  Working as hard as you possibly can  and seeing it pay off, earning what you wanted is, in my playbook, one of the most rewarding things in life. To me, there simply is nothing like football. Every year I am asked what my favorite sport is. Without hesitation, I answer football every time. It is one of the most rewarding and character building sports there is, and to me, it is just plain out fun. This is why I believe in football.