Moms, we need to talk about football, a very popular sport you may be harming. It is, in the words of one of its alleged coaching minds, “the best game that’s ever been fucking invented.” (Pardon the salty language, but I figure if you’re a parent you already appreciate the miracles that fucking brings.) The quote comes from Bruce Arians, the guy who bosses the Arizona Cardinals around, talking on Friday to a gathering of 130 high school football coaches. He sounds fired up about his chosen profession, no? Good boss behavior, right?
Nah. Rather, the Cardinals coach is tired of you standing between him and your beefy teens. He wants you to stop discouraging kids from playing a sport that’s increasingly connected to debilitating brain injuries. “We got to make sure that moms get the message; because that’s who’s afraid of our game right now,” he continued, according to the NBC Sports station in Phoenix. “It’s not dads, it’s moms.” You may see it as directing your son’s skull away from an infinite series of deleterious collisions, moms, but Arians is looking at the wider picture. He’s scoping ahead to a day when your maternal judgment topples his very industry.
Arians’s courage in calling out Big Motherhood has already been met with a resounding applause from people who enjoy sarcasm.
But, moms, in all fucking seriousness: Listen to Bruce Arians. He’s a big-deal NFL wheel, named the AP’s NFL Coach of the Year twice in the past four seasons. And he’s clearly worried that your concern and nurturing and general sense and assertiveness could bend the curve for a sport that leaves so many of its participants ruined: concussed, depressed, demented, suicidal. Moms, holy shit, do you realize what he’s getting at? Bruce Arians is saying you could actually win this thing. He didn’t use these precise words, but what I hear is, Keep up the good work.
Now, dads. What’s your excuse?