Parker Potter is a former archaeologist and historian, and a retired lawyer. He is currently a semi-professional dogwalker who lives and works in Contoocook.

With the end of another football season close at hand, this is as good a time as any to reflect on my deeply ambivalent feelings about big-time football.

On one side, I have happy memories associated with football that go back more than fifty years. From elementary school onward, all through the fall I could hear the high school marching band practicing their next halftime show at the end of the school day, and I can still recall crunching my way through fragrant autumn leaves on my way to the high school football stadium to spend Friday nights with my friends and cheering for the Bexley Lions.

My parents started taking me to Ohio State football games when I was in the fourth or fifth grade, and I fondly remember standing by the door to the Ohio State locker room when the games were over, clapping the players on their shoulder pads and begging for chin straps. I even got a couple.

I was in Ohio Stadium for Ohio State’s 50-14 victory over Michigan in 1968. After wins over Michigan in 1970 and 1972, I stormed the field with thousands of other Buckeye fans. After the 1970 game, I tore up a chunk of sod, took it home, and nurtured it in a flower pot in my bedroom until it died of heartbreak after Ohio State lost to Stanford in the Rose Bowl.

The tradition my parents gave me I gave to our daughter. Every year from kindergarten through twelfth grade, I took her to an Ohio State football game, and twice we stormed the field together after wins over the hated Wolverines. Hearing the band play always brought a tear to my eye as I recalled how much my mother loved watching them perform.

Our daughter is now a junior at Ohio State and is a football season ticket holder. For my birthday this year, she gave me a patch of the old artificial turf from Ohio Stadium. As you can see, my football-related memories are deep, rich, and meaningful.

But here are some more football memories. Right around the time I saw my first Ohio State game, I went to a game at nearby Capital University. I saw a player on the other team get his leg broken on a kickoff. A week or so later, I read in the newspaper that the player had died from his injury.

On more than one occasion, while watching professional football on television, I saw injuries so devastating that I can tell you exactly where I was when I saw the telecast. I was in Boston days after Patriot Darryl Stingley was paralyzed by a hit from Jack Tatum, a fearsome defensive back who I had asked for a chin strap ten years earlier when he had played for Ohio State.

Just a month ago, as I was watching Ohio State take on Georgia in the Peach Bowl, I saw one Buckeye taken from the field with a concussion and another taken to the hospital with a back injury.

There is no denying that big-time football is a brutal game, played by athletes who seem to get bigger, stronger, and faster every year. And so many of them end up paying a staggering price for playing the game, from knees that will never work properly or painlessly again to severe neurological injuries.

Seen through that lens, there is no escaping the unsettling reality that I spend eighteen or twenty weekends a year safely on my sofa being entertained by a sport that sentences some who play it to a disability or early death.

That makes me wonder whether I would outlaw big-time football if it were within my power to do so. I think I wouldn’t.

Every player in the NFL is an adult who attended college and is capable of deciding how he wants to make a living. At the college level, football provides some players with access to education that they would not have been able to afford without an athletic scholarship. And at places like Ohio State, revenue from football and men’s basketball subsidize dozens of other sports, providing opportunities for hundreds of other student athletes.

Moreover, the new name-image-likeness (NIL) rules sweeping across college football now allow football players to earn some of the millions of dollars that their efforts generate. So, no, I don’t think I would outlaw big-time football, despite the toll it takes on those who play it.

I’m not even sure I’d prevent an offspring from playing football, though that’s a closer call. I am the statistician for the Hillsboro-Deering/Hopkinton Redhawks football team, and my favorite moment at the post-season banquet is when Coach Jay Wood gives out the Iron Redhawk awards, which go to every player who attends every single team event during the season, regardless of how much or how well he or she happened to play. Coach Wood calls the Iron Redhawk the highest honor he can bestow on a player, and I appreciate the way that it reinforces a valuable life lesson that has nothing to do with blocking schemes or pass routes.

Notwithstanding my rose-colored view of the benefits of big-time football, I recognize the potential for all manner of abuse, most of it landing squarely on the shoulders of the players. For now, I’ll continue to tune in, but I remain conflicted, and it would not surprise me if the time comes when my Sunday afternoons involve more TCM and less NFL.

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