Brett Favre Doesn’t Want His Grandkids to Play Football

There have always been protective parents who refuse to let their children play football — but some of the game’s most vocal opponents in recent years have actually been some of its best players.

Longtime Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, who once held the all-time NFL touchdown passing record (508), is joining the unofficial group of former players who have not fully endorsed the idea of younger generations getting into the game as it is.

Favre is also the executive producer of an upcoming documentary called “Shocked: A Hidden Factor in the Sports Concussion Crisis.” This past week, he was on the CBS Sports Pick Six Podcast to promote the film — and during his appearance, he may have shocked some of his biggest supporters when he admitted he would rather not see his grandkids play football.

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“I’m not going to encourage them to play. I’m [also] not going to discourage [them],” he said. “But I say this to everyone who will listen: If my grandsons were to say — and they call me Paw-Paw — if they were to say, ‘Paw-Paw, will you be my caddy in golf? I think I’m going to do golf instead of football,’ I would be much more happy, satisfied and excited by that than by them playing football.”

Of course, the concern when it comes to football is injuries — specifically, head injuries. During his interview, Favre admitted he received a concussion during a 2009 game; it was that injury that led to the iron-man quarterback’s finally calling it a career despite many threats of retirement in prior seasons.

Favre is far from the only NFL superstar who’s expressed concerns over the sport’s record of safety when it comes to head injuries. Similar statements have come from fellow NFL legends Mike Ditka, Drew Brees, Troy Aikman, Adrian Peterson, Kurt Warner, and Terry Bradshaw in the past.

The most shocking of the bunch likely would be Ditka — he epitomized what it means to be a hard-nosed football player. Nicknamed “Iron Mike,” Ditka had a Hall of Fame career as a tight end during the 1960s and moved on to be one of better coaches in NFL history for the Chicago Bears. He was named Coach of the Year twice during the ’80s and had a tough-guy reputation, both as a player and a coach.

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In 2015, Ditka told HBO’s Bryant Gumbel that if he had an eight-year-old son who wanted to play football, he would not allow it.

“Nope — and that’s sad,” Ditka said about the possibility of having a son who wanted to play the game. “I wouldn’t. My whole life was football. I think the risk is worse than the reward. I really do.”

The high school football participation rate has dropped by about 5 percent over the past decade, according to a report in The Washington Post, and this appears to be the trend moving forward. As more NFL stars — past and present — speak out against the sport and its safety measures, its participation rate is bound to continue dropping. The top reason for this is concussions; football is responsible for nearly half the concussions (47.1 percent) suffered by high school athletes, according to The American Journal of Sports Medicine.

Further studies into the sport’s adverse health effects will likely also turn people away from the sport. After all, Boston University conducted a study last July on the brains of 111 deceased NFL players; all but one of them had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a neurological disorder that can lead to cognitive problems and dementia. The cause of the disorder is repeated head trauma.

If players who participated in the sport at the top level think there is a problem even with youth football, that problem is likely very real.

As more research is done on this topic of head trauma, the future of football could be in trouble. If players who participated in the sport at the top level think there is a problem even with youth football, that problem is likely very real — and needs to be addressed if the sport hopes to survive.

Concerns about injuries combined with controversial political messaging mean the NFL (and football in general) may be in need of some serious rebranding in the near future.

Tom Joyce is a freelance writer from the South Shore of Massachusetts. He covers sports, pop culture, and politics and has contributed to The Federalist, Newsday, ESPN, and other outlets. 

(photo credit, homepage image: DSC09546, CC BY 2.0, by Arnie Papp)