There is a new sport in India. The kind which would qualify to be a contact sport and arguably one of the toughest to play and understand. When I say football, I don't mean the one from the EU I am talking about the one from the US. I was browsing today about what was going on in Indian sports and came across this news item about a 21 year old named Roshan Lobo from India being interviewed by a couple of American news anchors.
A couple of things caught my eye about this young adult. First of all, he sounds super confident. Second of all, he sounds super freaking confident. When the interviewer asks him if he would like to play in the US, he replies back saying that it would be cool to play in America but that he wants to learn everything he can and go back to India to make Indian football the BEST in the world. Not one of the best, not second best (considering India has to compete with the US), but the BEST. How many balls would it take for someone to dream of such a thing? Probably 4.
I will talk about the football league in India on a day when I start seeing more progress, but in this piece I wanted to share some of my thoughts on American Football.
Unlike other sports which are played in India, American Football is a special one. Mainly because it has remnants of the good old american values. Yes, hard to believe but when you think about it America didn't become such a great country with out values. People who built the foundations of America were risk takers who weren't scared of tackling problems head on with full force. Yes, the sentence was written with football in mind as a metaphor. Americans built the biggest bridges, the tallest buildings, and pretty much more than half the things we use in our daily lives. What I am trying to imply is that Americans didn't built America with out strong values. Football was invented in the US, and guess what the sport might bring to the table?
If you walk through American high schools, you will notice the stars of the schools are usually the athletes. The super stars are usually the athletes who also excel at academics. Football and basketball usually take the limelight in the school. They are played in the fall and winter respectively and receive a lot of community support. The football quarterbacks, linebackers and receivers are generally dating the hottest girls in school, all the nerds hate it but they can't help it (I would fall in the nerd category).
Besides the glam and fame that come with playing football, there are virtues that accompany with the sport. If you watch one of the grueling practices the football players go through, you will understand right away that it takes guts to be covered with armor and a helmet and do all the football drills in the severe heat or cold, which ever mother nature throws at you.
There is no faking of injuries, there is no SLY time wasting, there is no backing down from confrontation. You beat the other team head on with out holding back. You support each other on the team like they are your brothers in arms because if you don't the weakest link in the chain breaks and the whole thing falls apart. If there is no teamwork in football, there is no team. A linebacker will probably never touch the ball through out the game, but if he doesn't do his job (which is to defend/assist the quarterback) the play falls apart. The linebacker isn't the main player on the team but he is just as important. One of the lessons many Indian kids can learn through football, teamwork.
Another virtue football holds is the fact that it is a contact sport. For many Indian kids who grow up to be afraid of being hurt, it would be a virtue to learn not to be afraid of getting hurt. To enhance one's body to perform hard physical tasks and match up against someone else who is performing against you is an awesome feeling to have. There are only a few sports which offer that feeling and American football is one of them.
Football is also hard work. Your goal is always to run faster and zig-zag through people who are trying to tackle you, become stronger to push and ram through who ever is trying to stop you from crossing the ball over the end line, and jump higher to make sure you jump over all the players falling in front of you.
Most people don't know this but football takes intelligence. Each team's coach develops many plays with different variations of those plays, and it is the case both on the offensive/defensive ends and the special teams department. It is pretty hard to memorize all the plays and actually implement them on the field and it takes a good amount of intelligence to do that. Here is a small piece on the aspects of memorizing and implementing plays.
Remember I was talking about how Roshan Lobo is such a confident lad? I want to get back to that point. It is not an accident that he plays football and has confidence to show for it. Playing football forces you to think confidently, because when you put those shoulder pads on and teach yourself to not be afraid of being tackled or tackle someone, you transcend into a zone where your mind tells you that you can face anything in life.
The final virtue that I notice about football is that it builds character in the player. For all the things I mentioned above there are many other things a person has to do to be a football player. He has to eat more, work out more, take care of his body through all the dings, bruises, broken bones and concussions. Through all those tough situations he has to motivate himself and motivate his team to keep going through the end line. Through all those endeavors you will have to respect your coach even though he yells at you to build you a thicker skin, and in the end respect your teammates and the teams you play against.
It is a good old American sport which built itself out of the good old American values, and as Indians we should learn from what it can teach us. From all the strengths and weaknesses that India has as a nation, it will never hurt to learn some things from other great nations.
Keep it up Lobo, I hope you become an inspiration for many other Indian kids.
