Benefits of Playing Football

Football is a difficult game. It is a sport that requires intense and exhausting practices where players must push their bodies to their limits. In the offseason players are required to lift heavy objects and go beyond their comfort zone in conditioning and speed development drills. This whole year’s worth of work is all to have success in, at a maximum, fifteen different contests. Football is a difficult game, and that’s what makes it special.

There is no sport where the time invested per contest is so high. Most team sports play anywhere from 20 to 50 games in a season. Football is different, the physical demands of a football game require it to be only played once a week. The result is that each game’s value becomes higher and higher.

The effect of the small amount of games is to promote the importance of the off-season conditioning program. Football is without a doubt the sport the relies most on the off-season strength and development piece. In sports like baseball and basketball student athletes spend the majority of their offseason competing in different travel and all star teams. This, other than 7 on 7, is not possible with football, which means teams must rely on strength and conditioning to gain a competitive edge over their competition.

This creates a situation where student athletes must put in the work during the offseason if they want to be successful during the season. Football is great because it forces student athletes to work hard during the offseason months without any immediate benefit. Most football players and coaches spend the months of January, February and March in the weight room pushing their bodies to the limit knowing that they will not see any real benefit until August or September. This is what makes football great.

The concept of delayed gratification is a very difficult thing for people to fully understand. I don’t believe this is a generational issue, it’s a human issue. People react to the short-term incentives that are placed in front of them, it’s human nature. What football does is train the student athletes who participate in it to work hard knowing that they will not receive the benefit immediately.

Developing the appreciation for delayed gratification might be the single greatest trait for successful people. In all fields there is a requirement to put in a large number of hours working before the results start to set in. Football is the greatest vehicle for teaching delayed gratification which makes it the perfect sport for developing young men.