{"id":60298,"date":"2016-10-31T15:05:50","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T20:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=60298"},"modified":"2026-10-14T13:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T18:32:23","slug":"podcast-248-football-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/culture\/games-tricks\/podcast-248-football-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast #248: Why Football Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Football is often used as a metaphor for life.<\/p>\n<p>What is it about football that makes it so adept at providing lessons on living, what specific lessons can we gleam from the sport, and are those lessons worth the risk of physical injury that come with playing the game?<\/p>\n<p>My guest today&nbsp;takes a stab at answering these questions in his book&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0143127640\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0143127640&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=stucosuccess&amp;linkId=FSXA3GZUT5SFDAZ4\"><em>Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game<\/em><\/a><i>.&nbsp;<\/i>His name is Mark Edmundson and he\u2019s a professor of English at the University of Virginia. I had him on the show at the beginning of the year to talk about his book&nbsp;<i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/articles\/podcast-166-self-soul-and-living-a-more-idealistic-life\/\">Self and Soul<\/a>. <\/i>Today&nbsp;on the show Mark and I discuss his experience playing high school football and the lessons on character, courage, loss, and manliness that he picked up from the game. Besides the upsides of football, Mark also shares the negative lessons football can teach young men. If you played football in high school like I did, you\u2019ll definitely resonate with this episode. But it will also be of interest for anyone who has a son who plays, or who simply watches the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Football is often used as a metaphor for life. What is it about football that makes it so adept at providing lessons on living, what specific lessons can we gleam from the sport, and are those lessons worth the risk of physical injury that come with playing the game? My guest today&nbsp;takes a stab at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":195734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42376,281,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-games-tricks","category-podcast"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/248-538x280.png","medium_large":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/248-768x432.png","aom":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/248-372x230.png","reactor-320":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/248-320x180.png","reactor-640":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/248-640x360.png"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.4 (Yoast SEO v28.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Podcast #248: Why Football Matters | The Art of Manliness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is it about football that makes it so adept at providing life lessons, what specific lessons can we gleam, and are they worth the risk of injury?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/culture\/games-tricks\/podcast-248-football-matters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Podcast #248: Why Football Matters | The Art of Manliness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is it about football that makes it so adept at providing life lessons, what specific lessons can we gleam, and are they worth the risk of injury?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/culture\/games-tricks\/podcast-248-football-matters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Art of Manliness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"http:\/\/facebook.com\/artofmanliness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-10-31T20:05:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-14T18:32:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/248.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Brett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@artofmanliness\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" 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