Dan Wetzel
Multiple Authors
Inside a tiny courtroom in a tiny (population 202) Mississippi town on Thursday, the football world awaited a decision on the college eligibility of Ole Miss star quarterback Trinidad Chambliss.
Chambliss would eventually be granted an injunction against the NCAA that would provide him with a sixth year of eligibility and send him back to Oxford as a Heisman favorite for the championship-contending Rebels. The NFL draft would have to wait another year.
Yet for all the significance of the decision, the most passionately discussed item to emerge was about … fatherhood?
Part of Chambliss’ argument was that in 2022, a severe case of tonsillitis significantly impacted his sleep and caused him to not see any on-field action, entitling him to a medical redshirt season.
Ole Miss quarterbacks coach Joe Judge, formerly the head coach of the New York Giants, was called in to testify for Chambliss. One of the questions was about the importance of sleep for football players.
Judge decided to lean on his experience in both the pros and college and discuss how he handled players who had a child born during the season — and their significant others.
“We would have to educate,” Judge said of the conversations he would have with the baby’s mother. “This is always a tough conversation to have. It’s not even popular.
“We would have to educate significant others who may have been pregnant during the season or have a baby during the season,” Judge continued.
“And you have to educate them on, ‘You have this baby in the middle of season, that father has to play good football, right? It’s a day-by-day production business. He has to be ready to perform and go out there and play … You need to let him sleep. He needs to be in another room, detached.'”
“You have to explain to the mother like, ‘Hey, listen, he ain’t waking up for midnight feedings. After the season, he’s full-metal jacket. You do whatever you want with him. He can change every diaper. But in season, he’s got to have different priorities,'” Judge concluded.
Football coaches, they don’t just teach the game, they teach life lessons … from 1948.
Let’s give Joe Judge a little grace here. The married father of four is known in football for his decency and for being extremely family-oriented, which isn’t universal in that business. Testifying can also be nerve-racking, and given a do-over, he’d probably have left that analogy out or at least added further explanation.
He was trying to make a point to help his player get an injunction; he certainly didn’t expect it to go viral.
And look, if one parent wants to go through the meat grinder of handling every single middle-of-the-night feeding, diaper change and so on, all so the other parent can rack out in another room 10 hours a night because he has to play Arkansas next week, hey, that’s up to the couple.
Or maybe what Judge was suggesting — given how much money college players, let alone his former NFL players, earn — was to hire a night nurse or get family help to ease the burden.
That said, a passionate debate about fatherhood erupted.
“Don’t listen to this, young men,” DeMarvion Overshown, a Dallas Cowboys linebacker (and father of two boys) wrote on social media above a video clip of Judge’s comments. “Be there for the mother of your child and let the rest take care of itself.
“Those midnight feedings turn into financial freedom, because nothing will inspire you more than being a great father,” Overshown concluded.
Overshown couldn’t be more correct about that.
Being a father isn’t about being one when it’s convenient and you’re properly rested. It’s about being there for the hard stuff, and there will be more hard stuff than a new dad can even fathom, far harder than 2 a.m. wakeups (little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems).
Those early moments are about connecting with a child that you love more than you could have ever imagined, a bond that will refocus your entire world to the point where you would do anything for them, including pushing to become the best version of yourself.
That includes trying to embrace maturity and accountability, focus and perspective. It can drive you to be a better student, better worker, a better friend and certainly a better partner.
There is no doubt that proper rest helps athletes, but so can exchanging selfishness for selflessness and teamwork. Showing a child respect for their mother may be the most important thing you can do.
Balancing work and home is one of the great challenges of life, whether the office is a sold-out football stadium or not. Providing for your family is part of every father’s job, but providing means far more than just money.
Those midnight feedings tend to produce midnight lessons you can’t learn any other way.
Leave a Reply