My phone rang one evening when I was driving home. It was my buddy, Dylan Rigdon, a former professional basketball player and someone I have known for 30 years. He is one of those guys who is good at everything and in shape to still do it. He surfs, skimboards, plays hoops and coaches his two sons in flag football. His 11-year-old Eamon wants to play tackle football next year.

He asked me about my son playing tackle football and immediately I told him this was a decision my wife and I are wrestling with. I have had this conversation with probably 20 of my guy friends -- all dads -- most of us former jocks. In my opinion, we represent a good cross section of parents of the next generation of the American athlete.

I love football. It is a great sport. Now when I tell you this, you do one of two things: you nod in approval, or you think of me as a “basketball guy” who is simply pandering to fans of America’s favorite sport to watch and wager on.

The truth is my love for football has little to do with covering it for over a decade on national radio, or even watching it my entire life. My love for football stems from playing it from the age of 7 until I was 14 then begging my coaches and father to let me play one last year while I was in high school.

My love for football is not just because “it is awesome.” I love it for what it does for boys if taught the right way. Football, when taught correctly, teaches discipline, toughness (both physical and mental), and understanding the chain of command. It teaches angles, balance, leverage and deception. It teaches that you must work together with teammates. Football at youth levels can inspire overweight kids to get in shape to make weight (we used to have age/weight groups), make skinny kids want to be stronger. It teaches commitment, as practices can be grueling. It also provides the easiest Halloween costume ever -- all seven years as a kid.

I grew up in the ‘80s in Orange, Calif. When I was 7, I was on the Orange Raiders of OJAAF (Orange Junior All-American Football). At Jordan Elementary I wore my Raiders jersey every Friday, as would every kid who played football. I was a tiny defensive lineman who tried to get under or between the center and the guard when the ball was snapped to trip up the quarterback. I liked football some that year. The next year, playing at the same level, I was coached by a man named Larry Powers.

Coach Powers put me at quarterback and I fell in love with the game. Back then, the first game was at 9 a.m. and coach Powers would pick me up and we would strategize over doughnuts and milk. We ran “Power-I” and some “Bone” and I carried out every bootleg fake knowing that I could call my own number whenever I saw the defense selling out to stop the run. When you are 8 and you can plant your back leg and pass a little, football is really a good time.

We had an epic battle with the other Orange team one Saturday morning. My old team the “Raiders” were still together, they had better banners, more cheerleaders and probably better coaching top to bottom. They also had Grant Pearsall. Grant’s dad played for the Minnesota Vikings, and Grant seemed destined to join him at that level, even at the tender age of 8.

Elite athletes seem to move differently than regular kids. Grant would go on to star at USC, but in second grade we went at it. He was a running back and kick returner, I was the quarterback/defensive back/kick returner. The next year I was the quarterback for the Cowboys. By fourth grade I was back with the Raiders and now Grant was my running back. By sixth grade I was doing too much, I decided to take a year off, but I got talked out of it. I joined a winless team and I think we won one or two games only to have our season ended prematurely by a postgame fight between parents (youth sports being ruined by parents is nothing new). Taking a team that was a mess and making them competitive while being outmanned across the board … that was fun football.

Doug Gottlieb (Photo provided)
Doug Gottlieb was a quarterback for the OJAAF Cowboys in third grade. (Photo provided)

I played other sports too. Travel soccer in California is year-round, travel basketball, tennis and baseball, and on Friday nights I was the ball boy for El Modena High School’s football team. My brother, Gregg, is four years older, he played football growing up, but was always a bit small. Gregg's nickname was "Rat" (maybe it was his teeth or maybe it was because RATT was one of his favorite bands), and they called me Gopher. My jobs ranged from getting spit cups for seniors on the bus to games, to keeping the “K” balls dry and ready. “EL Mo” went to the California Interscholastic Federation semifinals my second year as a ball boy and I found myself devastated when the season was over.

My final season playing was at Anaheim Hills. I had to play Pop Warner as I stayed back in eighth grade for sports. I would end up growing 9 inches during that second year in eighth grade and after being hit in the knee and having a case of Osgood-Schlatter disease, I decided to only play baseball and basketball and hang my football helmet up. My high school was a powerhouse in football, basketball and baseball. Seasons overlapped into one another and while it could be done, there were not many 6-foot quarterbacks.

My senior year in high school, our once-proud football program was struggling (and after I finished Tustin High School would go through an amazing stretch of having more NFL players than any other high school in the country). Winless in their first couple of games, ever loyal, my basketball teammates and I would go to the games and throw the football around at halftime. I smelled the unmistakable scent of a high school football field. Wet grass, a lot of dirt and some body odor. SoCal “Santa Ana” wind-induced fall has a unique smell. On my official visit to Notre Dame, I stood on the field as the Irish ran behind Lou Holtz to take the field to play Michigan. Hearing the “Victory March,” smelling the fresh cut grass, seeing Touchdown Jesus and taking it all in as we walked to our seats, I missed football.

I asked my coach Andy Ground, my future coach at Notre Dame, John McLeod, and my father about playing football at that point and basically the message was clear, “We can name 10 bad things that can happen in the next seven games and the only good one is saying you did it, so let’s just pass and move on.”

My life has spanned 39 years and I have done a lot of cool things. Life is about moments. The feeling of making a great pass or dunking a basketball or hitting a game-winning shot and being mobbed by your teammates are moments that you have to experience to understand. In the pantheon of great “feelings” in sports, breaking away from a crowd and running for a touchdown, hearing only cheering and your own breath might just be at the top of the list. My zest for football is not just for playing it as it is for the game itself. The schematics, the training, the big plays and the ones that set up those big plays … love it, every bit of it.

But …

Football is bad for you. It hurts your body, this we always knew. You can be paralyzed -- or worse -- playing football, we knew this as well. Football is linked to brain damage.

***

I have a son and he loves football. Here is the crux, I love my son more than I love football.

Meet Hayes. He is 6. If you have a boy, I hope he has what my boy has. He loves sports, and he likes to play them every single day. He looks like his mom and competes like his dad. “The Dude” likes baseball, basketball, soccer and tennis and plays them all at a high level … for a 6-year-old. About a year ago he didn't want to play football.

“It looks like it hurts,” he told me.

“They do have pads and it hurts some, but it is a lot of fun,” I told him.

I was working in studio at CBS this past winter when something amazing happened to my son. There is one weekend where we have both a basketball game early and an NFL playoff game late. The basketball game brings me to the studio as most of the country was watching the Cowboys play the Packers. My daughter, Harper, has always had a thing for Tony Romo. When she was 2 she woke up after a nap, saw him slinging it and fell for him on a Fox close up shot of him on the sidelines.

So my kids gathered around and watched dad at halftime, then turned back to the Cowboys and Packers on Fox. While Romo was my daughter’s first star crush, Dez Bryant was my son’s first sports idol. Dez is still our guy from Oklahoma State and he jumps both literally and figuratively off the screen. When his amazing fourth quarter, fourth-down reception was ruled an incompletion, my son was apoplectic. When our CBS basketball game was over, the “NFL on CBS” guys rolled in and home I went. As I walked in the door I was bombarded by questions. “Why that wasn't a catch?" and forced to explain the inexplicable basis of such a ruling. It was glorious. Hayes was hooked.

We began running routes in the basement. Every. Single. Day. Then he saw the highlight of Odell Beckham Jr.’s catch. So long Dez, hello OBJ. Sure I tried to push Julian Edelman’s skill set, but that can wait, he is all OBJ right now. “Can we play catch” is the most uttered phrase in my house. Since flag football has begun, Hayes wanted me to teach him routes. Slant, hitch, go, post, corner, hitch and go and of course the jet sweep are all in his route tree. No, I haven’t taught him the "post corner post” that would make Jon Gruden scream with delight.

In Connecticut where we live, he can play flag football now and has the option to play tackle in third grade, so I have two years yet to “decide” for my son. Flag is a lot of fun, but eventually they all want to hit someone. My wife and I are kind of at a loss. I never have loved anything like I love my children.

***

I played youth football and I am fine (some would dispute this). But kids are bigger, stronger and the injuries seem to be getting worse despite the equipment and concussion protocol getting better. Of course I can tell my son “No.” That is my job as a dad, but should I? Part of me wants him to get hit, know he doesn't like it and move on with other sports, but what if he does like it? Or maybe, what if this is what he is really good at? Josh Elliott once told me the thing about swimmer Michael Phelps wasn't just how good he is, it is that he was pushed to the sport his body fit best. What if this is my son’s fit? Forget all of that, what about the discipline, the fundamentals, the game, the smell … why take football away?

“Football is dangerous” was something we laughed about as kids. If your mom wouldn’t let you play, and it was always a “Mom” thing at school, you were -- at best -- called names not fit to print.

At the same time, doing something, just because we did it as a kid, well that isn’t exactly evolving. When I was young seat belts were optional, there was smoking allowed in airplanes and I was a latchkey kid at the age of 7.

“It was a different time” translates into, man, were they ever. So sending my child out to face possible injury is one thing, to even slightly risk possible brain damage or worse seems ludicrous. Yet I watch my neighbor, Pat Leahy, tell me that watching his son play tackle football is the single coolest parenting experience he has had in sports.

This decision isn't about me though, it is about my son.

If you have a boy, there is a good chance you have asked yourself this question, and if you are like me, you likely never thought it was even a question.

“I’m going to let him decide.” Your kid? Well that seems reasonable. When I was 9, I decided to ride down a ditch by my house in the rain, because all the other kids had done it. Hindsight tells me I wasn't yet old enough to know I would fly over the handlebars and nearly break my neck not wearing a helmet.

“Those numbers are skewed in the CTE findings.” Sure they are. But what percentage of players need to get brain damage from football to convince you it is a bad idea?

“Concussion protocol is better than ever.” Sure, they diagnose head trauma better, but it seems to be occurring constantly in the sport.

“It is position dependent.” This is the Hasselbeck Argument. The Hasselbeck’s dad was a football icon, but he told his boys they had to play quarterback. That is great and I would like my son to play quarterback, but what if is he isn't one?

My point is as simple as it is complex. I’m a dad first, it is literally my life and I love it. The part of being a dad that is the hardest is making tough decisions, ones you know lead to what’s best for your child, and deciding if I put my boy in harm’s way is an agonizing one.

My idea behind this piece was to create a thoughtful conversation, not to state what you should or should not do. Feel free to tweet to me @GottliebShow and tell me what you are going to do with your son.