Danny Kanell Calls for No Youth Sports on Sundays | Jason Whitlock Harmony

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All right, welcome to the Harmony Channel.

I'm Jason Whitlock, your host, and we're going to talk about Danny Canal.

We're going to talk about view sports, but I guess the Chiefs just signed Kenneth Walker, unbelievable.

The running back for the Seattle Seahawks is now paired with Patrick Mahomes.

The Chiefs have also signed Travis Kelsey to a one-year deal.

Man, the Baltimore Ravens say, hey, we're getting Max Crosby, we're all in.

The Buffalo Bills get DJ Moore, we're all in.

And now the Chiefs, Kenneth Walker, and they have the ninth pick in the draft and the 29th pick in the draft.

I thought they were going to try to pack it something and move up and get Jeremy low.

Man, they're not waiting around on the rookie.

They get Kenneth Walker.

Man.

Tyree Hill probably just around the corner.

All right, I got to, let me get to Harmony in today's show.

Danny Canal, who appears on Fearless all the time.

He's got two young daughters that are potential volleyball stars.

And Sunday morning, Danny put out a video over X that complained about,

man, what am I doing at 7.30 in the morning?

I'm at this huge volleyball tournament.

What am I doing here at 7.30 in the morning?

Why are they doing this on a Sunday?

Let's play Danny Canal.

Okay, a lot's been made.

What do we have to do to save college sports?

We need to save youth sports.

We need to save parents from youth sports because I'm here at a volleyball tournament.

And it is 7.40 on a Sunday.

We need to enforce laws that you cannot start youth sports games on the weekends before 9am.

And how about no sports on Sundays?

How about that one?

Let's put those laws into effect.

Fascinating take.

I've got a group of fathers here.

TJ Moe, Virgil Walker, Anthony Walker, to discuss it.

Let's start.

I'm going to start with Anthony just because Anthony has it been your son's basketball games you've been going to or another.

It's your son's basketball games.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Yeah.

I want to start with you here.

How do you feel about Danny's comments?

I feel like if you want your show to go well, you have to sign a couple of Walker brothers.

But no, back to the subject at hand, I'm in full agreement with Danny.

I have seen over my lifetime sports just invade family life.

And when I look at the scriptures, Acts chapter two, when the church is in its infancy, the scriptures tell us in Acts chapter two that they all who believe were together.

They had all things and common.

They fellowship together.

They broke bread from house to house together.

They were real community together.

And that was what was primary.

Their families and the church community was primary and everything else is secondary.

We now live in a situation where we're trying to squeeze in the family time.

We're trying to squeeze in the fellowship and worship time.

And I've got some members of mine who may have been at that particular tournament because they have daughters who are volleyball players.

So they're having a, hey, you know, we're going to have to miss today because we've got another tournament and all of this.

And these sports organizations, you know, they're just opening up more and more time.

So I'm in agreement with them full hard.

TJ, your kids are young, but you're also relatively young and probably experienced this wasn't going on to this degree in my lifetime when I was a kid.

You know, the seasons were pretty defined and there wasn't.

But anyway, you may have went through a little bit of this.

You played basketball.

Did you play baseball as well as a kid?

Just sounds young.

Yeah.

And you got some young kids that I think are going to be athletes.

Your thoughts here on what Danny had to say.

I need Isaiah to grow several feet and stop growing wide and tall if he's ever going to be an athlete.

Hey, even looks like she's on a good trajectory though.

Yeah, it was, it was starting to go when I was a kid, but see football planned around Saturdays.

So I only ever remember playing one Sunday game and one of our, you know, three best players was a Mormon kid.

And his parents wouldn't let him play.

And we were also upset about it.

We were like nine years old.

It's the first time I remember ever even thinking about him.

And the Mormons drew line.

We do not plan Sundays.

We don't care about your stupid little game.

I don't care how good you are.

And I actually think that's the attitude we should all take.

We do not.

In fact, America used to take this as a whole.

You know, going back, I mean, from all of the, from the beginning of our founding till about 1960.

We had something called blue laws where you couldn't go in and go shopping for anything that was not essential.

Because we believed in the Lord's day and that your job is not to go out and go leisure shopping.

And so in starting in 1960, these started, these laws began to be challenged in court.

The Supreme Court actually said, no, this is secular law.

And, you know, you can do whatever.

But by the 80s, they began to be struck down because they said they were too vague and whatever.

And so obviously you can do whatever you want.

But you couldn't sell alcohol on Sundays.

Basically, anything that was not essential, you couldn't have.

This was extremely common up in the Northeast.

And so we used to believe this as a country.

And then the NFL, it is actually to the, I think the NFL

is probably to some degree, a net positive, although I'm starting to go the other way on that.

To the degree that it's taken over Sundays, it is the worst thing that could have possibly happened.

The Sunday is now NFL day.

It is not the Lord's day in America.

And I think that is destructive and awful.

Virgil, I'm in the process of writing a book about the Christian founding of organized sports.

And one of the major points I'm making is that, look, if sports events were operated through the church,

the way they used to be, that a lot of this stuff wouldn't be going on.

Because the church would be like, hey, man, we preach and have communion on Sundays.

We're not playing sports.

Or if we're going to play sports on Sunday, it'll be at three o'clock in the afternoon.

And, you know, it's right after church.

And again, I say like the, if the churches were still fundamental and a huge part of sports,

traveling to all of these different tournaments, it would be a community event.

It would be the people right here in this church, we'd have our own tournaments for our own congregants,

and we'd play other churches and would all be local.

I just think they've removed sports from church so that sports could become the new religion,

rather than something that was a tool for Christianity.

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Yeah, I don't disagree with that.

For the most part, there are still churches, mine's one of them, that have sports leagues.

And so you have, they're connected to whether it's football or soccer or basketball.

What have you, they do have sports leagues.

The issue really has more to do with how we've elevated the importance of sports.

And so it really has to do with the idea that every parent believes that their kid is going to be in the NFL or in some professional level sports.

And so the time that you're talking about Jason was more aligned to, hey, sports can be used as a tool to inculcate, to catacize and to ensure that these young people have these spiritual disciplines that are connected with physical activity.

The challenge has been now, sports has been monetized.

And now we believe that everybody can become, you know, the next LeBron James.

And so you can, you can, you can tell, I love what TJ Moe said about blue laws and things like that.

Those were in place.

You even had some cities who wouldn't allow sports teams to play on Wednesday nights because they knew that that Wednesday night was typically a church night.

Now that's gone to the wayside, even graduations are happening on Sunday mornings during the, you know, during the hours that you would consider time for church.

And so the culture is upside down, but it requires parents to put it right side up.

I'll stop here and say this.

It was Vody Bachum who made the statement that if you send your kids to Caesar, you shouldn't be shocked if they come out as Romans.

What's happening as a result of our prioritization of sports culture is that kids are leaving home going to college and walking away from their faith altogether.

And why? Because they're prioritizing everything else that's connected to, you know, whether sports or whether it's school or whether it's some primary activity, they prioritize that above the worship of God on a Sunday morning.

Anthony, when I was growing up, my parents came to my football games once a week on Saturday when I was a little kid on Fridays when I was in high school on Saturdays when I was in college.

Now, it seems like it's virtually every day of the week. I was talking to Tyler Cardin who's got a son that's a baseball player.

And holy cow, they play a lot of baseball games, a lot of days of the weekend. It's with the church and all that.

And I'm Danny Cannell, a Christian who's like, man, you know, I wish we didn't do this on Sundays. What do you advise parents in that situation? Well intention.

And as a father, you're sitting there and a mother, I want to support my kids. I got to go to everything back in my day. It's like when I played church league basketball, my parents didn't come.

It was just me playing church league basketball. We carpooled, somebody's parents would take us or whatever.

But now it seems like parents go to everything.

And it kind of goes back to what TJ was hitting at, which was some of the balance and boundaries that we had as a nation and as families.

I know for my situation, before my son played any kind of serious sport, before he really got involved, we told him, you know, we're going to do our best as parents to be every one of your games if we can.

If you can come to your practices because we just enjoy our family time. But then I also mentioned that we're not going to be missing a bunch of church, a bunch of Wednesday nights and all of this.

And one of the things that I try to teach him as well is being your best, not to be the star athlete, but in representing the God that you serve.

We're supposed to do everything unto God. So I want you to be, you know, do well, practice well, et cetera. But then your team is going to know, man, we might be missing one of our best players because we've got a game on Wednesday night or Sunday night.

The league needs to know. So I'm, I'm with Virgil and TJ on this. If parents make that boundary up front to their kids to let them know, you know, my son being a star basketball player, a star athlete or whatever is far less than him being a righteous son of God.

Like that's primary. And even as it relates to his education, we want you to get educated, et cetera. But we want you to know God's word. That's primary. Everything else becomes secondary.

We feed into that as parents when we, you know, they, they got to play on Wednesday. Well, you know, they got to play on Sunday. And we feed into that. And then we look up years later to wonder, you know, why are, why are they having so many issues?

They're great athletes, but they're poor disciples of Christ. They're very knowledgeable and educated, but they don't know God's word. So my advice to parents, you know, be involved as much as you can in your children's lives, obviously, but let them know that all of these things become secondary.

I do want to echo your point, Jason, when you said, you know, at your time, you know, parents weren't involved. We squeezed so much out of family life that that's probably the only way for a lot of parents to have that time.

You know, when my son's playing through the season, he's at school for seven, eight hours. He has practice after that. Sometimes his games are right after that. So he would have been gone from six, 30 that morning until nine o'clock at night, because he played both JV and varsity. So that's a whole day. That's, there's Monday gone Tuesday. He's got practice Wednesday. He's got practice. And he's got Bible class. Like when are we going to have time as family to say, hey, let's sit.

And enjoy. Well, I guess we got to go to his game, you know, to do that. So it's, it's boundaries that I would advise and making the keeping the main thing, the main thing. If you want them to be righteous children of God, disciples of Christ, put your energy and focus in that. And if they are such the great athlete, they will be seen by who they need to be seen by.

TJ, I listened to Vert Anthony's comments there. And the number one, the first thing that crossed through my mind was like homeschooling. If you, if you homeschool, you can spend time with your kids. And then, and again, homeschooling what I've read and been told is like, that's three or four hours a day. It's not a seven, eight, nine hour of the way the public school system and these kids are smarter.

Obviously, they get more one on one attention, but, but I, I homeschooling as a potential solution, because I think a lot of parents, fathers and mothers are thinking like, well, if I go to these sporting events, I do get my family time in.

And, and so I get it. But for, for me, I sit there and remember like there was more trust in the society that I grew up in. And so parents were more comfortable allowing their kids to go get coached by TJ Moe's father, whereas now parents are probably just a file, be more paranoid. And they want their set of eyes at practice at all the games because it's not just micro managing their kids.

It's, it's making sure their kids don't get abused and taken advantage of. Anyway, any response to any of that.

Yeah, no, that's exactly I, both you and Anthony made very good points. I think, look, homeschooling is making any massive comeback to the point where I think California at some point, this is purely speculation, but they don't like when anybody else gets to deal with their kids. I think California is going to try to outlaw that is my belief within the next 10 years, they're going to do something.

Because it is spiking massively in California, in particular, because of what they're doing in schools. There's a lot of stats in this. We're going to homeschool. You know, we've already started. We got almost five year old. And so we're just at the beginning stages of this, but we plan homeschooling when you start reading the stats on this, everything you said is correct. All, I mean, everything about the experience is better. There's nothing even down to the socialization everybody pretends well, they won't be socialized. No, they're way, way more socialized because they're used to talking to adults all the time. And they know how to interact with people.

And it's, it is a totally different way. They better test scores, they do better in college, right, that they're ready for life much sooner. You can always tell when a homeschool kid is applying for a job, because they're the one that stands out in all the best ways. It's very easy to see. The other thing is parents to your point, Jason, is these numbers are not exactly right, but the spirit of the idea is when we were researching all this stuff, I think you get something back like 17,000 hours with your kids if you homeschool.

Compared to sending them to school for, you know, from kindergarten up until the time they're 18. And the other thing, this scary part, if you're just trying to squeeze in like Anthony said squeeze an in at a time where you don't even get to talk to him, you're just showing up their game and giving a high five when they hit a three.

I think, I think the stats show that 75% of all the time you're going to spend with your children has already passed by the time they're 18 years old.

So they're going to go live their lives and you're going to spend very little time with them the rest of their life actually in person.

And then that is the reality. The only time that's a little bit different if you have super rich parents and they come back to your house lot.

That's it. Otherwise, you're giving your kids, as Virgil said, off to Caesar and allowing them to raise your kids, you're sacrificing 17,000 hours while you go do who knows what and complain about it.

And so all of that is true. And you know, to the degree that parents should show up at games, my parents showed up at every game.

One of my parents were at every single game I ever played. And that was a huge deal to me because it, and it wasn't, they spent a ton of time with me.

I lived in a world, we still had dial up internet when I was playing these sports. All right. And so there's a different world than we're playing in right now.

But you should go to all these games, but you should have serious rules. I mean, something I've been thinking about for probably a year now and have been discussing with a lot of my friends and some of them have kids a bit older.

I think travel sports are one of the most destructive things in America. I think it destroys families. I think it totally throws all of your religious beliefs out the window because you blow through every Sunday.

You're off in Georgia and Mississippi and who knows where particularly baseball and basketball football didn't travel a whole lot.

And then, you know, you don't take family vacations anymore because you can't afford it because you're spending all your time traveling with your kids.

And all of your normal rhythms, they're totally gone because you're chasing around what competition that you could have found down in Troy, Missouri.

Oh, well, we took a trip to Utah instead because, oh, that's where the competition is. Yeah, okay. And so I don't buy any of it. I think it's totally destruction. And I'm pretty sure I'm opting out of that.

I didn't do it and I ended up getting exactly where I needed to go playing football. And then I can remember which one of these guys made the point. I think Anthony, if you're really good, they will notice you.

And you don't have to go all over the country to do that. And to the degree, just the rep of my pointer, to the degree that you're missing out not being able to do things on Sundays.

We have such a prime example because we know that we all know it's scriptural, right? Everybody were well aware of the Sabbath.

But Chick-fil-A is the one place that does it and they do more business in six days than every other fast food chain does in seven.

And that's literally how it's supposed to work. That's what the Bible says. It's why in the Bible, they said, hey, God said, every seventh year, you need to stop planting.

And the land needs a time to rest. You can't just abuse it. And that's why all the pesticides and everything that we use and we try to steroid out all the land today, it's killing us.

Instead, we would produce more food and better food doing it every six years and taking the seventh off and having a legitimate Sabbath. That is a rule of law for the entire earth that God put into place.

And so there's nothing that we can do on that seventh day that would be better than what we would do with six days and a little bit of rest.

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But all the cool opportunities could pull us apart. It's causing issues in everyone's marriage.

My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos.

TJ, I got to jump in, Jason. Amen, amen, amen. Jason, when you talk about having the church leagues, etc.

What I'm seeing in a lot of these sports as well is it's just blowing up. It goes from, hey, we're going to have practice this day to this day.

Then it is, well, we're going to have a bonus optional practice if you want to come in on Saturday.

Then we're having, if we want to do personal training, etc.

Then we're going to do such and such. We've got to scrimmage with another team just so we can kind of keep just so we can max out all of that.

Like you said, you've blown through everything all week long and no family time.

We are enjoying a season outside of the season of just having some time with family and just chillin' out.

It's okay. With our church, we have a very active youth ministry.

So if ever there was a Wednesday night that my son was not able to go to class, he's missing that.

Like, man, I wish I could go to class, but we've got practice or we've got a game or we've got a travel, etc.

Like, no, we're not doing the travel stuff. We are really pouring into him and our daughter as well.

We're pouring into them spiritually. Love sports wasn't athlete myself.

Loved it. There's so many parallels to what you can learn as with leadership, with teamwork and all of that stuff, that's fine.

But it is not to the degree that we sacrifice our family or our faith.

Growing up, that was the thing that they would say with football teams in particular, pay his faith, family, and then football.

Now, as TJ has pointed out, it's football.

In my time coming up, I saw it go from football, it was from this time to this time to now.

The shows that's leading up to it start at 9 o'clock. It's all day.

We're squeezing out the Lord.

I just think it's ironic, Jason, that when Jesus came into this world, there was no room in the end.

And we're finding now, we're squeezing him right back out to where there's no room for Jesus in our life.

Virgil, be patient with me here. I got about five more minutes left in the show.

But I got to ask Anthony to follow up, and then I'm going to let you close the show out with your final thoughts.

And you can pray us out at the end. Anthony, when I listen to you and TJ talk, and I think about Danny and just all the travel, all the running your kids here and there,

that I would think that all this sports participation and just all these different things that parents are responsible for as it relates to their kids.

This puts additional stress on the marriage, I would think, and also undercuts like quality time just between the husband and wife.

And everybody is completely exhausted whenever it comes to dealing with each other.

Amen. Amen. It runs you ragged because it's all about where they have to go.

And then with both of our kids being involved in either athletics or in talent, art, et cetera, we're having to split up.

So it may be during a busy season throughout the week that we're just catching each other early morning, late in the evening, or where, hey, I've got to go.

I've got a meeting at such and such while I'll take him to the game or I'll be and we'll be back and we're sharing stories and not really being able to be involved, which again, the balance must be there and it must be OK.

You know, it is all right. I didn't play AAU ball and I think I'm OK as a human being as a person. I'm fine. You know, we're good.

So you don't have to do those things. It's not worth sacrificing marriage, not worth sacrificing your family. Great point, Jason.

Virgil, I'll let you final thought here.

Yeah, a lot of a lot of great things stated there. I had to mark some things down before I forgot.

I went, go back to what TJ Moe mentioned about 17,000 seed hours from K through 12. That's a real stat.

I pulled that one from, again, Vody Bachum's book that that book, you know, family shepherds really changed the whole trajectory of how we did our lives.

That was the point at which reading that book and doing study about biblical world view that we pulled our kids out of the public school system and homeschooled them all.

My daughter went through middle school, through high school and graduated. With the boys, their critical years were kind of early elementary and middle school.

And so we let them go back to high school. And truth be told, I wish I hadn't. There were too many things that they ended up getting exposed to in that space that weren't necessary.

All the reason we did that was was doing no small part to the fact that we wanted to be the disciples, the disciples of our children, we recognize whatever we put them in, whether it was public school systems or, you know, sports.

All of those opportunities are opportunities for discipleship. And so it's incredibly important for us to think through kind of what that looks like.

The challenges with parents today is all of them are operating on the 10,000 hour idea that if I can give my kids 10,000 hours of sports or of whatever the activity is, they'll become experts in it and they'll be the best at it.

And so their thought is, if I do Saturday, but if I do Sunday, that'll be the action. Then if we travel, that'll be the extras. All of them are operating on this premise that they need to be the first ones to get their children up to 10,000 hours of exposure to whatever sport they have them placed in.

And the reality is, while that does, I think it does place stress on the marriage. It does place stress on the family. The choice is really theirs.

They're the ones, it's not the sports systems. It's not the sports organizations. They're going to find ways to make money, right? These parents have got to parent up.

They've got husbands have got to husband up, man up wives have got to find their role in that space and say we aren't doing this.

My dad engaged in sports with me, but both of my parents worked. And as a result, he didn't come to all of my games. I played football in middle school, early high school, had a lot of fun, but he could only come to those he could come to.

And that really, that was the extent of it. But I'm not marked or something wrong with me. Well, maybe there's something wrong with me. It has nothing to do with the fact that my dad did or didn't show up to any of my games.

It's really a choice that parents have to make. They have to stand up. I heard the commentator mentioned, hey, we need to put laws in place. You can do that.

But ultimately, people are going to figure out ways to get around that. It's incumbent upon parents to say in the way that Joshua did in the Bible,

as for me in my house, we're going to serve the Lord and leave it at that.

Virgil, quick prayer and we'll be done.

Yeah, Father, we give you thanks and praise for who you are. We pray for these parents who are making challenging decisions and are trying to navigate life the best way they know how with the information that they have.

We pray that you give them wisdom in that and give them direction and guidance. We pray for our conversation that it may be heard far and wide in that those who have ears to hear.

We'll hear it and follow the truth of your word. We ask all this in Christ's name. Amen.

Gentlemen, thank you so much. We'll see you next time on Harmony.

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