A man I’ll call Dave sat across from me at a coaching session a few months back and said something that’s stuck with me ever since.
“I didn’t even notice it happening,” he said. One Sunday I looked up, and my daughter was twelve. Twelve. And I couldn’t tell you the last real conversation we’d had, because every Sunday for as long as I can remember, I had a game on.”
He wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t an absent father in the way we usually picture that word—he was home. He coached her softball team, for crying out loud. But somewhere along the way, Sunday had quietly become sacred to something other than his family. Kickoff at noon. Kickoff at 3:25 on Sunday Night Football. Add the pregame and postgame shows on either end, and Dave was spending nine or ten hours a week, every week, for years, in front of a screen that gave him nothing back.
That’s the story I want to tell today, because last week I laid out the problem in broad strokes. This week I want you to feel it.
The Table That Went Quiet
Last blog, I wrote about how some of my best memories with my dad happened both on a field and around a dinner table, and I meant that. That table mattered. It was where the day got talked through, where I learned how to needle my brothers and take a joke back just as hard, where my dad, without ever calling it a lesson, taught me what it looked like for a man to show up every single night.
Contrast that with a story a woman named Renee shared with me at a men’s event about her husband, Mark. She wasn’t angry when she told it; that was almost the saddest part. She’d made peace with it.
“Sundays used to be our day,” she said. “Church, then a big lunch, then we’d just be together. Now Sunday is Mark’s day. He’s not going anywhere. He’s just gone.”
She told me their kids had started eating lunch in front of the TV with him, not because they loved football, but because it was the only way to be near their dad. Presence by proximity. Not connection, just closeness.
I sat with that one for a while, because I don’t think Mark is a villain in this story. I think Mark is most of us. I think Mark loves his family and would tell you, without hesitation, that they’re the most important thing in his life. But love isn’t measured by what a man says matters most. It’s measured by where his attention actually goes when nobody’s making him account for it.
The Church of ESPN
Here’s what’s changed even since I was a kid watching games with my dad: the broadcast itself isn’t really about the game anymore.
Turn it on right now, any Sunday, any network. Count the minutes before someone tells you who to bet on. The “Play of the Day” gets squeezed in between two segments breaking down the point spread. There’s a guy with a headset whose entire job is to tell you which player to start in your fantasy lineup like he’s handing down scripture. It is, without exaggeration, structured like a church service for a god that promises you’ll feel something if you just put a little money on it.
I talked with a guy, whom I’ll call Ray, who told me he’d spent close to four thousand dollars on sports betting apps over eighteen months. Not because he had a gambling problem in the classic sense. He’d tell you himself he doesn’t have an “addiction.” He just liked the feeling. The little charge of having something riding on the outcome. The dopamine hit when his parlay hit.
Here’s the part of Ray’s story that got me, though. He told me the four thousand dollars didn’t bother him nearly as much as something else did: his son had asked him, more than once, to help build a pinewood derby car for scouts, and Ray kept pushing it to “next weekend” because he wanted to watch the games. By the time he actually sat down to build it with him, the deadline had passed. They built it anyway, just for fun, a week late. His son was gracious about it. Kids usually are. That’s what makes it worse, not better.
The casino always wins. I said that last week, and I’ll say it again, because it’s not just true about your bank account; it’s true about your time. Look at who built the skyline in Vegas. The winners didn’t build it. And whether the currency you’re spending is dollars or hours, the house always ends up ahead when you’re the product being sold back to yourself as entertainment.
What the Dopamine Actually Costs
I want to be fair here, because I’m not writing this from some mountain of moral high ground. I’ve had my own Sundays where I told myself “one more quarter” three or four times in a row. I know the pull. In fact, I’m an actual shareholder of the Green Bay Packers. I’m not writing to condemn you; I’m writing because I’ve watched too many good men wake up at forty-five wondering where the years went, and I don’t want that for you.
A pastor friend of mine- I’ll leave him unnamed since it’s not really his story to tell publicly- told me about a man in his congregation who came to him in tears. Not because of an affair. Not because of addiction to alcohol or drugs. Because his son, now grown and gone, had told him at Thanksgiving, “I don’t actually know you, Dad. I know what you were like watching football. I don’t know much else.”
That sentence should stop every one of us cold. Because it’s not really about football. It never was. Football is just the vehicle. Social media is another one. The news cycle is another. Video games, work emails answered at the dinner table, the endless scroll at 11 pm while your wife falls asleep next to you unacknowledged- it’s all the same mechanism wearing a different jersey. Something outside your home is winning the fight for your attention, and your family is losing by default, without you ever consciously choosing it.
That’s the trap. Nobody decides, “I will prioritize a stranger’s fantasy touchdown over my son’s science project.”It happens one Sunday at a time, one scroll at a time, until one day it’s just who you’ve become.
The Turn
I want to end with one more story, because I don’t want to leave you sitting in the weight of this without seeing what the other side looks like.
A man named Curtis went through one of our coaching programs about a year ago. He came in exactly like Dave, exactly like Mark, exactly like Ray, a good man, present in body, mostly absent in attention, and mostly unaware of it until his wife finally said something that landed. She didn’t yell. She just said, quietly, “I miss you, and you’re right here.”
Curtis made one change. Just one, to start. He turned the TV off during the second half of the early game, every single week, and used that hour to take his two boys outside, no matter what. Sometimes it was just a catch. Sometimes it was nothing more than sitting on the porch. He told me the first few weeks felt like withdrawal. He genuinely didn’t know how to fill an hour without a screen in front of him.
Eight months later, his younger son started asking him, unprompted, if they could do “our hour” even on days there wasn’t a game on. That’s the whole story. No dramatic ending, no movie moment. Just a man who noticed where his attention was going, made one deliberate change, and slowly got handed back something he didn’t even realize he’d lost.
That’s the win I talked about last week. Not a trophy. Not a covered spread. A kid who wants “our hour” even when there’s nothing forcing it.
Where This Leaves Us
In my last blog, I said this is spiritual warfare, not a metaphor, that the enemy doesn’t need to take down a nation one soul at a time, he just needs to take out the head of the house. I stand by that fully. But I want you to hear this week’s point sitting right next to it: the way that battle actually gets lost isn’t usually dramatic. It’s not one big collapse. It’s a thousand small Sundays, quietly handed over to something that will never once ask how you’re doing.
And the way it gets won isn’t dramatic either. It’s one hour. One table. One phone turned face-down. One father who decides that “our hour” matters more than the second half.
If any of these stories hit close to home today, if you saw yourself in Dave, or Mark, or Ray before you were willing to admit it, that’s exactly the kind of honesty we’re building the summit around. You are not the only man sitting with this. And you don’t have to sort it out alone.
Listen to the conversation that’s already happening: truemanpodcast.com
Watch it play out on YouTube: @truemanpodcast
And reserve your seat for the summit that’s going to pull all of this together: Reserve Your Seat — The Power of Asking for Help
This is a free, one-day gathering unlike anything we’ve built before, and seats are limited. Don’t just read about the family you want back. Show up and start building it.
Build the Man. Strengthen the Family. Restore the Nation.
MVP (Mike Van Pelt) is the Founder & CEO of True Man Life Coaching and Founder of American Family Renaissance. He helps Christian men reclaim their God-given identity, break isolation, and lead with authenticity through faith, character, and brotherhood.