Farhan Lalji: The Real Color of Sport, Academy Conundrum & Make the Big Time Where You're At

Farhan Lalji is a very recognizable face and voice in Canadian sports. Since 1997 he's been with TSN, covering everything from the Olympics to the Stanley Cup and the Super Bowl. He's a CFL Football Hall of Famer in the media category and a BC Football Hall of Famer as a builder thanks in large part to creating a high school football program from scratch in New Westminster. He also sits on the national board of KidSport and has spent years watching the youth sports landscape up close, from every angle.

But in this episode of Better Sports Parents, Farhan isn't talking as a broadcaster or a Hall of Famer. He's talking as a dad. One who got caught up in hockey's spending arms race when his son was six years old, who made mistakes coaching his son that he's doing differently with his daughter, and who at one point realized he could still coach his son, but no longer push him.

Farhan has one of the most quotable lines in the show's history: "In hockey, there are two types of parents: those who have money and those who borrow money. There's no not having money." He talks about what it was like to live inside that reality as a parent, even as someone with his level of sports awareness, and why the privatization of youth sport is his single biggest concern for the next generation of Canadian kids.

This is a conversation about coaching, community, access, identity, and what it actually means to be a sports parent when you know everything about sport and still can't always get it right.

Chapters

00:00 Opening

01:35 Introducing Farhan Lalji

03:37 How sport influenced Farhan's life as an immigrant kid

06:50 The high school football coach who never left his life

08:03 What his parents stressed (and didn't) about youth sport

09:23 Are we over-parenting in youth sport today?

10:21 The loss of free play and what's filled the gap

13:03 Devices, screen time & holding off on phones until 14

15:47 From SFU communications to TSN: the career decision

17:20 What coaching taught him about life lessons through sport

18:17 How to connect with kids who have different competitive goals

22:12 Valuing the player who just wants to belong

25:14 A quarterback who said "I'm done after senior year"

26:16 Where the line is between participation and competitive sport

27:36 The pressures of youth hockey

30:08 The academy bubble: socialization, entitlement and what kids miss

32:38 "The real color in sport is green"

34:42 The two types of hockey parents we've created

35:06 Farhan's confession: he got caught up in it too

37:14 Are we pricing ourselves out of hockey as a nation?

39:12 Is the environment we've created in hockey a net positive?

41:05 Why he chose to build a football program from scratch

46:26 The Justin Morneau playoff game and what community sport can look like

48:06 How do we get back to community sport?

49:15 We need to pay coaches

51:22 Why he left New Westminster and what his son actually wanted

54:25 "I can coach him, but I can't push him"

56:33 You're not coaching football. You're coaching kids.

57:21 When is the right time to coach your own child?

59:15 How he set boundaries with parents as a coach

01:01:21 How a player taught him a valuable lesson

01:02:47 Parenting his son vs. parenting his daughter in sports

01:04:48 The number one issue in youth sports: privatization

Resources

Unplugged

KidSport