Farhan Lalji: The Real Color of Sport, Academy Conundrum & Make the Big Time Where You're At | Ep 30

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.