At a Super Bowl press conference, Justin Timberlake says his son ‘will never play football’

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel have a 2-year-old son, Silas Randall Timberlake. Justin Timberlake is the headliner for the Super Bowl 52 halftime show on Sunday. At an NFL press conference ahead of that event, Timberlake said his son will never play football.

“He will never play football,” Timberlake told a reporter. He’d been asked whether he’d support his son if he wanted to “run some routes and get in the NFL.” It was part of a longer exchange about his son following him into an artistic field.

Timberlake had been joking a few seconds earlier about his own ability to play for the Patriots in the game. That prompted the question about his son, which Timberlake answered by saying he’d never play football. He never backtracked on that point, though he briefly sounded like he was making a joke.

“If he wants to get into the arts or sports, yeah, I would fully support that. I think I can hopefully offer him some advice on what to do and what not to do.”

Timberlake’s stance isn’t unique. It’s become a more common one as the world’s learned more about the consequences of repeated blows to the head involved in the sport.

A study in 2017 found that 99 percent of former NFL players who had donated their brains to research had signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease.

A bunch of current and former players have said they won’t let their children play the sport that became a career for them. Enrollment in high school and youth football programs has generally been on the decline for a while.