Hall of Fame TE Tony Gonzalez is using his platform to advocate for prostate cancer screenings | The Players' Tribune

I was sitting outside the gym the other day, parked in my car, waiting for my son.

He was inside working with a strength trainer I hired for him. He wants to be a great athlete, and I want to give him every opportunity to chase that. More than anything, I want him to become whoever he is supposed to become.

But as I sat there, I started thinking about how different his childhood is from mine.

When I was a kid in the '80s, there were no personal trainers for me. No spreadsheets. No customized workout plans. No nutrition programs. No one was talking about recovery, mobility, protein windows, none of that. And I don't want this to sound like some old guy yelling about how my generation had it better. That's not the point.

This is about time.

The time we had then. The time we have now. And how we choose to spend it.

For me, that childhood time started in the bed of a Dodge pickup truck.

The truck had AC, but my dad basically treated it like it was illegal to use unless the heat index was 98 degrees. He was old school like that. A tough man. A God-fearing man. A good man.

My parents were divorced, so my brother, Chris, and I lived in two different worlds. With Mom, we were just her boys, free to do what we wanted. With Dad, it was different. He was a Seventh-day Adventist. He followed his faith strictly. He was a vegetarian, and he believed there was a right way to do things.

And he loved that truck.

My dad was a recreation therapist at the VA hospital in Long Beach. His job was to help veterans assimilate back into everyday life and deal with the difficulties of life after war. It was remarkable work, really. And with my dad, that work didn't always stop when he clocked out. Some of those veterans became his friends. He would bring them by the house sometimes. We would go to their houses. We would go fishing with them. As a kid, I was around these men enough to feel the weight of what they had been through, even if I was too young to understand all of it.

They were incredible men. Men who had been through it. Really through it. The Vietnam War had ended only about a decade earlier, and a lot of those guys were still trying to live with what they had seen and carried home. I knew enough to know they were heroes. And I knew enough to see something in my dad, too. He had this selfless side to him. He helped people. He showed up for them. That made an impression on me.

My dad wanted us to see the world, or at least as much of it as he could show us from his truck. We didn't have money to fly places, so we drove. We drove to see family. We drove to campgrounds. We drove to places he thought mattered, or places he thought would open our eyes. Sometimes it was Tennessee. Sometimes it was Mexico. Sometimes it was the Redwoods. Wherever it was, we got there the old-school way: packed into that truck, watching America go by.

We did everything on a tight budget. We stayed at campgrounds. I would pitch the tent, or at least try to be useful in the way a 10-year-old kid tries to be useful. We hiked. We swam. We fished. We were outside all day. Dad was an outdoorsman. He loved nature, and he loved teaching us how to be in it. When we caught fish, he would let us prepare them. He would never eat them, of course. But he would watch us, make sure we did it right. Then the next morning we would be back on the road.

Back in the truck.

The truck had a canopy over the bed and two bench seats up front. Chris was older, so he usually got the front. I was in the truck bed. Dad had it set up with carpet, a sleeping bag, and a pillow, so I could lie down back there below the windows, tucked in around all our stuff as we drove across America.

And those trips, man, I really cherish them now.

Dad didn't play the radio. So it was just me, Chris, the road, and our imaginations.

From where I was lying, all I could see through the windows were the tops of trees passing by and the sky. That was my screen. That was my entertainment. For seven or eight hours at a time, I would just let my mind run. I would picture my future. I would dream about what I wanted to do when I got older.

A lot of it was sports. I saw myself playing football, playing basketball, fishing, surfing, living.

In my mind, I would see highlights of my idols. Bo Jackson. Michael Jordan. I had their posters on my wall back home, and I could almost see their best plays up there in the sky through that truck window.

I loved how those players could make you feel.

I didn't know how to get where they were. I didn't know what it took.

Growing up, nobody was obsessed with whether I won or lost. Not in a bad way. My parents wanted me to play, stay busy, stay out of trouble, and have fun. We didn't even watch sports like that. I would catch highlights at a friend's house or see my favorite guys here and there, but for the most part, I wasn't even really a football fan.

I think about that now and sometimes I laugh, like, How did I make it?

But one thing I keep coming back to is that I was free. I was just a kid playing games. Football and basketball weren't my entire life. I had nature. I had family. I had people. I had experiences. I had all that quiet time in the back of a truck with nothing but my imagination.

So when the pressure to be great finally came, it came from inside me. That's how it felt in high school. That's how it felt in college.

And then next thing I knew I was lining up across from Bill Romanowski in the NFL.

I wasn't in the truck anymore.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the NFL was getting to share those game experience with the people I loved. Being in the league can be isolating. There's a lot of pressure on you to perform, not only for yourself, but for all those who believed in you. And one of my favorite people was also one of the people who believed in me first.

My uncle, OJ Gonzalez.

Everybody has that fun uncle. OJ was mine.

He was the life of the party. Just the best. He was a card dealer in Vegas for a while. He rode a motorcycle with a custom KC88 license plate. He was married three times. He had stories for days. He was a rock for me, you know? And back when I was playing, he was one of my biggest fans.

The guys I played with knew him too. OJ would come out with us after games, and we had some legendary nights. Everybody loved him.

OJ and I would talk about football and life. He loved the game, even though he never played sports himself, let alone football. He always had questions about coaches, formations, plays, why we did this or that. And when you're in the NFL, as great as it is, it can be hard, too. Having someone like OJ in my corner meant a lot.

Did he care if we won or lost? Of course. He was a fan.

But I think what he cared about most was seeing me out there. Seeing his nephew do his thing. He cared about the hug after the game, the laughs, the stories, the good times.

He cared about life. All of it.

Right now, OJ is having a tough time. He had prostate cancer a while back and had his prostate removed. Since then, the cancer has returned, and it has spread into his bones. He is going through a lot, and it is not only sad, it is scary.

One of my other uncles, Roger, passed away from prostate cancer. My grandfather passed when I was young from colon cancer that stemmed from issues with his prostate. Cancer runs through my family the way it runs through so many families.

And what is happening to OJ could happen to my dad. It could happen to my brother. It could happen to me.

That is why I am so adamant about men getting screened, especially as we get older. Prostate cancer is something we can fight, especially when it is detected early. But it starts with us being willing to have the conversation, go to the doctor, and take the test. For a lot of men, screening can begin with a simple blood test. That is not a big ask when you think about what is at stake.

For me, that is what matters most.

I want to be on top of my health. I want to be in control of my life. I want the men I love, and the men who are reading this, to have as much time as possible with the people who love them.

The NFL gave me a platform, and I want to use it to help as many people as I can. This issue means the world to me because it is not some abstract cause. It is my family. It is OJ. It is Roger. It is my grandfather. It is me looking at my son outside that gym and thinking about the time I still want to have with him.

I think back now on those long car rides with my dad, and the selflessness he showed in his work. He helped people. Even when it was hard. Even when the hours were long, the roads were dark, and his two sons were probably punching each other in the tent, he did what he could for others.

I have never forgotten that.

That was time well spent.

Those trips helped make me the man I am today. And in my own way, I want to carry that forward.

So please, if you are thinking about it at all, get screened. Talk to your doctor. Protect yourself.

And spread the word.

- Tony

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This article was originally published on ThePlayersTribune as The Window.

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This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 12:35 PM.