I had made the time to call my dad on the morning of Friday, Dec. 1.

He wanted to hear all about an interview I had with ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit the previous day. Not that we ever needed a reason to talk — most of our conversations centered around sports — but on this day, the Herbstreit interview made it a top priority.

Then, as it often does, all hell broke loose in the SEC.

Tennessee fired athletic director John Currie after Phillip Fulmer reportedly orchestrated his demise, Ole Miss finally got its bowl ban from the NCAA and just in case that wasn’t enough, Jimbo Fisher left Florida State for Texas A&M.

That meant that I had a few columns to crank out and my morning conversation with my dad was postponed to the afternoon.

Hours later, I finally got the chance to talk to him. By the time he was finished peppering me with questions about the Herbstreit interview, he told me something that I’ll never forget.

“I’m just so proud of you. You’re doing what you love and that’s just awesome.”

Twenty five days after my dad told me that, he died of cancer.

That was the last time that we really got to talk. At the time, my dad was already in hospice care. It was the choice he made after his third bout of cancer hit him in a 14-month stretch. We knew it was only a matter of time.

But I had no idea it would be so soon when I hung up the phone that day. I didn’t know when I called him 5 months earlier that it’d be the last time I’d get to wish him a happy Father’s Day.

At this time last year, none of us had any idea just how soon it would be. He crushed his first bout of esophageal cancer after he changed his diet and went to the gym 59 out of 60 days. When he had brain surgery to remove a hand ball-sized tumor in his brain that showed up last June, he relearned how to walk again after spending weeks in the hospital. 

What we did know was that he’d work his tail off. That’s what he did his whole life.

My dad was never much of a college football fan, but I promise, he had a good reason. He worked on Saturdays. He sold cars while my mom would drive my brother and me to whatever game we had on that given Saturday (she’d tape them so he could watch when he got home that night).

Even when I stopped playing sports and started writing about them, I couldn’t even watch college football with my dad because he was working on Saturdays.

Credit: Sheila O’Gara

After my dad got his third cancer diagnosis last November — it was terminal this time — I flew home to Chicago to spend a few weeks with him. I took care of him during the day while my mom was working. I’d cook for him, help him get to the bathroom and make sure he got all of his medications (I still have a scar on my thumb from trying to get his shoe on after he fell in the bathroom).

I still had a job to do, though. Fortunately, I worked remotely during those 3 weeks in Chicago. I remember watching College GameDay with my dad — that was the day Miami torched Notre Dame — and having a realization.

That was the first Saturday I ever spent at home watching college football with him.

I never thought it would take until he was 60 years old and in home hospice care with terminal cancer. I always thought there would be time.

I write this Father’s Day column not in attempt to gain sympathy or support for losing my dad. Lord knows our family got plenty of that the last year (he had hundreds of people at his wake).

My wish is that you, reader of this column, appreciate the time you have with your dad. Time is precious, and admittedly, it took me too long to realize that.

There are still moments when that really sinks in. A couple weeks ago, I went with my brother and mom up to Door County, Wisc., to our family vacation home. That was where my dad was at peace. We golfed nearly every day, which my dad would’ve appreciated. In the middle of one of our rounds, my mom turned to my brother and me with a realization of her own.

“You know, a year ago your dad and I played this course. Here we are a year later spreading his ashes on it,” she said.

That’s the stuff that stops me in my tracks. Or when I think about how a month after the Herbstreit conversation, my brother and I delivered my dad’s eulogy. Or how after I moved to Central Nebraska to start my journalism career in 2013, the most time I’d ever spend with my dad again were those 3 weeks that he was in hospice care.

But what keeps me pushing forward is how proud he was.

Proud he was to see my wife and I get married, despite the fact that it was 2 weeks removed from his first cancer diagnosis.

Proud he was that both my brother and I chose to pursue our passion in sports writing, despite the fact that our jobs took us to different time zones his final years.

Proud he was to talk on the phone about a random opportunity that I got, despite the fact that he only had a few weeks left.

I couldn’t have asked for much more from my dad. Just time.

If you’re able to spend Father’s Day with your dad — or really any day — savor that time. Whether that’s playing golf or debating the Alabama quarterback battle, take advantage of every experience you have left.

Make the time. You never know when you’ll run out of it.