It sounds like an easy question. But Rex Ryan, head coach of the New York Jets and a man without a pause button, has to think a moment before answering.
"Would you be in this business without your Dad?" I asked him.
"I would say without question," he answered, "because this is my only calling in life -- and this is my calling."
But that's when he caught himself. Because when Rex Ryan thinks about growing up with a famous father -- someone who spent a lifetime coaching football and invented the 46 defense -- he knows better.
Rex can think back to when he was a ball boy for the Minnesota Vikings, watching guys like Carl Eller and Alan Page go to work ... or he can fast forward to living with his father in Chicago and being around stars like Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton.
And that's when he knows. Buddy Ryan made a career decision a whole lot easier for his son.
"It was probably through those experiences," Ryan said. "Because if I wasn't given that opportunity, I might have missed an unbelievable opportunity for me. So I knew.
"Look, as a kid you always want to play, but I knew at a young age that I wasn't ever going to be good enough to play at this level. Yet I still loved competing. And I think that maybe seeing my Dad [made a difference] because he was always excited to go to work.
"And maybe that's it; maybe that's just the general father-son deal. You get in the family business because of how happy your Dad was doing something. And that was through the hard times as well. It wasn't just the Super Bowls. No matter what happened, he couldn't wait to get back there on Monday and correct things. And that's something that obviously had an effect on me and my twin brother."
That would be Rob who, like Rex, coaches in the NFL. He's the defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints, and he and Rex have strong ties to their Dad -- even though their parents divorced when the twins were 2. Buddy would take them in as high school students so they could be in schools with organized sports, but he did more than that. He took them to his work. He took them to their games. And he always seemed interested in what they were doing.
Rex Ryan calls his father "a great Dad," and he explains why in one sentence.
"He was always there," he said.
Psychologists will tell you that what children want most from parents isn't in toy stores or on Nick Jr. or at Disney World. Nope, what they want most is time, and Buddy Ryan apparently shared enough of his with his sons that they not only were satisfied but they never forgot. In fact, when I asked Rex Ryan to tell me what he remembered most about growing up with his famous father, he mentioned how Buddy and a family friend -- someone whose son played on Rex's Little League teams -- showed up at his baseball games ... and I mean all of them.
"They were always there," he said. "They were the only two guys who would travel to every game -- every single one of them. We weren't any good, and our teams weren't any good, but they went to every single baseball game. So there were two Dads at every game. The rest of them weren't. They never had the time. But those two did, and those are things you remember."
That Ryan coaches the Jets seems appropriate. The Jets were the first professional football team to employ his father, with sons Rex and Rob at Super Bowl III when Joe Namath guaranteed a Jets victory. On occasions such as Father's Day, Ryan thinks about times like that and how he wouldn't have been there without his Dad.
Buddy is 82 now and has health issues -- recently suffering a stroke after waging battles with cancer. But Rex speaks with him frequently and thinks about him often. And what he thinks about, he said, is that while he doesn't know if he would've made it to pro football without his father getting there first, having him show him the way sure as hell helped.
"I'm never intimidated by anybody or any particular situation because I've been there [growing up]," he said. "I've been cussed out by whoever and it's like, 'Who cares? I've been there.'
"I never got into this business to make money. I coached eight years of small-college football, and I never once in my life had a bad job ... ever. Had some bad teams, but never a bad job.
"Do I feel like saying, 'Thanks, Dad,' when I go to work? Yeah, it's true, especially with the fact that it's the Jets. That was my childhood team, and that was my Dad's first ever -- with Super Bowl III. He had eight years with them, and thanks.
"So when I had the good fortune to have two opportunities, there was only one choice for me, and that was the Jets. People said the media would be tough there and so would the pressure, but I said, 'That's OK. This is my team. This was my Dad's team.' And I take a great deal of pride in that."
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