I liked that football has a role for a large variety of body types from lean and fast to just big. Height is usually an advantage but not everywhere.
As for the mental part there is so much crap going on on large parts of the field that you have to remember at a moment's notice.
Much of football at lower levels relys on tons of memorization but this is the argument I made to my o line coach:
"So every year we face around 4 standard defenses. We play carnagie which runs a oddball one and you have us defending the zone blitz as well because you think a team is going to use it. So that's 6 defenses. Every d lineman can shade at least 3 ways but let's just call that 12 and not go permutations and let's skip the line backers that also covers mirroring of the d. We run essentially 15 run plays each direction for the purposes of the linemen rembering and 10 special plays so 25 plays... And we run them both ways so 50.
So we have 61250 = 3600. So basically you want me to memorize, recognize and recall and use within 1/2 of a step's notice 3600 things with 2 weeks of practice.
And every week you throw in 3 special plays and sub optimizing changes because of special players which ends up being 200-1200 changes.
Do you see how that might be difficult?"
But this is what most places do till you get up higher. After teaching my coach permutations math I said:
"Can you just tell us for each play what is the most dangerous thing to it and specifics for that week? That's really only 50*3 things total and about 12 things extra a week."
Reply "so you want me to teach you to be coaches basically"?
Me: "we are at a top ten University who plays football against carnagie and University of Chicago... I think we can use our brains pretty well"
Anyway yes it requires a ton of mental. I did as much studying each season of football in college as I did to pass orgo 1&2.