You're the NFL, and Wednesday was a dark and disturbing day.
By David Butler II, US Presswire
Junior Seau was a 12-time Pro Bowl linebacker who helped the San Diego Chargers reach the 1995 Super Bowl and the New England Patriots reach the 2008 Super Bowl.
By David Butler II, US Presswire
Junior Seau was a 12-time Pro Bowl linebacker who helped the San Diego Chargers reach the 1995 Super Bowl and the New England Patriots reach the 2008 Super Bowl.
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You're Roger Goodell, the law and order judge of sports commissioners, and you threw the book at the New Orleans Saints' bounty hunters. You did so in an age in which safety has become a searing issue and the post-career problems and tragedies of former players have grown too common to ignore.
You've been sending messages that the culture must change. That the cost of the same old NFL is too dear. So you hit four Saints with suspensions, and the debate about whether you had been too harsh had just begun to rage across computer screens, radio dials and TV channels.
Then police say Junior Seau, 43, was found dead in his Oceanside, Calif., home by his girlfriend Wednesday, a gun nearby. They are investigating it as a suicide.
He was a 12-time Pro Bowl linebacker and named one of the best players of the 1990s. He more or less owned San Diego when he led the Chargers to a Super Bowl. He played in another one with the New England Patriots.
All in all, his was a charmed and wonderful career, missing only a championship ring to be perfect. But then what happened?
What caused his post-career life to spin out of control? What made him drive his car off a cliff? What led to a fatal gunshot Wednesday morning? And now you wonder if this is somehow another casualty of a physical game that took too much, one tackle at a time.
"I think we have to add him to the list of those we worry about who could have effects of chronic, repetitive brain trauma," says Julian Bailes, a neurosurgeon at Chicago's North Shore University Health System and a longtime researcher into brain damage from concussions.
"We don't have any strong evidence (yet on Seau), and we know that people commit suicide for other reasons. … But to me it's also concerning due to the fact that he had such a long playing history."
One year ago Wednesday, on May 2, researchers at Boston University issued a report on the autopsy of Dave Duerson, who had shot himself months before.
Deaths of 1994 Chargers
Former Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau is the eighth member of the San Diego Chargers' 1994 Super Bowl team to pass away.
The others:
Defensive end Chris Mims died due to an enlarged heart on Oct. 15, 2008, in his Los Angeles apartment. He was battling significant weight and financial problems at the time. He was 38.
Linebacker David Griggs died June 19, 1995 in auto accident in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 28.
Running back Rodney Culver, 26, and his wife, Karen, died May 11, 1996, when a ValuJet flight crashed in the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 aboard.
Linebacker Lewis Bush died Dec. 8, 2011, in Tucson of cardiac arrest. He was 42.
Center Curtis Whitley was found dead due to an apparent drug overdose on May 11, 2008, in Fort Stockton, Texas. He was 39.
Defensive tackle Shawn Lee died Feb. 26, 2011, in Raleigh, N.C., of cardiac arrest brought on by double pneumonia. He was 44.
Linebacker Doug Miller was killed by lightning strikes July 21, 1998, in Dotsero, Colo. He was 28.
By Pete O'Brien, USA TODAY
Duerson, a former defensive back, had brain damage common to chronic head trauma, they said, citing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which had also been found in more than 20 other deceased players.
In his last note to his family, Duerson had asked his brain be sent to researchers. He wanted the world to know what had enveloped him.
You look at last May 2, and you look at this one, and you can't help but notice the similarities.
Late in his life, Duerson pleaded guilty to domestic battery.
In 2010, Seau survived that 30-foot plunge in his SUV (he told authorities he fell asleep while driving) hours after he had been arrested on suspicion of assaulting his girlfriend. He was never charged.
Duerson shot himself in the chest, an act which preserved his brain for study.
Police say Seau apparently shot himself in the chest as well.
You are Goodell, and you must wait for another investigation and autopsy to find out if there has been another man perhaps haunted by his football past.
"You're looking at someone who is approaching or at 30 years of exposure (to repetitive head contacts)," says Bailes, who has autopsied the brains of former NFL players such as Mike Webster, Terry Long and Justin Strzelczyk of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Andre Waters of the Philadelphia Eagles and Chris Henry of the Cincinnati Bengals.
You're the NFL players union, and if you don't feel the squeeze of a dilemma, you certainly should. One of your own, Jonathan Vilma has been exiled for a year. So you howl at what you see as unfairness and seek to get it overturned.
But what about your members who were intended targets? What about those who careers might have also been endangered as their attackers were enriched by cash rewards from a fund partly marshaled by Vilma?
You express solidarity for those reprimanded. So do other players who hit Twitter en masse Wednesday, eager to show support for the Saints and outrage at Goodell.
But if you don't look at the news from California and shudder, you are blind. That is happening to your past members. Perhaps you read the item noting that eight Chargers from Seau's Super Bowl team are dead, and that was just the 1994 season.
The demons that engulfed Seau could have come for other reasons. But you look at the CTE grave sites left behind — Duerson, Waters, even a 21-year-old player from the University of Pennsylvania— and you know the question must be answered.
There is a chill in the air. A growing awareness that the price tag for playing professional football is more than high. It has been deadly, and Wednesday might have been again.
You are the NFL — the commissioner, the players, the union — and you look at Wednesday and wonder how best to go from here. The Saints and their bounties are not the issue. The culture of the game is the issue.
Early Wednesday afternoon, angry voices from NFL players filled the airwaves, castigating Goodell for going too far. Football is a dangerous and physical place, and that's that. Free the New Orleans Four.
Meanwhile in Oceanside, Junior Seau is dead.
Contributing: Gary Mihoces
