By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
May 3, 2012
Sometimes this is the violent end to a violent sport, another ex-football player, a great one this time, Junior Seau who had his best years with the San Diego Chargers, shooting himself in the chest in an apparent suicide.
Twenty years in the National Football League and he does not even make a few years of retirement before it ends like this for Seau, the way it ended not so terribly long ago for an old Chicago Bears safety named Dave Duerson, who also shot himself in the chest so that doctors could study his brain, find out the damage that a violent sport had done to him.
This is not to say that Junior Seau is Duerson, that somehow they are the same because they were football players and their lives took them to these lonely and brutal deaths. No one could ever say that with certainty, even if their lives brought them to this kind of moment with a gun.
But even one death like this is too many and now there is another one for an ex-football player and if there is no way of knowing at this time that Junior Seau, who came out of the University of Southern California to become one of the most famous defensive football players of his time, the Lawrence Taylor of the San Diego Chargers, was another ex-player suffering from some kind of traumatic brain injury.
But would anyone be surprised if he did suffer from that kind of injury? He played 20 years in the NFL. He had been taking shots to the head since he was a star high school player at Oceanside High School, and probably earlier than that. A big, fast, violent player in a violent sport. How many hits to the head is that, between Oceanside High and Junior Seau being found dead at his home in Oceanside yesterday morning?
Maybe it was something else with Junior Seau, maybe it is never just one thing. But now he is dead, at the age of 43. Another ex-football player shooting himself dead with his own gun. After all the cheering, in all the great stadiums of his sport, after being as big a star as there has ever been in San Diego, the last sound is the gun going off.
“We believe it was a suicide,” an Oceanside police lieutenant, Leonard Mata, said. “There is no indication of foul play.”
He played his game as hard as it could be played for longer than most defensive players have ever played it. Twenty years in the pros, and college before that, and high school football before that. Again: We don’t know if brain injuries brought Junior Seau to yesterday, but we know that he wasn’t just leading with his shoulder pads all those years.
Dr. William Focazio is the founder of Pain Alternatives, Solutions and Treatment, a group that treats retired NFL players and other former athletes. Focazio and his people do not only provide free medical testing and care, because they run into so many ex-athletes who are destitute, they are even likely to pay for travel and lodging when the athletes fly in to see them from out of town.
“Given the style that Seau played,” Focazio said Wednesday, “I’m sure he had head problems. We know that repeated hits lead to depression.”
And then Focazio said, “Nobody wants to give up their lives to play (football), but that is basically what they are being offered.”
Seau played with the Chargers until 2003, played with the Dolphins after that and finished up with the New England Patriots. The stats on him were easy to find after it came out that he was dead by his own hand on Wednesday, that he had 1,526 tackles in his career, and had 561/2 sacks and even intercepted 18 passes.
And there were less glittering parts of his resume, an arrest once because of an investigation into domestic violence against a girlfriend with whom he was sharing a home in Oceanside, the woman saying that Seau had assaulted her during an argument. A few hours after that, he went down a seaside cliff in an SUV and survived.
This was less than two years ago, and maybe the post-playing life of Junior Seau was starting down a cliff at the same time.
Finally it played out on Wednesday the way it did, the body of the greatest San Diego Charger of them all found with a gun beside him, that body finally loaded into a medical examiner’s van and taken away. The news stories out of Oceanside said that fans took pictures as the van pulled away.
This was the dark ending to such a bright, loud, colorful career, for the football player known as “Say Ow.” An ex-Falcon named Ray Easterling killed himself on April 19. So that is two suicides in two weeks for ex-NFL players. It feels like an epidemic. Maybe we will never get an answer about why it was Junior Seau this time. Or maybe we don’t have to get hit upside the head to know the answer already.
“Given the style that Seau played,” Focazio said Wednesday, “I’m sure he had head problems. We know that repeated hits lead to depression.”
And then Focazio said, “Nobody wants to give up their lives to play (football), but that is basically what they are being offered.”
Seau played with the Chargers until 2003, played with the Dolphins after that and finished up with the New England Patriots. The stats on him were easy to find after it came out that he was dead by his own hand on Wednesday, that he had 1,526 tackles in his career, and had 561/2 sacks and even intercepted 18 passes.
And there were less glittering parts of his resume, an arrest once because of an investigation into domestic violence against a girlfriend with whom he was sharing a home in Oceanside, the woman saying that Seau had assaulted her during an argument. A few hours after that, he went down a seaside cliff in an SUV and survived.
This was less than two years ago, and maybe the post-playing life of Junior Seau was starting down a cliff at the same time.
Finally it played out on Wednesday the way it did, the body of the greatest San Diego Charger of them all found with a gun beside him, that body finally loaded into a medical examiner’s van and taken away. The news stories out of Oceanside said that fans took pictures as the van pulled away.
This was the dark ending to such a bright, loud, colorful career, for the football player known as “Say Ow.” An ex-Falcon named Ray Easterling killed himself on April 19. So that is two suicides in two weeks for ex-NFL players. It feels like an epidemic. Maybe we will never get an answer about why it was Junior Seau this time. Or maybe we don’t have to get hit upside the head to know the answer already.
Related:
SEAU DEATH STUNS FRIENDS AND FOES
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