Concussions not a big deal? Tell that to these guys
I started writing this column, then I stopped and said a brief prayer.
I said it for Ted McNairy, a Duke All-ACC offensive lineman I met awhile back, after he had written to me about the horrors of the concussions he received while practicing and playing NCAA football.
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Concussion repercussions
He told me in our meetings in Chicago and Durham, N.C., of the gray, the void, the overwhelming despair that had descended upon him.
He said if the feeling continued or expanded, he'd be forced to kill himself.
He did, not long after. He was 29.
I said my prayer for Ted because not a week goes by that I don't think about him, about the meaning of the brain, the head, that mysterious receptacle, as metaphysicians and religious officials have agreed, of the soul.
What will you trade for your soul?
What will you surrender for a "big hit"?
The NFL is under attack from legislators because of the news that concussions, which occur routinely in the game, are far more devastating than anyone apparently knew.
Why the connection should have been a mystery is beyond me.
But the brain-wounded veterans now shamble about in ways we no longer can ignore. The league's own study showed that brain damage appears to exist in former players at an incredible rate -- including a rate of 19 times the norm for men ages 30 through 49.
What did the NFL know and when did it know it?
That's going to be a huge thing. Can you say potential health-care-liability Armageddon? What athlete truly cares about a knee, a shoulder, an ankle? Fuse them. Replace them. We'll all limp to the grave.
But a man's brain, his essence?
''The NFL sort of has this blanket denial or minimizing of the fact that there may be this link," Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Calif.) said to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell during a recent Capitol Hill hearing. ''And it sort of reminds me of the tobacco companies pre-'90s when they kept saying, 'Oh, there's no link between smoking and damage to your health.'"
This is not to imply the NFL likes concussions. But it, and its satellite promoters -- you could say that includes all American sports media, this section, me included -- thrive on the massive head shots, the stuns, the knockouts, the crushes that send a player into a rag-doll heap on the turf.
Anybody remember ESPN's near-pornographic Jacked Up! segment on ''Monday Night Football,'' with the hooting announcers sounding eerily more than titillated as bells were rung and cobwebs distributed?
Indeed, the very language of sports head injuries has contributed to the lack of concern over the effects.
Dinged, seeing stars, tweet-tweet.
Try calling it this: bleeding in the brain. Memory death. Diminishment of a human being.
Not as funny?
The problem for football is that the head is in the middle of the shoulders, and if you think you can bring down Adrian Peterson with a shoulder tackle, check the dislocated appendage that results.
Helmets are so hard and unbreakable that launching oneself like a missile at another man's polymer shell almost makes sense.
Just not quite. I wish we all could see the details of the brains of the deceased Andre Waters, Mike Webster and Justin Strzelczyk, have their ruined and scorched ganglia explained to us by a neuroscientist. That would get our attention.
Of course, it's not just football. The adage ''Kill the head, and the body will die'' applies for all contact sports. Ask concussed Blackhawks Ben Eager or Jonathan Toews. Ask the Canadiens' Matt D'Agostini, whose shot from the Hawks' Andrew Ladd made me turn away in revulsion. Almost.
I forgot. I'm like you -- I do enjoy the big hits.
But as we learn this about ourselves, it is up to us as civilized people to protect those among us who are non-reflective or naive or foolhardy or daring or tough or confused and might do harm because of it. And doesn't that include just about every feisty young man you've ever known?
Boxing? It's amusing insiders call brain damage punch-drunk for slang, pugilistica dementia when they're trying to sound scientific.
I don't know how you change that blood sport. But critics said you could never change NASCAR, either, a swift, head-smasher of its own form. And yet since Dale Earnhardt Sr. destroyed his head and neck in a crash almost nine years ago -- because only cowards wear head and neck restraints, remember? -- how many traumatic head injuries have there been in that elite sport?
The point here is that the head must be off-limits in sport. It may not be trifled with. It is sacred.
If we can change that concept alone, perhaps my young friend Ted McNairy's death will not have been in vain.