Super Bowl 50

If you're looking for depression, you ought to see the NY Times article on Willie Wood.

 

No shit. That might be the LEAST depressing post-NFL player story I've read in a long time. Sucks, but at least he hasn't put a gun in his mouth.

 

OK, I just looked up the story on Willie Wood.

He has dementia and is an assisted living facility. That's awful. But ... he's 79 years old. That's hardly uncommon. Story says he went into assisted living at age 70 -- also hardly uncommon.

There are some stories that further the discussion -- Antwaan Randle El, and the ex-Giant who died a few weeks ago at age 27. I would hope, though, that we soon get past the "everyone who died must be reported on in the concussion context." Gifford was 84. Morrall was 79. Stabler was 69 and had put plenty of non-CTE-related wear on his body.

 

Montana missed most of the 1986 season with a serious back injury. I'm not sure the fact that he has trouble getting around should be all that shocking. The eye thing is kind of sad, though.

 

If not for football, Joe Cool wouldn't have had Jennifer.

Life is about trade offs.

 

I'm sorry Joe can't walk around too well, but here are a couple stories from the Steelers. These guys are killing themselves out there. I can't wait for all the MMA stories like this to start rolling through in a few years.

Garber: A tormented soul

• Desperate for a few moments of peace from the acute pain, repeatedly stunning himself, sometimes a dozen times, into unconsciousness with a black Taser gun. "The only way he could get to sleep," said Garrett.
  
• Glassy-eyed like a punch-drunk boxer, huddled alone, staring into space night after night at the Amtrak station in downtown Pittsburgh. "Living on potato chips and dry cereal," said Joe Gordon, a Steelers employee.
  
• A formidable man, at 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, who sometimes forgot to eat for days -- sleeping in his battered, black Chevy S-10 pickup truck, a garbage bag duct-taped over the missing window. "Sometimes he didn't seem to care," said Sunny Jani, the primary caregiver the last six years of his life.
  
• Writing wandering journals in a cramped, earnest hand so convoluted in their spare eloquence that, upon reading them in his lucid moments, he would be moved to weep. "You had absolutely no idea what was going through his mind," said Colin, his oldest son.
  
• The powerfully proud former athlete, anguished and curled up in a fetal position for three or four days, puzzling over his life, contemplating suicide and, in later years, placing those sad, rambling calls, almost daily in the later years, to friends and family when he couldn't find his way home. "All I see is trees," he'd say apologetically, almost in a whisper.
  

 

Yeah, it's going to be awesome when we get these kind of stories out of the MMA.

 

Seems to be able to walk around just fine with pockets full of quarters in that pizza commercial.

 

Any potential occupation can carry physical risk.

Skipping college to work in a factory means you'll get a decent paycheck at 19 but, by 40, your joints may be shot. UPS drivers make good money but when was the last one you saw who was 60?

Even in my business, photographers and reporters usually get the hell out by 40 to work on the assignment desk or management because that crap wears on your body.

Where will it end from NFL players? I know quite a few guys who played in the NBA and Europe, some for many, many years. Their knees and legs are shot and they hobble around like Fred Sanford... and they're only 45.

Would any of them give back those years 20-25 years ago? The money, fame, baby dolls?

 

Knees and heads are similar.

 

Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

 

My neck, my back, ....