Posted on 05/03/2012 1:34:22 PM PDT by Kaslin
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RUSH: Junior Seau. Junior Seau's suicide. I met Junior Seau just one time. It was one year at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic Golf Tournament. Dean Spanos, the Chargers owner, was playing in the tournament and I was playing with Fuzzy Zoeller and his crew that year. And we all had dinner one night after that day's round. And Junior Seau was everything everybody is saying about him. He was uplifting, he was funny, he was in a great mood. He was kind of in my face humorously over politics.
He was a big believer in the government doing as much it could to help the poor and this kind of thing. He was just one of these people you like being around. So, now, how to explain the suicide? I have to tell you, I am amazed. Every channel I go to there's either a sports doctor or a psychiatrist or somebody explaining, "It has to have been all the concussions from playing in the NFL! It just had to be. There can't be any other reason." Well, I did hear one other reason, that he just couldn't adjust to not being in the spotlight, to not being on stage.
The football field's a huge stage and he was a big star. He just could not adjust to being a comparative nobody. He didn't leave a note so nobody knows. Here's Sanjay Gupta. He was on CNN so nobody heard it. That's why I want to play you this one. He was on Anderson Cooper 210 last night, which nobody saw. So I have to play the sound bite here for you. Anderson Cooper said, "Sanjay, several NFL players have committed suicide in recent years. Brain-related injuries they sustain while playing have been blamed.
"It's impossible to know what was going on in Junior Seau's mind at this point..." So, "impossible to know." It's impossible to know, but still: What was going on in his mind? It's impossible to know, Sanjay! We all know it's impossible to know, but is it possible? Even though it's impossible to know, "is it possible that past head traumas could have played a role in Seau's taking his own life?" It's "impossible to know what was going on in his mind," but nevertheless I want you to answer the question of why he did it.
GUPTA: We have enough evidence to say, "Yes," because you're starting to see, uh, a pattern of exactly what you're describing here, Anderson. This idea that the previous blows to the head -- uh, trauma, for example, sustained on a football field -- can accumulate over time and lead to something known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, CTE. Dave Duerson. You remember, you and I talked about him in 2011. He shot himself in the chest as well. It's a very unusual way -- uh, a rare way -- for one to commit suicide and just hard to talk about. But in Duerson's case he had left that note that Paul was sort of alluding to saying, "I shot myself in the chest. I'd like my brain to be studied." Duerson's brain was studied and in fact he did have exactly what he was concerned about: CTE. That was confirmed, you know, when they studied his brain.
RUSH: Now, Seau did not leave a note asking for his brain to be studied. Already doctors are asking for the brain of Seau to study it. But how many of you laughed at me when I told you some months ago that maybe not in our lifetimes (but it's gonna be close) somebody is seriously going to suggest banning the game of football. You can see we're heading in that direction. Now, every suicide is due to the game. "The game is killing people!" That's already been established here. So what's next, folks, with liberals in charge?
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Interestingly, I believe the effect of a "whiplash" injury may be more serious in terms of brain injury than an old-fashioned hit on the noggin.
I spent a year working in the woods. My logging career was cut short by a falling limb that knocked me silly and broke my back. About 5 years after that, I rejoined the military (National Guard - had been in the Marines earlier) and was in for 13 years. Never did go back to logging. Too dangerous.
I don't think steroids have anything to do with it. Junior Seau played 20 years in the NFL. Even if he weighted 180 lbs, 20 years as a linebacker is going to take a toll.
The pro-football industry makes scads of money so they are an automatic target.
if they want to make football safer however, they can start by absolutely enforcing a ban on steroids and hgh......
Well, I’m not so sure. Steroids certainly cause health problems (and are illegal, along with cheating). And, Mr. Seau did not leave a suicide note, so who knows why he did what he did. Why is it simply assumed that repeated concussions was the cause. Steroid use could have been a contributing factor as well.
If players are willing to assume the risks of injecting themselves with steroids so they can be in the NFL, all these factors need to be studied.
It’s not a contradiction. It shows that you can sustain head injuries without concussion symptoms. That’s what makes the Chris Henry autopsy so scary. He never missed a game due to head injury but he CLEARLY sustained head injuries. CTEs don’t occur spontaneously, so there’s only two possible reasons Henry had them: injuries sustained before getting to college, which is really scary because that means he had permanent brain damage from peewee or high school football; or it was from injuries in college and pro ball that were to slight to be noticed (aka sub-concussions). There’s no way to view the Henry autopsy without fear. He either had his brain permanently damaged as a kid or as an adult in plays that didn’t appear to cause injury, either way you have to look at the current crop of players as walking wounded, we don’t know what percentage of this year’s crop of rookies already have permanent brain damage from football, but it’s looking like the number isn’t zero.
If true, that will kill the game......insurance premiums will skyrocket to the point where high schools will not be able to afford to pay them, so they'll wind up dropping football.
Since CTEs can’t be diagnosed until after death it probably won’t drive insurance up that high. But its all pretty scary.
I never said concussions weren’t serious - I said you probably can’t blame all suicides on them. It was hardly “claptrap”.
I never said concussions weren’t serious - I said you probably can’t blame all suicides on them. It was hardly “claptrap”.
If he had brain injuries, I would first look at his 20 years in the NFL as a linebacker. That is going to take a toll on a body.
A person who did steroids and limited himself to 5 years in the NFL, then retired, got off the steroids and promptly shriveled up to a normal size might have assorted squeaks and rattles for the rest of his life but is unlikely to be punch drunk.
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