Jason Davis, Soccer Raconteur

Junior Seau, a legend at linebacker for the San Diego Chargers and a football player of such immense energy and commitment that he managed to make me like him despite my unwavering and somewhat unhealthy loyalty to the rival Denver Broncos (Go Broncos), killed himself yesterday. He was 43. 

Seau shot himself in the chest, immediately setting off alarm bells for those attuned to the growing understanding of the effects of concussions (and repeated impacts to the head, for that matter) on athletes. Seau is the second ex-player to take his own life in that distinctive manner in the last year; the first, Dave Duerson, left behind a note that specifically instructed doctors examine his brain. It was a poignant and achingly self-aware action by a man clearly overwhelmed by mental illness.

Seau left no such note, but it’s likely he chose to kill himself in the manner he did for the same reasons as Duerson. Preserve the brain so that it might help researchers better understand the damage done by a professional football career. Again, it’s not just the concussions that matter—impact after impact with the head as both deliverer and receiver of blows does its own definite damage—but they rightfully get most of the headlines. 

There’s a reason I’m writing about Seau, even though I’m aware that hundreds of thousands of words have poured (and will pour) out of writers better than I on the man, the issue of concussions, and the difficult question of what comes next for America’s favorite sport. I’m writing about Seau because his death might be the thing that finally fractures my appreciation of the sport he played at such an insanely high level.

This is about my kid, absolutely, I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I’ve already decided—and maybe it was Duerson, or Penn football player Owen Thomas (who, frighteningly, never had a documented concussion), or the work of Taylor Twellman, or all of them that did it—that my son won’t be playing good old fashioned American football. At least not the kind where you put on a plastic helmet and willingly ram your head into another human being while running at full speed because one moment of bone-shaking violence is disproportionately valued by everyone involved. 

I played football. From age 12 until 18 (with a year off when I lived in Montgomery, Alabama, where the Deep South football culture at my high school scared the bejesus out of me, and another after moving back to Virginia and deciding I wouldn’t be any good after taking a year off), I willingly slammed my head into kids my age in a bid to attain some fleeting athletic glory. I enjoyed it, and I was decent enough to earn a bit of social respect through the effort.

I’m not sure it was worth it. 

I know I had at least one concussion while playing and it’s possible I had a few more. Luckily, I don’t have any lingering symptoms from “having my bell rung.” I came out of my football experience—which was nothing like Seau’s of course—unscathed. 

But it’s not really my own concussions that stick out in my mind (which is an ironic thing to say, admittedly, because people who suffer concussions rarely remember the incidents that caused them); it’s my little brother’s. He’s two years younger than me. He was, and probably still is, a much better athlete. In high school, his own football experience was more “rising star” as opposed to my “practice all-star.” Kevin was a really, really good athlete. 

Kevin quit football after his sophomore year of high school. He didn’t really have a choice, because he was legitimately afraid of what the next hit to his head might do to him. He passed up two years of probable glory (our high school was a regional power at the time and would win a state championship the year after he graduated) to protect his brain. This was 15 years ago, when concussions were still “bad, but not that bad.” 

I was in the stands watching Kevin play as a JV fullback when he suffered the concussion that ultimately led to his decision to quit. After being knocked woozy covering a kickoff, Kevin remained in the game, no one aware that his brain was in shock. When he became confused about a defensive play call, a teammate smacked him in the back of the helmet and told him to “wake up.” He would later score a touchdown on offense that he will never remember scoring before finally taking himself out of the game. 

That night, I watched my brother bawl uncontrollably for hours on end, not because he was in physical pain but because his brain function had literally been scrambled by the violent concussion. When asked, he couldn’t explain why he was upset. His emotional regulators had gone haywire.

It’s one thing to see your brother in anguish over something tangible. It’s something else to see him that way when he can’t explain or stop it. The concussion causes the emotional distress and the lack of understanding causes more. It’s as insidious a thing as there is. 

That concussion wasn’t my brother’s first. The combined damage done from several others over the years (most sports-related, though I’m aware of at least one that wasn’t) brought him to that point, when one more trauma was enough to break him. He was 16 years old.

That’s why my kid won’t play football. It’s not worth it, even if he misses out on the American high school cultural constructs that come with it. My brother dealt with years of mood-swings and bouts of depression, and still suffers from debilitating migraines, so while he’s relatively happy and healthy now (he’s got a kid on the way, which is possibly the greatest thing to happen in history outside of my own son being born), he dealt with much more than anyone should have to to get where he is. Kevin played football for five years. I don’t want to imagine what might have happened had he bowed to peer/coach pressure and continued playing. The passing of Junior Seau makes me imagine it.  

My decision to bar my son from playing football is the easy part. More difficult is reconciling my love of football as a spectator sport (um…Go Broncos) with the horrible damage it does to the men who play it. It’s beginning to get more and more uncomfortable to watch. Although there’s a concussion risk in soccer (again, Taylor Twellman), I find myself locking in on the sport to the exclusion of football because it doesn’t have the same wanton glorification of violence. 

Today, I’m just thankful that I didn’t emerge from football with serious complications from concussions and that my brother quit when he did.

Rest in peace, Junior Seau.