ABC News reports that a team of scientists who analyzed the brain tissue of the late NFL star Junior Seau after his 2012 suicide "have concluded the football player suffered a debilitating brain disease likely caused by two decades worth of hits to the head."

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Justin-Forposting/100002531076048 Justin Forposting

    or maybe he had brain damage that caused him to choose to ram his head against things for two decades.

  • http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

    I’ll repeat what I said at the time of the Jovan Belcher tragedy:

    This pattern is becoming all too familiar. Junior Seau and Dave Duerson both shot themselves after they realized they were losing control. Both men had no history of domestic violence, then suddenly lashed out at their spouses.
    It’s getting harder and harder to justify this game.

    • xzzy

      The game doesn’t need justification, it’s just a game. The game remains fun if you switch to flags instead of tackles. You may  not be able to maintain a 9 billion dollar a year league showcasing flag football, but the game itself would still be enjoyable.

      Finely tuned athletes crashing into each other at full sprint and using their head as the initial contact point is what’s hard to justify.It remains to be seen if that can be regulated out of the game without alienating viewership.

      There’s certainly a lot of lip service going around, but I think eventually the medical community is going to decide that all head contact is verboten and at that point we’ll see whether the NFL is truly willing to sacrifice revenue for health.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=692271352 Rob O’Daniel

        Flag football may be, as you say, just a game (and I’m all in favor of switching to it) but professional football is anything but a game. It becomes ever-more distant from that rootstock each year.

        Pro football is BIG business, pure and simple. As long as GMC, Geiko, GoDaddy, and General Mills keep reaping massive revenue, pro football will continue as is, tragic and utterly-preventable player deaths be damned.

      • http://www.facebook.com/miriam.anixter Miriam Anixter

        I sincerely doubt that the NFL cares one whit about the health of the players when money is involved.

    • http://www.facebook.com/miriam.anixter Miriam Anixter

      My dad always says– “well, they know what they were getting into”.  I find that very hard to believe, since these guys have spent years coming up through a sport where to persevere requires a strong belief that they are the special one that will make it to the bigs.  How many high school players make it big in college?  How many of them get drafted?  How many of them have a lucrative career in the NFL? (assuming no career ending injuries along the way). They’ve spent years of work and sacrifice based on the belief that they will be the lucky one– how much easier to believe that they will be the lucky one that avoids the effects of head trauma?  The players will always be grasping at that golden ticket and have everything to lose and the NFL (and college teams) are the ones making all the money.

  • chaopoiesis

    The best way to save pro football at this point is to make it touch.

    Validation could be implemented with mobile electronics… iGlads.

    • flickerKuu

       Have to agree with you.  Smashing human heads together is Cro Magnon and hurts more than just the two guys doing it.

    • http://marjaerwin.livejournal.com/ Marja Erwin

      It’s an old issue. Didn’t the split between soccer and rugby begin with safety issues? Although the cumulative brain injury issue probably affects every form of football to some degree. It’s probably something that should be considered in soccer too, banning the header in favor of body traps.

      • http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

        I have read about soccer players being injured by heading balls.

  • plyx

    At first glance I thought the title said ‘Junior Seau had brain disease called “two decades of hits to the head”. Needless to say I’m relieved I’ve now seen the title correctly.

  • http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

    CTE has a long history, especially among boxers though it’s being seen in other sports like football and hockey.   There is no way to be certain that CTE “caused” the suicides that are happening in NFL players though.  It can be a range of factors.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/romeo-vitelli/junior-seau-suicide_b_1821545.html

  • Florian Bösch

    It’s scientific now, whacks to the head are not healthy. Who’d have thunk.