pour one out for a classic eagle
killed himself last night
(http://www.philadelphiaeagles.com/uploads/photos/perm/main/HCKPGHHNAOFN/080404-waters.jpg)
that's farging awful
Is this serious? Yesterday's really shaping up to be overall stellar in Eagles' history.
Thats horrible, Such great memories of him.
Is this serious?
joke: suicide
punchline: andre waters
get it?
WHAT?????????
:'( :'( :'(
LINK?
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/16059523.htm
:(
this sucks. rip.
RIP Andre. One of my all time favorites. I am so sad over this.
He was one of my all-time favorites. Sad news. R.I.P. #20
Does this literally make this the worst time ever in the history of Philadelphia sports? Can it really get any worse than this? No championships in over 23 years. All 4 teams did or are going to miss the playoffs. Now the embodiment of the Buddy Ryan era headhunting defense has killed himself.
RIP Andre, and may your death end a cursed era of Philadelphia sports.
:-\ :'(
Jerome Brown, Reggie White, and Andre Waters all dead.
Ridiculous.
what the farg.
:'(
Wow this week couldn't get any better for an Eagles fan. fargin A :boom
RIP Dirty. You were the man.
As a fan, this is like a kick in the balls after being told your dog died.
I can't help but wonder what could have possibly driven Waters to this.
Quote from: FFatPatt on November 20, 2006, 11:59:37 AM
Jerome Brown, Reggie White, and Andre Waters all dead.
Ridiculous.
That is rediculous. That after life D is getting stacked. There must be some bad ass football games happening on the other side. :evil
Quote from: Susquehanna Birder on November 20, 2006, 12:32:24 PM
I can't help but wonder what could have possibly driven Waters to this.
Maybe he watched the game yesterday.
Well, it definately sucks but I'm not and I never will be sympathetic to anyone who offs themselves. I'm not going to go as far as maybe Dio would and say good ridance, but I feel no sympathy for him. There's always other options.
Quote from: Sgt PSN on November 20, 2006, 12:37:21 PM
Quote from: Susquehanna Birder on November 20, 2006, 12:32:24 PM
I can't help but wonder what could have possibly driven Waters to this.
Maybe he watched the game yesterday.
I was going to say that, but thought better not :paranoid
farg that. He embodied everything that I loved about Buddy Ryan's teams and was part of what got me into professional football in the first place. Dammit.
Quote from: Sgt PSN on November 20, 2006, 12:37:21 PM
Quote from: Susquehanna Birder on November 20, 2006, 12:32:24 PM
I can't help but wonder what could have possibly driven Waters to this.
Maybe he watched the game yesterday.
Well, it definately sucks but I'm not and I never will be sympathetic to anyone who offs themselves. I'm not going to go as far as maybe Dio would and say good ridance, but I feel no sympathy for him. There's always other options.
People in a severe depression don't see other options. Perhaps this was the problem here.
That's the only thing I can think of, PG. I feel for his friends and family. I tend to get angry at people who do such things, but that's another story.
all the articles i've read mention nothing about suicide, just that details are not available.
are we just assuming it was suicide?
Quote from: phattymatty on November 20, 2006, 12:58:29 PM
all the articles i've read mention nothing about suicide, just that details are not available.
are we just assuming it was suicide?
Read on philly.com that it was suicide and Roob just told me the same thing. Apparently, a family member gave more info.
People usually commit because they are mentally ill. I prefer not to judge and certainly his loss is a sad day in Eagle land.
I have always admired suicides.
For whatever reason I really don't get too distraught by death anymore. Though this is a sad day for Eagles fans.
Damn, man, that sucks.
:( Rip Andre. This is sad. He should be somewhere teaching kids to give the effort and play with the heart that he had. Had half a toe taken off just to suit up against the Cowboys. One of my all time favorite players. He will be missed.
Sorry to hear about AW, he was a helluva player. Sad time for his family and friends and a lot of you fans with such great memories of him as an Eagle. 44 is much too young regardless of the circumstances.
Rest in peace, Dirty Waters.
shocking! those were fun years to watch. the excitement that Buddy brought back to the team with Randall and that defense.
Mahalo nui loa AW for all you did.
:( Well this sucks. My first memories of football/Eagles were Randall and that defense. Well, and Bubby Brister, but we won't go there.
RIP :(
Wow. That sucks.
Let's keep the good news coming!! :boom :fire :drool :paranoid
Trying to remember which game with AW was my favorite...I'll just have to go with the Houston game in 91 or so when Andre and Wes lit the WR's up..still remember Givens laying on the sidelines with all the splints up his nose :-D :-D :-D :-D RIP #20..wish it would'a turned out different >:(
Awful news. RIP Andre Waters.
No Eagle is safe right now past or present. This team overall is truly cursed right now.
People who believe in curses should probably take a bath with a curling iron.
They only exist for the city of Philadelphia.
Quote from: King Cole on November 20, 2006, 04:18:25 PM
They only exist for the city of Philadelphia.
Better throw a toaster oven in there too, just to make sure.
Damn this isn't what I wanted to read when I got home from work. What an awful weekend.
R.I.P Mr. Waters.
Every time I read the title of this thread in the forum, my mind thinks it reads "RIP to the dirty thirty".
I open it to find out that not only am I wrong, it makes me sad to know the truth plus even sadder that my initial impression was wrong.
RIP AW. I was thinking about getting a #20 throw back. That is terribly sad.
Quote from: Father Demon on November 20, 2006, 05:21:14 PM
RIP AW. I was thinking about getting a #30 throw back. That is terribly sad.
he wore #20
Quote from: Wingspan on November 20, 2006, 05:22:16 PM
Quote from: Father Demon on November 20, 2006, 05:21:14 PM
RIP AW. I was thinking about getting a #30 throw back. That is terribly sad.
he wore #20
I know that. Fat fingered typo.
They should retire #20 for both Waters and Dawkins after Dawkins retires next year.
i would in no way honor anyone who commits suicide.
It wouldn't be honoring his death. It would be honoring his career and reputation as a player.
free mumia!
Sad news. I feel bad for his family that he left behind because that is the ones who are affected by suicide. Nothing is ever bad enough to off yourself.
I loved Andre and it is shocking that he did this. I remember how much Emmitt Smith and the Cowboys hated him and it warms my heart.
Emmitt was dancing on the "Ellen" show today. It was on in the dentist's office.
I think he's a closet case.
I just heard. :'(
RIP to one of the most intimidating hitters ever to wear an Eagles uniform.
This just sucks. RIP. :'(
Quote"Philadelphia Eagles fans are the best fans in America," Waters said. "They always treated me very special and they still do today. We knew the 'Vet' would be rocking every time we stepped into that stadium."
The fan favorite even understood their frustration when the team wasn't playing very well.
"It's like when you're working for a boss; if you're not doing a good job, then you're going to be told about it," Waters said. "But I loved those fans, I played my heart out for them."
Damn shame. Prayers for the family.
RIP Andre. One of my first favorite Eagles.
IGY are you by any chance 5thandLehigh on the Maryland Scout.com board??
I heard earlier today, but this is the first chance I got to get to my computer.
This is terrible news for anyone who's got love for the Eagles. Unbelievable that another member of the Gang Green defense is gone.
Tough couple days for the Eagles.
R.I.P. Dirty :'(
Yeah those guys are dropping like flies. Someone check up on Clyde Simmons and Seth Joyner, make sure they're okay.
So who is the true #20, Dirty Waters or Dawkins?
I agree with FF, #20 needs to be retired when Dawkins hangs em up.
The "true #20"?
You are a joke.
You whine too much.
Waters badass play and nasty 'tude vs. Dawkins being probably one of the best saftey's ever in the NFL, and probably the guy who helped revolutionize the posistion, in addition to being a big hitter. Who's the true number 20 on the Eagles D in everyones mind? Just because Gang Green is what got you into football doesn't mean you have to whine because I want to hear what people think about it. Waaah waaaah. :'(
I'd really like them to retire #20 for both guys, like FF pointed out. Especially with the untimely death of Waters. :(
Man, thats terrible to hear. I loved watching that guy play.
RIP Andre' "Dirty" Waters
Some stuff from today's papers:
QuotePosted on Tue, Nov. 21, 2006
Waters' suicide stuns Buddy & Co.
By PAUL DOMOWITCH & ED BARKOWITZ
pdomo@aol.com
THE PHONE CALL still was fresh in Buddy Ryan's mind. Now, for all the wrong reasons, it will be one the former Eagles coach never will forget.
After agreeing last week to coach in a college all-star game in Las Vegas in January, Ryan telephoned one of his favorite ex-players, Andre Waters, to see if he'd be interested in helping him coach one of the teams. Waters, the former Eagles strong safety who had just finished his first season as defensive coordinator at Fort Valley (Ga.) State, couldn't say yes fast enough.
"I wanted him to coach the kids in the secondary for me,'' Ryan said. "He was laughing and carrying on. There was no sign of anything like this.''
To the shock of Ryan and everyone else who knew him, Waters, 44, ended his life early yesterday. He put a gun to his head in his north Tampa home and shot himself. His girlfriend discovered his body at about 1:30 a.m.
Waters is the third prominent member of those Eagles Gang Green defenses of the late 1980s and early '90s to die. Defensive tackle Jerome Brown was killed in the prime of his life - and career - in a 1992 automobile accident in Florida. He was 27. Defensive end Reggie White died in his sleep 2 years ago at the age of 43. Another former Eagle from that era, safety Todd Bell, who played for the Eagles in '88 and '89, died of a heart attack last year. He was only 47.
Now Waters.
"It's amazing,'' Ryan said sadly. "They were so young. It really is terrible.''
"I walked in here [to the NovaCare Complex] today and saw a picture of Reggie on the wall,'' said Mike Quick, the former Eagles wide receiver who played with White and Brown and Waters and now is the game analyst for the Eagles radio network. "That's the first thing that came to my mind. Jerome, Reggie, and now Andre. All those guys. The same defense, man.''
"I just can't believe it,'' said Mike Golic, who played defensive tackle for the Eagles from '87 to '92, rotating with Mike Pitts at the inside spot between Brown and White. "That's three guys from our defense, all gone so young. It's just awful.
"The thing with Jerome, it was an accident. And with Reggie, there was an explanation [sleep apnea]. But this leaves a lot of questions for the people who were closest to [Waters]. We didn't know what demons were troubling him and that's hard. You wonder why he didn't reach out [for help].''
Waters, a native of Belle Glade, Fla., was signed by the Eagles in 1984 as an undrafted free agent out of Cheyney State. Spent 10 years with the team, 8 as a starter. Finished his NFL career in Arizona, playing 2 years for the Cardinals when Ryan was the coach and general manager there.
He was one of the NFL's hardest-hitting players, and in the minds of many of the players he went up against, also one of the dirtiest. But he seemed to revel in his "Dirty Waters'' reputation, even if it ended up costing him more than a few dollars in fines over the course of his career.
"On the field, he wasn't liked very much,'' said former Eagles receiver Harold Carmichael, now the team's director of player services. "But off the field, everybody loved him.''
Waters was an inspiration to players at Cheyney and other small schools. His NFL success allowed them to dream the same dream he did.
"For a guy his size, coming out of Cheyney University, to be able to do what he did in the NFL, it gave a lot of hope for guys in small schools and small programs,'' Quick said. "That's one of the things that he took back to Cheyney. Because he went back there a lot. It gave a lot of those kids hope that they could play in the NFL, too.
"Andre Waters did... He wasn't very big, but he had a huge heart and he'd take on anybody. It didn't matter. He was that kind of player. You look at the great safeties that played for the Eagles, and 'Dre ranks up there with the best of them.''
After Waters' playing career, he got into coaching. He worked as an assistant at several smaller schools, including Morgan State, South Florida, Saint Augustine's, and Alabama State before getting hired as the defensive coordinator at Fort Valley State this year.
He had hoped to coach in the NFL and became increasingly frustrated as that dream eluded him. But friends said they don't believe that's the reason he killed himself.
"It blows your mind that somebody could do that to themselves,'' Quick said. "I don't know how it gets that bad in your life.
"He loved coaching, loved teaching kids what he knew about football. If you've got nothing else, you got that. We talked about it back in the summer. He was all excited about what he was doing as a football coach.''
Waters was in Philadelphia last December with many of his former teammates when the Eagles paid tribute to White, who this year was inducted posthumously into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
"He was fine then, having a good time,'' Carmichael said. "Walking around laughing and joking with people. There was no indications [that he was troubled].''
A big part of Carmichael's job is helping players get on with the rest of their lives after their playing careers are over. He said Waters appeared to have no difficulty making the transition.
"He'd been out of the game for a while,'' he said. "He transitioned very well. There might have been other things in his life that weighed heavy on his heart. You never know what's going on in someone's head unless you've walked in their shoes. A lot of people, on the outside it looks like everything is beautiful. But you never know what's going on in the inside.''
Agent Jim Solano, who represented Waters and several other Eagles players from that era, including Clyde Simmons and Seth Joyner, was stunned by the news of the ex-player's suicide.
"Totally incredible,'' he said. "It's a terrible, terrible thing. That makes three guys on that team that have died. They say things come in three, but you don't expect anything like this. How many other teams in history have had three players die at such a young age? What a shame.''
QuotePhil Sheridan | Suicide of ex-Eagle Andre Waters hits hard
By Phil Sheridan
Inquirer Columnist
There was real pain in Andre Waters' voice.
This was April. Waters was on his cell phone, driving a carload of at-risk teenagers to a barbershop and then on to a barbecue place. He was working with court-adjudicated youths, but still trying desperately to get back into the one business he knew best.
"I love the kids, I really do," the former Eagles safety said that day, just six months before he apparently took his own life. "But football, that's where I believe I have the most to offer. I just can't get a chance."
Waters, 44, died early yesterday from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He took with him the answer to the only question - Why, Andre, why? - worth asking. He may have given at least part of an answer in that nearly three-hour phone conversation in April.
He wasn't just frustrated and bitter about his inability to find a job with an NFL team. He was personally hurt by a system he believed used players up and spit them back out. But then, everything was personal with Waters.
That seems surprising, since he was the most violent and reckless of football players, but the contradiction isn't hard to explain. It was because Waters was a sweet-tempered, gentle soul that he had to be so vicious on the field. That's how this too-small undrafted safety from Cheyney State made it through a 12-year NFL career.
When he was a young player, clinging to a roster spot as a special-teamer, Waters was painfully shy. He had a stammer that made him too self-conscious to do interviews. He took classes to lose that stammer and became one of the most outgoing and personable and quotable Eagles of the last quarter-century.
With hard work, Waters believed, you could accomplish anything.
That's what made his estrangement from the league and the game so hard. Waters told me that he woke up some mornings in too much pain to get out of bed. His body burned and ached from every big collision he made in a career spent throwing his body at bigger men. He said he could link each pain to a particular hit or injury.
"I played because I loved it," he said. "I'm not looking for sympathy, because it's what I wanted to do. I just don't think people realize the players they cheer for wind up unable to walk or sleep because of pain."
What bothered him was that the sacrifice of his body didn't mean anything to the NFL the moment he couldn't play anymore. Jobs in scouting and coaching went to men who spent their 20s working a different career track and networking.
"Nobody knows the game like players," he said. "But the guys who get into coaching and scouting right out of college, they're getting experience while we're out there playing. When we're done, nobody wants to hire us."
Waters' first coaching job was at the University of South Florida, near his home in Tampa. After a couple of years, he was offered a spot in the NFL's minority coaching program. Forced to choose, he resigned his college job for a summer internship with the St. Louis Rams. The gamble didn't pay off with an NFL job. His subsequent college jobs were at smaller programs. Even there, he said, he ran into coaches who resented the ex-NFL big shot.
For the first time, hard work and dedication weren't enough. Coaching jobs are about whom you know and timing and opportunity. Although Waters played for great defensive coaches - Buddy Ryan, Bud Carson, Marion Campbell - none was active by the late 1990s. He had no sponsor, no pipeline, no one to give him that one break.
He coached this fall at Fort Valley State, a Division II program in Georgia. The Wildcats' season ended Nov. 11. Waters took his life nine days later.
Maybe there were other reasons. Maybe something happened recently to drive Waters to suicide. Or maybe the pain - physical and emotional - palpable in his voice just kept getting worse. Probably, we'll never know.
After the Eagles clinched the NFC East title in Dallas in 1988, the players were celebrating in the locker room as reporters filed in. Andre Waters, 26, was off to the side, capturing it with his video camera, when the distinctive voice of Reggie White called the team together for a prayer.
Compelled to join in, Andre handed his camera to the nearest person. It was still running, so I panned the joyous faces: White and Jerome Brown, Seth Joyner and Randall Cunningham. Then I centered the viewfinder on Waters and slowly zoomed in on his No. 20.
Someday, I figured, when he was old and looking back at his life, he'd have at least a few taped moments of himself in that huddle.
I don't know if Andre ever saw that video, or if he had any idea who took it. What hurts is knowing he'll never get old.
Phil Sheridan | Andre Waters: 1962-2006
Born: March 10, 1962 in Belle Glade, Fla.
High school: Pahokee (Fla.).
College: Cheyney, where he was a small-college all-American as a senior in 1983.
NFL career: Signed as an undrafted free agent, Waters played for the Eagles from 1984 to 1993. He played for the Arizona Cardinals in 1994 and 1995.
Position: Safety/cornerback.
Height: 5-foot-11.
Playing weight: 199 pounds.
NFL games: 156.
Sacks: 31/2.
Interceptions: 15.
Touchdowns: 1. (He scored on a fumble recovery against the New York Giants in a 1989 game.)
Tackles: Waters led the Eagles in tackles in four seasons.
QuoteRich Hofmann | Another icon from the Buddy Ryan Era is gone too soon
NO MATTER how long you are in the business, you never get used to these phone calls. The hesitation as you prepare to punch in the numbers is always the same. You close the phone, open it, close it again, all the while rehearsing what you are going to say. "I'm a reporter from Philadelphia, and we just heard the word, and we're all so sorry... "
Eventually, you call. Only this time, the machine clicks on after a couple of rings. It is Andre Waters' voice:
"Hello. I'm sorry there is no one to answer your call at the present time. But if you leave a name and number, someone will return your call as soon as possible. Thanks and have a blessed day."
It stuns you, the whole thing, the voice juxtaposed with the awful reality that Waters had committed suicide at the age of 44. To some he was Dirty Waters, the caricature of a violent football assassin. To people who knew him better, he was a 5-11, 185-pound safety who came from nothing and turned himself into something, into a feared professional.
To others, still - especially around here - Waters was another memorable character from their favorite Eagles era, from the defense that Buddy Ryan built in the late 1980s.
Reggie White was their majestic leader. Jerome Brown was their resident puppy dog. Waters was their passionate guided missile. They're all gone now, unspeakably.
Over a decade in Philadelphia, if you were around Waters, you saw him grow into a professional but, at the same time, you saw him never lose what might be described as his earnestness. It is a brutal business sometimes, and Waters had his share of injuries, and even the healthy guys leave the game with pain.
It hardens you to things. It had to harden him.
At the same time, though, the memory that always sticks is the one of this notebook that Waters used to carry around. He had been in the league for 3 or 4 years at that point. Undrafted out of Cheyney State, he showed up in 1984 and played well enough that Eagles coach Marion Campbell couldn't cut him. When Campbell was fired and Ryan was hired in 1986, Waters survived the inevitable roster purge that followed.
Ryan used to talk about how he wanted players who would drop their opponent on his head and then stand there and laugh at the fallen body. Waters was Ryan's kind of player. And even as Andre's safety-mate, Wes Hopkins, spent years sparring with Ryan over pretty much everything - Ryan's explanation for most long touchdowns was "Wes fell down," even when he didn't - Waters idolized the old man. And, so, the notebook. It contained all of the stuff Waters was studying, all of the stuff he needed to remember, and on the cover was penned a slogan, like a grade-school kid might write.
It said, "Soar Like A Eagle," and it summed up everything you needed to know about Waters: the tough upbringing in rural Florida, the loyalty, the innocence. Especially the innocence.
It was such an irony: innocence and Dirty Waters. He never reveled in the nickname, not really. He never even got why people said it about him. He understood that he pushed the boundaries, but he thought he was just a tough player. Even though the league ended up changing some rules specifically because of his insistence on hitting quarterbacks in the knees, Waters never really recognized the problem.
His most famous incident that way might have been a Monday night game in 1990 against Minnesota, when he twice went after the knees of Vikings quarterback Rich Gannon.
On the ABC telecast, analyst Dan Dierdorf railed against Waters, calling him "the cheap-shot artist of the National Football League."
After the game, Gannon was justifiably livid. Waters' response was:
"The quarterback is just like any offensive player. I'll tackle anybody at the knees - not only the quarterback, but running backs, wide receivers, anybody. If the quarterback shouldn't get hit at the knees, then he shouldn't be allowed on the field."
NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue disagreed, sternly. He fined Waters $10,000, a large amount of money back then.
But there were other incidents. Waters was fined for hits on other quarterbacks, including the Rams' Jim Everett and the Falcons' David Archer. He
incurred the wrath of many others, too. The Oilers hated him because of a hit he laid on a wide receiver, Drew Hill, on a pass that was thrown 10 feet over everyone's head. The Bengals were mad at him for things he said in a verbal back-and-forth with running back Stanley Wilson, who was a recovering drug addict.
So, on the one hand, there was Dirty Waters. Just as real, though, was this truth: that everybody who spent any timegetting to know Waters ended up liking him. He came from nothing in Pahokee, Fla., and turned himself into a solid pro and a local legend. He continued on after retiring, unable to get into the NFL but coaching in small colleges. Last year, at the Reggie White tribute at Lincoln Financial Field, he couldn't have seemed happier to be there.
Now, this. This grand, rollicking, hilarious era of Eagles football has seen another death. Maybe someday, someone will explain.
Man, this is brutal.....
If there is some type of Philly curse, I can guarantee that good ole #20 is putting the boots to it right now. There were so many good memories of Waters that it's impossible for me to count them all. I've been following the Birdz since 1975, and in all of those years no one had more heart for this team, the city, and its fans like Andre Waters. The colt has been spilled, and I got the DRS playing in the background for ya... RIP Andre.
Quote from: Munson on November 21, 2006, 03:14:04 AM
You whine too much.
Waters badass play and nasty 'tude vs. Dawkins being probably one of the best saftey's ever in the NFL, and probably the guy who helped revolutionize the posistion, in addition to being a big hitter. Who's the true number 20 on the Eagles D in everyones mind? Just because Gang Green is what got you into football doesn't mean you have to whine because I want to hear what people think about it. Waaah waaaah.
I'd really like them to retire #20 for both guys, like FF pointed out. Especially with the untimely death of Waters.
I repeat, you are a joke. This is the thinking of a child. Wondering who the 'true' #20 is. It's basic and moronic. Ask any Eagles fan and they'll tell you that they love both players and that the fact that they wore the same number, while coincidental, never played a role in how much they liked/disliked that player. Only someone with substandard intelligence would wonder aloud, "Hey I wonder which one is the true #20." They were both number 20. One of them is a better player, the other represented a completely different era of the team. It's a stupid question and you should kill yourself immediately.
respect
(http://render2.snapfish.com/render2/is=Yup6eJP%7C%3Dup6%3DzqH%3AxxqUD7qRUrKxzX7BHpUUKxgXP0J%3F87KR6xqpxQQPPxGaexQolxv8uOc5xQQQoaaPenonJaqpfVtB%3F*KUp7BHSHqqy7XH6gXP0J%7CRup6aQQ%7C/of=50,410,442)
I'd love to see a clip of him killing Drew Hill in the House of Pain game.
Him & Chuck Cecil were the assassins in the early 90's.
i have the house of pain game on dvd...unfortunately i dont know the first thing about how to get any of it on the computer
Are you able to copy DVDs? I'd kill to have a copy of that.
i can but youd be like 50th in line to get a copy and i only have a real time stand alone burner...meaning it takes me like 3.5 hrs to burn one copy
Thats cool...whenever you have a chance and get the others taken care of. Lemme know how much when you get around to it.
Quote from: PhillyPhreak54 on November 21, 2006, 04:13:47 PM
Are you able to copy DVDs? I'd kill to have a copy of that.
Phreak, I'll be 1st in your line for you to burn it for me. I called it.
moneys not an issue...ill do it for free i just have to do some ive already promised and am having a hard time not being lazy to get those done...it truly is a pain in the ass
i was thinking about getting a laptop with a burner that will do it faster than real time and then selling the copies on ebay and other places to pay for the computer
Thatd be a good idea...you could make a killing selling those things.
yeah i know....i also have the body bag and bounty bowl games
Whatever happened to that 'Chuck' guy that used to come on here and pimp Eagles games on DVD?
i was just about to say im sure im far from the only person that has these...others have them and a lot more and im sure they are relatively cheap...id suggest a google search
:'( Respect for a player I'll always think well of. Man I loved that D.
Quote from: ice grillin you on November 21, 2006, 04:47:18 PM
i was just about to say im sure im far from the only person that has these...others have them and a lot more and im sure they are relatively cheap...id suggest a google search
IGY is growing up.. :'( I remember when the young lass didn't know what the google was.
Quote from: ice grillin you on November 21, 2006, 04:34:49 PM
yeah i know....i also have the body bag and bounty bowl games
I'd love to have those.
RIP Andre... you were a great one.
*sigh* I so miss that Defense...
Long Live the Gang Green! Give me a Killer Defense and a mediocre Offense any day!
Andre, Jarome, Reggie...somebody better check on the rest of those guys!
Seth Simmons, Clyde Simmons, Wes Hopkins, Byron Evans and Eric Allen. Better say some prayers for these guys.
Ahhh, to have a defense like this to root for again.
Andre Waters
"He scared everybody -- receivers, running backs, quarterbacks. He was a tough guy. He believed in the theory of reduction: If you keep hitting people, they don't want to get up."
He believed in the theory of reduction: If you keep hitting people, they don't want to get up.
thats great and should be someones sig
QuoteWaters' mom on suicide: 'He let the devil fool him'
Early Monday morning, former Eagles safety Andre Waters died from a single self-inflicted gunshot to the head.
Yesterday, his mother spoke of her son and alluded to the personal problems that led to the suicide in his Tampa home.
"[When he called] we would pray and stuff whenever the devil got on him," Willie Ola Perry told the News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
Referring to her son's suicide, she said: "He let the devil fool him."
Perry told the newspaper she often quoted scriptures to Waters, and said she suspected he was unsettled.
"I told him he was running from the Lord," Perry said. "I felt he had a call on his life and wouldn't yield to it."
Perry, said her youngest son did not use drugs, nor did she ever recall him drinking alcohol.
Waters, 44, was one of 11 children, and, according to Perry "was respectable and liked to help people."
In 2004, Waters helped found the Carolina Football Development League to help troubled youths. League board member Bill Thomas said one of the teams - the Raleigh Eagles - was named after the NFL team Waters played for from 1984 to '93.
Thomas said that Waters, a native of Belle Glade, Fla., was with his girlfriend before committed suicide.
"She had left, and when she returned, she heard a gunshot inside the house," Thomas said.
Waters leaves behind three children and will be buried in his hometown, his mother said.
He played 12 seasons in the NFL. Besides his years with the Eagles, he played with the Arizona Cardinals in 1994 and '95.
He was a tenacious player who received the nickname "Dirty Waters" because he played tough and tackled hard.
Perhaps his most memorable game was a Monday night clash against Minnesota when he twice went after the knees of quarterback Rich Gannon. He was fined $10,000, which at the time was a hefty amount.
After the NFL, he coached at several colleges and was the defensive coordinator at Division II Fort Valley (Ga.) State at the time of his death. He also held coaching positions at Morgan State, the University of South Florida, Alabama State, and Saint Augustine's College.
:-\
My mom claims the devil's after her also, but she's really just nuts and needs to be medicated desperately. Holla.
Andre was obviously mentally ill.
Not because he killed himself...that's a noble act. All this Devil voodoo is what I'm talking about. Only an idiot or a crazy person beleeeeedat, and Dirty Waters wasn't an idiot.
QuoteThe Mysterious Death of Andre Waters
BELLE GLADE -- The clouds, gray and wintry, rolled in from the Atlantic on a recent afternoon and formed a melancholy canopy above the vast sugarcane fields by the southern banks of Lake Okeechobee.
Outside an old red-brick Baptist church, across the street from a mission to feed the needy and homeless, a small crowd began to gather in the parking lot tucked away from the bustle of Main Street's holiday traffic. Inside, the body of man who once thrived before crowds of thousands lay at rest in an open casket.
There was a trace of a smile on the face of former NFL star and college coach Andre Waters, the way his grieving family and legion of friends and former colleagues always remembered him. He looked calm and at peace, wearing a neatly trimmed goatee and a nice brown suit.
There was no hint of the violent, tragic end to his life on Nov. 20, four days before Thanksgiving, when authorities say he put a small-caliber gun to his head inside his North Tampa home and squeezed the trigger.
"He was so wonderful," said his mother, Willie Ola Perry, greeting a handful of visitors at the front of the church. "And I know he had them last seconds with God. He's somewhere with the Lord now. I truly do believe that." But he left behind a mystery.
Why would a man - a widely respected coach, a beloved mentor of young athletes, a devoted father of three - take his own life when he seemed to have so much to live for? What was going wrong in his life, unseen to so many, that would make him want to end it?
There may never be an answer. But perhaps, not so far beneath the surface, there are clues.
"It's such a loss"
When the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office releases its report in the next month or so, more might come to light.
For now, the department offers no new details - other than its initial findings about the gun and a still-unnamed girlfriend who found his body - pending the completion of a toxicology report. There has been no word of a suicide note.
Yet in numerous interviews conducted by the Times in the past two weeks, a picture has emerged of a person who projected an upbeat demeanor but concealed bouts of depression; a person who was engaged in a prolonged and emotionally draining court fight involving custody of his daughter; a person who harbored some deep-seated feelings of frustration about his career.
What puzzles so many people contacted by the Times is that Waters, 44, appeared to be in excellent spirits and making plans when they last spoke to him.
"Everything seemed well with him to me," said a nephew, USF running back Aston Samuels. "I talked to him right before he came back down to Tampa and he was laughing that big laugh of his and joking with me. So it's just a question mark."
The same sentiment was expressed by his former coach with the Philadelphia Eagles, Buddy Ryan.
"I had just talked to him two weeks before," said Ryan, retired and living on a farm in Kentucky. "I'm going to be coaching a college all-star game in Las Vegas and I was going to get him to come out there and coach the defensive backs. He and I were laughing on the phone and talking and all this. Two weeks later I hear he took his life. I had no idea he had any emotional problems."
Ryan gave Waters his first break. Waters made the Eagles in 1984 as an undrafted free agent out of the obscurity of Cheyney State in Pennsylvania, a rookie who stammered when he spoke to the media. But when Ryan became coach in '86, he immediately noticed the special-teams player who hit with a ferocity that far exceeded his 5-foot-11, 190-pound stature.
He would become the starting strong safety and one of the pillars on bone-jarring Philly defenses, a popular team leader and a postgame quote machine for reporters. On the field, he earned the nickname "Dirty Waters" for his aggressive style, though he insisted he just played the game hard. Off of it, he was known to people around him as a gentle, upbeat and giving man.
"It's such a loss," Ryan added. "He was a great leader and a great student of the game, and he was one of the first guys I had there in Philadelphia to build the team around."
Former Eagles teammate Mike Golic, now an ESPN radio personality on Mike & Mike in the Morning, noted sadly that Waters was the third major loss in the fabled Eagle defense. Lineman Jerome Brown of Brooksville died at 27 in a car accident in 1992 and end Reggie White of cardiac arrhythmia at 43 in 2004.
"It was a shock for Jerome Brown, a shock for Reggie White and the same way for Andre Waters," the former defensive lineman said. "With Andre, that would be the saddest in that you wonder what has to be happening in somebody's life going that bad to make you do something like that. It's troubling. He was such a great person. Always laughing. Always there for the kids."
Holding pain inside
In death, Waters had come full circle - back in the hardscrabble Belle Glade neighborhood of his childhood near the endless tracks of the Florida East Coast line, an at-risk enclave where hopes and dreams are so often derailed.
At the wake, only a day after Thanksgiving, talk focused on Waters as a person and not whether anyone could have foreseen such a devastating turn. A handful of his 11 siblings stood by his casket, smiling one minute, crying the next. In the pews, the silence was broken by bursts of wailing. As dusk became darkness, mourners continued to stream in.
There was a former football teammate from Cheyney State, Michael Steward, now coaching high school ball in Washington. The Eagles sent retired receiving greats Mike Quick and Harold Carmichael to represent the team; other ex-Eagles would come for the funeral a day later. Waters' longtime agent from Philadelphia, Jim Solano, flew in. And all around the church were nephews and nieces, aunts and uncles and countless friends, all dealing with the sudden loss as best they could.
Later, in the parking lot, one of Waters' nieces, 22-year-old Terrica Walker, offered a unique perspective about her uncle. She was close to him and often caught herself referring to him as "my dad" in conversations with friends.
It was Waters who encouraged her to enroll at Saint Augustine's College in Raleigh, N.C., during his four-year stint as a defensive coach ending last year. He let her save money by living in his house, and she stayed with him three years. She noticed something: He battled with depression.
"I saw him suffer in silence and I saw him struggle to find peace and find rest and that was what I was praying for him to get," she said. "Even the Sunday before (it happened), I knew he was depressed. This isn't something that just happened. I mean, he'd been struggling for years and he was trying.
"He would see a lot of pain in the world - often with kids who were broke that he tried to help - and he suffered from that. He searched for answers left and right. People will say it was for this reason or that. There's no one reason. He couldn't pinpoint it."
Walker says her uncle never took medicine for depression or sought professional help, though she says he insisted she see a psychologist at one point when she was depressed. But he wouldn't help himself.
"I was right in his midst for three years and every morning he would wake up with this big sigh, it never failed," she said. "He would try to cover it up because he didn't want to bring everyone else down."
A nephew nearby, 16-year-old Avon Waters, joined in the conversation. A high school football player in Atlanta, he stayed with his uncle during summers to attend football camps. He remembers that his uncle immersed himself in the Bible. "Every morning, it was read the Bible, go and run," he said. "Then come back and read the Bible again."
The teen said he got a call from his uncle on Nov. 17: "He was like, 'I'm down.' So I sung the church song we always sang - 'Hold out, just a little while longer.' And he started laughing, and I said, 'See man, you ain't down.' And he said, 'Well, if I ever do go, just dedicate the season to me.' But I never thought he would do anything like this."
Walker says she talked to him on her birthday one day later. "I called him because I knew he wasn't doing well and I said, 'How you doin', uncle Dre?' and he was like, 'I'm all right.' But I knew he wasn't. I could hear it in his voice. I said, 'You know I love you.' He said, 'I love you, too.' He wished me happy birthday. And I just told him to take it easy."
QuoteTrials and tribulations
There was something else going on in Waters' life during the last four years, something that likely was an ongoing source of stress and pain.
Since 2002, he had been engaged in a bitter custody rights battle with a Tampa woman with whom he had a daughter. The child, Andrea Waters, was born Nov. 10, 1998.
According to records at the Hillsborough County Courthouse, Waters - who has two other children from a marriage that ended in divorce - filed a petition of paternity in 2002 seeking shared custody of Andrea.
The mother and child had moved to Arizona, making it difficult for Waters, coaching at Saint Augustine's in North Carolina, to have contact with his daughter. On the stand, he was questioned about child support and his income: $37,000 college coaching salary, plus deferred compensation from the Eagles of $85,000 annually. The mother testified that "she did not believe that there was an effect on the child not seeing the biological father in the last year."
Still, in 2003, the court sided substantially with Waters, who re-established his residence in Tampa. Shared parental responsibility was granted, and if the mother failed to relocate to Florida within 60 days with the child, Waters would be awarded primary residential care of Andrea. She moved back.
But in 2004, she filed an appeal that addressed issues of custody and support. In August, the court affirmed most of the trial court rulings, but on one matter found in favor of the mother - that the trial court "erred by failing to consider child care expenses when it fashioned the child support award."
"Without getting into the particulars, it is clear from the very beginning of this case to the very end of this case, Mr. Waters was winning just about everything," said Tampa attorney Richard Escobar, who, along with law partner Carlos Ramirez, represented Waters.
"That was not that the problem here. I think what you've got to realize is that when people go through a battle for custody, (they) are going through probably the most emotional and traumatic event that they will ever experience. ... So even in those cases where you are winning hands down, you really aren't, because of the emotional toll - because of the separation, a real separation between a father and his most precious individuals, his kids."
Court papers suggest the case was not over. A court-ordered mediation conference had been set for Friday, and a case management conference was on the books for Jan. 19. It appears there were issues of visitation to be worked out. But, according to Escobar, "mediation precedes future litigation" as well.
The firm, he says, will continue to represent Waters, with a representative from his estate to take his place. The attorney who handled the case for the mother declined to comment.
"He was a very strong guy and very likable," Ramirez said. "A tremendous person."
And a person under immense strain from a custody fight with no end in sight.
"The emotional toll could be an absolute train wreck going on inside a person, and you just don't see that," Escobar said. "... The fact that Mr. Waters was a professional football player, an outstanding one at that, makes him a tough individual. So sometimes you just don't see it as easily or clearly with those types of people."
But neither man imagined it would end as it did. "I was very shocked," Ramirez said. "I still am."
A lingering bitterness
Another personal issue consumed Waters: frustration about his career. And perhaps nobody knew more about that than longtime sports writer Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Six months ago, Sheridan set out to do a short interview with Waters, whom he had known for many years while covering the Eagles.
"I needed three minutes and Andre talked for three hours," he said. "He just started pouring his heart out and I wound up with a notebook full of quotes."
When Waters retired from the NFL in 1995, after 12 seasons with the Eagles and two with Arizona, he embarked on a career as a college coach. He landed a job at Morgan State in Baltimore, then spent three seasons as secondary coach at South Florida.
His troubles appear to have started when he left USF before the 2000 season to spend training camp with the St. Louis Rams as part of the NFL's minority coaching internship program.
Bulls coach Jim Leavitt believed Waters would miss too much preparation time with the team, according to sports information director John Gerdes, so Waters had to choose between the internship and USF. He took his chances on the internship, but it didn't lead to anything.
So Waters was out of a job and soon working a step down the career ladder in smaller Division II programs, first at Alabama State in Montgomery then at Saint Augustine's. Sheridan recalls how Waters talked of feeling unhappy and unappreciated and that some coaches resented him as a former NFL player and didn't welcome his input.
Waters badly wanted to get a coaching job in the NFL, but couldn't find a path in. He saw former Giants and Patriots linebacker Pepper Johnson hired by coach Bill Belichick. But none of Waters' former coaches were around by the late '90s, said Sheridan, and he had no sponsor. Sheridan wrote about his conversation in a recent column, including how Waters felt the NFL system used players up only to spit them back out.
"I was just shocked at how bitter he was about it," Sheridan added. "One thing he said was, 'When you're playing football it tastes like honey, and it goes down sour like a lemon when you're not.' That's how he felt about the sport. He was also in a lot of physical pain. Every part of his body hurt, and he knew which collision or injury from his career was at the root of it."
His frustration was also evident to friend Bill Thomas, a board member for a youth sports program in the Raleigh area when Waters coached at Saint Augustine's. Waters donated $5,000 to the Carolina Football Development League to help get kids get equipment. The league's first team was named the Carolina Eagles in honor of Waters.
"He said to me, 'Anytime I can do anything to help, just let me know,' " Thomas said. "He was always like that. He loved working with kids. His dream was to have a boys and girls club named after him, where he'd be behind the scenes and kids could play sports and get mentoring and education help. But I remember he said, 'When I was a superstar, I should have had this facility done. It's kind of hard to get this facility off the ground now that I'm a has-been.' "
Waters' most recent stop was this year at Division II Fort Valley State, a historically African-American university south of Macon, Ga. He served as defensive coordinator and the Wildcats finished their season Nov. 11 with a 4-7 record.
He earned rave reviews from players and staff for the energy, sense of fun and all-out dedication he brought to the job.
Nine days after the season ended, he was found dead by his girlfriend on the back porch of his Tampa home, leaving behind so many questions.
Two weeks ago at the little church in Belle Glade, none of that mattered. It was not a time for questions, but for remembering and accepting.
Under the South Florida night sky, Terrica Walker smiled.
"What my uncle taught me most is that you can't settle for what's average; you always have to go above and beyond," Walker said. "I loved him. He was my hero."
-- Dave Scheiber can be reached at scheiber@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8541.
Expert ties Waters suicide to brain damage (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/sports/football/18waters.html?hp&ex=1169096400&en=60edcd39036b0e8d&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
Quote from: SD_Eagle on January 17, 2007, 11:08:02 PM
Expert ties Waters suicide to brain damage (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/18/sports/football/18waters.html?hp&ex=1169096400&en=60edcd39036b0e8d&ei=5094&partner=homepage)
From what I can tell, former NFL players seem to kill themselves at a lower rate than the general population.
I'm sure that lawyers are salivating at this news, however.
id kill myself to if i had brain damage
Quote from: ice grillin you on January 18, 2007, 06:30:54 AM
id kill myself to if i had brain damage
:-D
That sucks for him, i remembered seeing a Bryant Gumbel special about Mike Webb? from Pittsburgh and how he was depressed from having so many concussions over his career.
Quote from: ice grillin you on January 18, 2007, 06:30:54 AM
id kill myself to if i had brain damage
That's sort of an odd thing to say. Waters didn't know he was killing himself because he knew he had brain damage; but rather the brain damage, if you buy into the story, affected his judgement. Sort of a different thing. Besides, I'm pretty sure you do have brain damage, and yet you type away.
Waters didn't know he was killing himself because he knew he had brain damage; but rather the brain damage, if you buy into the story, affected his judgement.
ha
i was joking
the hardest part about eating vegetables is the wheelchair
That's just the brain damage talking. Listen to the voices; they're on your side.
You guys played a hand in Waters' early death (yes, you - I exempt myself because, beyond Emmitt Smith, I wasn't paying any attention to football during those years. So I derived no enjoyment out of Waters' play, nor do I particularly enjoy today's savage hits ala Sheldon Brown-Reggie Bush.). You guys are proponents of this sick, gladiator culture of embracing "hard-nosed play" - with "hard-nosed" often involving players banging themselves silly and doing irreparable damage to themselves. If Waters had exercised sound judgment and taken himself out of games during the times when he should have, you guys would have been boo-ing him, peppering him with the "soft label", and all but calling for a more "hard-nosed" replacement.
Be sure to read the reader comments accompanying the New York Times article. Many of the comments bring the perspective about this sick gladiator machine.
Will the morbid cycle repeat? Will this be your beloved Brian Dawkins in 10 years? (Hauntingly-enough, he even wears the same no. 20. :paranoid )
He didn't really commit suicide, I actually killed him.
Ridiculous how they are comparing suicide with concussions, in football. Hello, people kill themselves on the daily. It's the concussions! I can see the lawyers drooling over this concept.
I almost killed myself yesterday after I bumped my head on an open cabinet. I was this close.
Quote from: Crossroids on January 18, 2007, 11:02:42 PMYou guys played a hand in Waters' early death (yes, you - I exempt myself because.....
Maybe you could exempt yourself from posting here? That would be great, thanks.
Quote from: mussa on January 19, 2007, 12:17:19 AMHello, people kill themselves on the daily.
On the daily indeed!
Quote from: Beef Rapp on January 19, 2007, 12:35:17 AM
I almost killed myself yesterday after I bumped my head on an open cabinet. I was this close.
I laughed.
I feel down wood steps head first and cracked my head on cement floor drunk one time. Top step, whole way down. I got up, grabbed a beer, went upstairs and puked. I think I had a concussion. Suicidal thoughts do not run through my head
Quote from: Crossroids on January 18, 2007, 11:02:42 PM
You guys played a hand in Waters' early death (yes, you - I exempt myself because, beyond Emmitt Smith, I wasn't paying any attention to football during those years. So I derived no enjoyment out of Waters' play, nor do I particularly enjoy today's savage hits ala Sheldon Brown-Reggie Bush.). You guys are proponents of this sick, gladiator culture of embracing "hard-nosed play" - with "hard-nosed" often involving players banging themselves silly and doing irreparable damage to themselves. If Waters had exercised sound judgment and taken himself out of games during the times when he should have, you guys would have been boo-ing him, peppering him with the "soft label", and all but calling for a more "hard-nosed" replacement.
Be sure to read the reader comments accompanying the New York Times article. Many of the comments bring the perspective about this sick gladiator machine.
Will the morbid cycle repeat? Will this be your beloved Brian Dawkins in 10 years? (Hauntingly-enough, he even wears the same no. 20. :paranoid )
I didn't play a part in Waters' death, but I'd be happy to play a part in yours.
Quote from: Crossroids on January 18, 2007, 11:02:42 PM
You guys played a hand in Waters' early death (yes, you - I exempt myself because, beyond Emmitt Smith, I wasn't paying any attention to football during those years. So I derived no enjoyment out of Waters' play, nor do I particularly enjoy today's savage hits ala Sheldon Brown-Reggie Bush.). You guys are proponents of this sick, gladiator culture of embracing "hard-nosed play" - with "hard-nosed" often involving players banging themselves silly and doing irreparable damage to themselves. If Waters had exercised sound judgment and taken himself out of games during the times when he should have, you guys would have been boo-ing him, peppering him with the "soft label", and all but calling for a more "hard-nosed" replacement.
Be sure to read the reader comments accompanying the New York Times article. Many of the comments bring the perspective about this sick gladiator machine.
Will the morbid cycle repeat? Will this be your beloved Brian Dawkins in 10 years? (Hauntingly-enough, he even wears the same no. 20. :paranoid )
We seriosuly need a BOOO smiley
Quote from: mussa on January 19, 2007, 02:01:13 PM
Quote from: Crossroids on January 18, 2007, 11:02:42 PM
You guys played a hand in Waters' early death (yes, you - I exempt myself because, beyond Emmitt Smith, I wasn't paying any attention to football during those years. So I derived no enjoyment out of Waters' play, nor do I particularly enjoy today's savage hits ala Sheldon Brown-Reggie Bush.). You guys are proponents of this sick, gladiator culture of embracing "hard-nosed play" - with "hard-nosed" often involving players banging themselves silly and doing irreparable damage to themselves. If Waters had exercised sound judgment and taken himself out of games during the times when he should have, you guys would have been boo-ing him, peppering him with the "soft label", and all but calling for a more "hard-nosed" replacement.
Be sure to read the reader comments accompanying the New York Times article. Many of the comments bring the perspective about this sick gladiator machine.
Will the morbid cycle repeat? Will this be your beloved Brian Dawkins in 10 years? (Hauntingly-enough, he even wears the same no. 20. :paranoid )
We that is incredibly accurate need a BOOO smiley
Quote from: mussa on January 19, 2007, 01:45:24 PM
I feel down wood steps head first and cracked my head on cement floor drunk one time. Top step, whole way down. I got up, grabbed a beer, went upstairs and puked. I think I had a concussion. Suicidal thoughts do not run through my head
had?
:-D
Quote from: mussa on January 19, 2007, 01:45:24 PM
Suicidal thoughts do not run through my head
i would re-think that
well i did play midget football back in the day and i fell down the steps. so maybe i should just kill myself
that's what i'm saying!
I'll be with you in 30, Dirty!
Quote from: Crossroids on January 18, 2007, 11:02:42 PM
You guys played a hand in Waters' early death (yes, you - I exempt myself because, beyond Emmitt Smith, I wasn't paying any attention to football during those years. So I derived no enjoyment out of Waters' play, nor do I particularly enjoy today's savage hits ala Sheldon Brown-Reggie Bush.). You guys are proponents of this sick, gladiator culture of embracing "hard-nosed play" - with "hard-nosed" often involving players banging themselves silly and doing irreparable damage to themselves. If Waters had exercised sound judgment and taken himself out of games during the times when he should have, you guys would have been boo-ing him, peppering him with the "soft label", and all but calling for a more "hard-nosed" replacement.
Be sure to read the reader comments accompanying the New York Times article. Many of the comments bring the perspective about this sick gladiator machine.
Will the morbid cycle repeat? Will this be your beloved Brian Dawkins in 10 years? (Hauntingly-enough, he even wears the same no. 20. :paranoid )
Maybe we can play a hand in your death. Here, I'll start...
Kill yourself
Second.
X infinity. Get it over with already.
And take Bunkley/Cole/Skippy the wonder pup-poster with you. He's way behind on killing himself, and I don't think he's got the guts to do it.
^^^^
$$$$$
Quote from: Crossroids on January 18, 2007, 11:02:42 PM
You guys played a hand in Waters' early death (yes, you - I exempt myself because, beyond Emmitt Smith, I wasn't paying any attention to football during those years. So I derived no enjoyment out of Waters' play, nor do I particularly enjoy today's savage hits ala Sheldon Brown-Reggie Bush.). You guys are proponents of this sick, gladiator culture of embracing "hard-nosed play" - with "hard-nosed" often involving players banging themselves silly and doing irreparable damage to themselves. If Waters had exercised sound judgment and taken himself out of games during the times when he should have, you guys would have been boo-ing him, peppering him with the "soft label", and all but calling for a more "hard-nosed" replacement.
Be sure to read the reader comments accompanying the New York Times article. Many of the comments bring the perspective about this sick gladiator machine.
Will the morbid cycle repeat? Will this be your beloved Brian Dawkins in 10 years? (Hauntingly-enough, he even wears the same no. 20. :paranoid )
Eat a fleshpop, idiot.
Quote from: Crossroids on January 18, 2007, 11:02:42 PM
You guys played a hand in Waters' early death (yes, you - I exempt myself because, beyond Emmitt Smith, I wasn't paying any attention to football during those years. So I derived no enjoyment out of Waters' play, nor do I particularly enjoy today's savage hits ala Sheldon Brown-Reggie Bush.). You guys are proponents of this sick, gladiator culture of embracing "hard-nosed play" - with "hard-nosed" often involving players banging themselves silly and doing irreparable damage to themselves. If Waters had exercised sound judgment and taken himself out of games during the times when he should have, you guys would have been boo-ing him, peppering him with the "soft label", and all but calling for a more "hard-nosed" replacement.
Be sure to read the reader comments accompanying the New York Times article. Many of the comments bring the perspective about this sick gladiator machine.
Will the morbid cycle repeat? Will this be your beloved Brian Dawkins in 10 years? (Hauntingly-enough, he even wears the same no. 20. :paranoid )
If we have this power, how come Andy Reid is still alive?
Time to get to work on this. >:D
:-D
QuoteA DEVASTATING LOOK AT NFL CONCUSSIONS by Michael David Smith
Last year, Bryant Gumbel made some comments on HBO's Real Sports that embarrassed the NFL. He insulted the head of the NFLPA, Gene Upshaw, suggesting that he was nothing more than a puppet for the league. That was particularly noteworthy because Gumbel had recently been hired as the play-by-play announcer on NFL Network.
That controversy has long since blown over, but a Real Sports segment that first aired Monday night (a brief clip of which can be viewed here) has the potential to be a much bigger problem for the league.
The segment began with a discussion of former Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters, who committed suicide last year. Waters' family donated his brain to be studied, and the doctors who examined it believe the concussions he suffered in the NFL directly contributed to the depression that led to his suicide.
Dr. Ira Casson, a neurologist and the head of the NFL's committee on concussions, insisted that "[t]here's no clear evidence" connecting player concussions to depression, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, or any other health problem. Of course, the tobacco industry was able to find doctors, who would say there were no long-term health risks associated with smoking cigarettes for decades -- even after everyone knew that was nonsense.
I'm not saying Casson is anything like the doctors who inhabited the back pockets of the tobacco companies, but a doctor who gets a paycheck from the NFL has an obvious conflict, and according to the Real Sports report, independent doctors who aren't conflicted say people who suffer concussions in their 20s and 30s end up with serious problems later in life.
Every time a former NFL player shows up on television with clear signs of brain damage, everyone watching has to wonder why no one stepped in to put a stop to this problem.
And that led to the question from Gumbel at the end of the segment, a question every viewer had to know was coming: "Where's the NFLPA in all this? Where's the union that's supposed to be protecting these guys?"
While Gumbel might have an axe to grind with the union, it doesn't mean that his question is not a good one.
What did they do...download his thoughts? Jesus christ ive never heard anything so stupid
you tell 'em Doctor!
Quote from: mussa on May 15, 2007, 04:05:32 PM
What did they do...download his thoughts? Jesus christ ive never heard anything so stupid
Mussa, there was pronounced trauma on the area of the brain that deals with emotions. They dont have the technology to say 100% that was the cause, but when you have a specific area of the frontal Lobe showing decay, you can definitely tie emotions to the action.
That might have been the dumbest comment I've ever read on here, mussa. And you're going head to head with Munson and King_Cole here. Jesus.
The doctors who examined his brain said it resembled an 82 year-old's in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's.
Quote from: mussa on May 15, 2007, 04:05:32 PM
What did they do...download his thoughts? Jesus christ ive never heard anything so stupid
Did you try reading this post of yours?
Well if i would of known the specific area of the brain that was affected, then maybe i would of thought differently. either way seabiscuits post didn't say anything about it. so bash me all you want. jesus christ.
(http://www.shelleytherepublican.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/angry_jesus.jpg)
(http://www.someecards.com/filestorage/thi_14.jpg)
:-D @ Wingspan and Sus
also laughing at Wingnut
more evidence of brain damage to NFL players
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/26/athlete.brains/index.html
good thread digging
thanks honey
Enlightening article. Scares the shtein out of me. I have had quite a few concussions.
There's another article about the same subject in today's NYTimes sports section.
dr sanja gupta had a big story about sports head injuries on cnn this morning as well
they had ted johnson on there who self claims to have had over 100 concussions in his career
I've had 3 concussions, they are fun
especially on 3 ambien and a bottle of shiraz..I hear ya
Are you sure you're not a chick?
I was referring to Seabiscuit Rome-hes Ambien and wine boy
There may be evidence that playing in the NFL can cause brain injury, but the whole idea that this caused Andre Waters to commit suicide doesn't make sense. If this kind of brain damage is so common in the NFL and it causes suicide, then how come there aren't all kinds of players killing themselves? There was a player named Shane Dronett who just committed suicide but other than that I can't think of any others (although TO's tragically failed attempt would have bolstered the numbers). I doubt suicide rates in the NFL are as high as the normal population so the argument doesn't make sense.
Terry Long killed himself by drinking antifreeze.
Justin Strzelczyk effectively killed himself by driving his speeding truck into a semi.
both of these guys brains were studied and found to have CTE
a quick search for NFL suicides doesn't turn up more names, but I'm sure they're out there, just not as famous or as recent. Humans kill themselves all the time, it's one of our more commendable proclivities.
also, a little piece of data I picked up along the way...average life span for an NFL player? 55 years.
No doubt the pounding that football players take can damage the brain. And if there are players who kill themselves and are found to have had CTE, that draws an association but doesn't necessarily say anything about causality. It's like drinking water doesn't cause people to become murders even though > 99.9% of all convicted murders have drunk water during their lives.
And no doubt human beings kill themselves all the time, it's one of the more common causes of death. My question is if NFL players off themselves more often than the rest of the country at large. To medically determine that CTE would cause suicide, like that doctor commenting on Andre Waters' case suggested, they would first have to determine that there are significantly more suicides among NFL players (and probably hockey players, boxers etc. that have CTE) than the random population. Even then they would still have to somehow control for other factors like the mega-dose steroids they used back then, the conditioned aggression, and such.
I'm all for the NFL investigating these kinds of things but at this point players should have a sense of what they are getting into. I read that Runyan just built a new house and had an elevator put in.
overpaid athletes
shut up, bitchmade
It's now certain that in the next ten or twenty years there will be a lot of research put into CTE in athletes who participate in sports that subjugate the skull to violent trauma. Soccer, boxing, hockey, football. We'll see what it shows. I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusions point to an extremely high rate of CTE. I'm also pretty sure the sanctioning bodies of these sports will have nothing to do with funding this research, and will resist and contest all findings that demonstrate a link between their sport and brain damage. PR campaigns to discredit the science will be effective in causing sports fans to disbelieve the science, and life will go on pretty much the same. People want to believe what they want to believe.
Could we be looking at the end of an era in football? It was a different game in the old days when players could clothesline a WR and Deacon Jones would headslap OTs into submisson. Now you can get a flag for looking at a quaterback's knees. Probably in the future all hits leading with the helmet will be outlawed (a la the McGahee hit) but I'm not sure what they do beyond that to protect people. They have that new car technology that beeps just before collision and expands airbags, maybe they put that in the RBs helmets.
Ultimately the NFL and the union will probably have to decide between neutering the game or letting the players keep it hard hitting, caveat emptor.
Quote from: Eagaholic on January 29, 2009, 12:34:55 PM
Could we be looking at the end of an era in football? It was a different game in the old days when players could clothesline a WR and Deacon Jones would headslap OTs into submisson. Now you can get a flag for looking at a quaterback's knees. Probably in the future all hits leading with the helmet will be outlawed (a la the McGahee hit) but I'm not sure what they do beyond that to protect people. They have that new car technology that beeps just before collision and expands airbags, maybe they put that in the RBs helmets.
Ultimately the NFL and the union will probably have to decide between neutering the game or letting the players keep it hard hitting, caveat emptor.
Just get rid of helmets. That will reduce head injuries dramatically
if players are going to be so overpaid they should be able to suffer a little brain trauma
You guys do realize that you're all in agreement but are still arguing, right?
Goddamn CTE injuries.
Quote from: Diomedes on January 28, 2009, 10:42:59 PM
also, a little piece of data I picked up along the way...average life span for an NFL player? 55 years.
Good data is tough to find. The 55 figure was popularized by an attorney (Hall of Famer Ron Mix) who was representing players trying to get workmen's comp in the 80s. It has its origin in a nonrandom, unscientific survey of 800 players. Basically whoever they could find information on in the papers (which would obviously skew to those who die).
A more comprehensive and statistically valid survey (http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pdfs/nflfactsheet.pdf) was conducted at the behest of the NFLPA by the federal government's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in 1994. This survey actually found that NFL players had a
significantly reduced death rate compared to the general population of males of the same age and race. This survey was based on all players in the NFL pension system... the problem being that the data for players who played before 1972 is reduced and before 1959 is nonexistent. Therefore, most of the players surveyed had not yet reached age 50. It would be surprising, however, if the death rate of NFL players suddenly spikes and surpasses that of the general public after age 50.
The biggest medical difference from the normal population is the sheer size of players such as linemen, virtually all of whom qualify as obese, complete with all the medical problems associated with obesity. Obviously bad knees and similar common sports injuries are more common, as well... but these are rarely life threatening. On the other hand, keep in mind that, compared to the general public, many NFL players are exceptional athletes in top physical condition, and they maintain a healthy and active lifestyle after leaving the game.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4472274
QuoteBOSTON -- Three NFL players on Monday joined a growing list of former professional athletes who have agreed to donate their brains after death to a Boston University medical school program that studies sports brain injuries.
Center Matt Birk of the Baltimore Ravens, linebacker Lofa Tatupu of the Seattle Seahawks and receiver Sean Morey of the Arizona Cardinals announced they have donated their brains and spinal cord tissue to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy so researchers can better understand the long-term effects of repeated concussions.
More than 150 former athletes, including 40 retired NFL players, already are in the program's brain donation registry.
"One of the most profound actions I can take personally is to donate my brain to help ensure the safety and welfare of active, retired, and future athletes for decades to come," Morey said.
Doctors see sports-related brain trauma as a growing health crisis due to the discovery of the neurodegenerative disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy in a number of athletes who have recently died. The condition is caused by repetitive trauma to the brain.
Sufferers may experience memory loss, emotional instability, erratic behavior, depression and impulse control problems, progressing eventually to full-blown dementia.
As part of the program, the players will be interviewed annually for the rest of their lives so researchers can examine the relationship between clinical symptoms and pathology.
Birk, Tatupu and Morey have all played in the Pro Bowl, making their pledge all the more significant, center co-director Chris Nowinski said.
"These active NFL players have admirably ignored concerns held by many athletes that by participating in this research, they could be perceived as having a concussion history that could negatively affect their career and contract negotiations," he said.
The center was created in 2008 as a collaborative venture between BU Medical School and Sports Legacy Institute.
nice work on thread combination
A-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLzkBm9Ljhg
Video from The House of Pain Game
Jeff Kemp throws a TD!
Richie Kotite Post Game PC!
"Hopkins and Waters the most persuasive pair of safeties in the NFL"
DAMN YOU! I didn't read all the way down and unintentionally saw Kotite... DAMN YOU!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/sports/14football.html?hp
QuoteALLENTOWN, Pa. — A brain autopsy of a University of Pennsylvania football player who killed himself in April has revealed the same trauma-induced disease found in more than 20 deceased National Football League players, raising questions of how young football players may be at risk for the disease.
Owen Thomas, a popular 6-foot-2, 240-pound lineman for Penn with no previous history of depression, hanged himself in his off-campus apartment after what friends and family have described as a sudden and uncharacteristic emotional collapse. Doctors at Boston University subsequently examined Thomas's brain tissue and discovered early stages of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease linked to depression and impulse control primarily among N.F.L. players, two of whom also committed suicide in the last 10 years.
But lets send Bradley and Kolb out there!
YAY TEAM!
this is why the players can basically ask for whatever they want in the new cba and id back them
And the Eagles apparently said that Stewie went back in there because they weren't fully aware of it because they were over there dealing with Kolb.
Yeah ok.
meh, it's plausible that they didn't realize what was up on the spot.
I'm not gonna be heard killing them over yesterday
Quote from: ice grillin you on September 13, 2010, 05:20:59 PM
this is why the players can basically ask for whatever they want in the new cba and id back them
yeah, pretty much end of story for me too.
just awful...
Quote
In his battle with ALS, Turner relies on his football toughness
By Mike Jensen
Inquirer Staff Writer
In all his years playing football, at the University of Alabama and then for almost a decade in the NFL with the New England Patriots and Eagles, Kevin Turner prided himself on being hard-nosed.
"I never wanted to miss a snap," said the former fullback, who retired in 1999 after five seasons in Philadelphia. "I didn't want to miss anything in practice. It's one of the things that made me the player I was. I was dependable."
Turner says that with some regret.
This summer, the 41-year-old was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.
"Here recently, my hands just don't work," Turner said in a telephone interview as he was driving home from his job as a medical sales representative. "I can still grab a steering wheel. But at a restaurant or something, I take a drink of iced tea, I need two hands to grab my cup, kind of like a 2-year-old with a sippy cup. My kids thought I was joking around. It's hard to tell them I can't hold it with one hand."
Several years ago, before his diagnosis, Turner had contacted researchers at Boston University studying chronic traumatic encephalopathy. It's possible that, instead of ALS, Turner has this disease, which mirrors ALS.
It's also quite possible that his former profession caused his present condition.
For the study, Turner agreed to donate his brain and spinal column to be examined after his death. It's the same group that determined that former Penn linebacker Owen Thomas had early stages of CTE when he committed suicide in April.
Turner's agreement is "very important," said Robert Stern, codirector of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at the Boston University School of Medicine.
"By being able to study someone like Kevin throughout his life, to get information from things like brain scans, cognitive assessments, from spinal fluid, and then study their brain after they pass away is really critical," Stern said.
Turner didn't see Sunday's Eagles game. He had gotten a text message, however, from a friend with a link to an article about the concussions suffered by Kevin Kolb and Stewart Bradley. It brought back memories.
Turner's first thought: "That's got to be tough on coaches. It's tough on players. You feel like you're fine. At least I did most of the time. You go through a period, and, after a couple of days, I would always feel fine, even after the worst of what I consider head injuries."
That reminded Turner of a story that once may have sounded funny.
"A '97 game against Green Bay, I had a huge collision with a guy, on the wedge, on the kickoff," Turner said. "I always heard the saying, 'knocked out on his feet.' I guess that was what it was. I couldn't recall being out there. I ran my plays, did everything - just what I was supposed to do. But I finally came over and asked [Eagles teammate] Bobby Hoying, 'Are we in Green Bay or are we in Philly?' I could tell you what I was supposed to do, but I couldn't tell you where we were. Later that week, I felt fine."
Turner experienced some serious injuries in his career. He had back surgery and nerve damage in his spine. He suffered several concussions. The end came after a series of "stingers," or injuries to the nerve supply. He already had become concerned about his neck. Late in his career, he was told by one doctor that everyone has a certain amount of area in the spinal column so that the spinal cord will not be severed if a person suffers a broken neck. Turner was told he had less than half what was considered the normal area.
"I didn't know why - whether it was hereditary or from inflammation," Turner said. "That's kind of why I retired. It got so every time I hit somebody and my neck bent one way or the other, I'd have pain like you wouldn't believe shooting down my arm - like somebody putting a blowtorch to your arm, from your neck to your fingers. . . . It started to get more severe and going farther down my arm. It used to be primarily my left side. In '99, for the first time in my career, it went down my right side. That's really the play, when I had both arms sitting there limp and burning. That was my last play."
Turner thought he was prepared more than most players for life after football. He had a college degree, "plenty of money" and a planned career, "a beautiful wife and a couple of beautiful kids."
Instead, Turner said, he suffered "bouts of depression." He became addicted to painkillers. It was probably six years before a doctor told him how head trauma can change behavior and bring on depression.
"I had a time enjoying the things I used to enjoy on a regular basis," Turner said. "It's hard to say what caused what. Maybe it was just getting out of football, something I'd done all my life. . . . Some guys deal with it a lot better than others. I was one of those guys who had gotten my degree from Alabama. I wasn't a hell-raiser or anything like that. I had a good family."
Something was just missing.
"My wife would just say, 'You're not the same person,' " Turner said. "I was never really mean-spirited to her or my kids. I have a great relationship with all of them. I felt like I was never content, never really happy with what I was doing. When I heard about that [Boston University] study, I wondered if it had some merit to it."
Turner doesn't want the researchers to tell him about life spans. He hasn't gotten a good answer to that yet.
"I want their successors to be the ones who look at my brain," he said. "I don't want them to get too eager."
Turner has three children now: one son in seventh grade and another in first grade, and a daughter in fourth grade. Both boys are playing football.
"I worry about them. All this kind of hit me right in July," Turner said, referring to the ALS diagnosis. "They're already tuned up on playing football. It worries me all the time. My oldest is playing junior-high ball. My youngest, he's playing [youth] league. It's full contact."
If his children continue to play, it won't be at his old position.
"Fullback and linebacker, you're usually a good 5 yards away," Turner said. "You get up a pretty good head of steam. It makes for a different type of collision."
These are hard issues, Turner said.
"These are kids who love athletics, not just football," Turner said. "My daughter is involved in gymnastics. I've seen more injuries in gymnastics than I have in football with my two boys."
Turner talked for almost an hour and fumbled for an answer only once, when asked whether he would do it all again.
"That's such a tough, tough question," he said. "Knowing what I know now, gosh, it's very hard to answer. I guess if somebody would have told me, 'Hey, if you play professional football for a certain amount of time and get a hit to the head, and it raises your chances of dying at an early age - like being in your 40s when you're 20-something - it's hard to tell anybody that."
Turner still is working, selling medical devices. He had spent Monday in Dalton, Ga., and had a 21/2-hour drive home to Birmingham, Ala.
"I can drive, no problem," Turner said as he drove. "But certain things I just can't do. Sometimes it's very hard to turn the ignition in my truck. I need two hands. My hands just don't have any strength."
Sucks, he's a guy who had a plan and it all goes to shtein. He's an underrated player in the Lurie era
http://articles.philly.com/2015-12-16/news/69065462_1_eagle-andre-waters-philadelphia-eagles-fans-cte
I had heard before that Andre was going to be portrayed in this flick.
Def must see on video.l
Holy crap! Go back and read the first few pages of this thread. WTF happened to all these people? There's like 10 of us left.
Some lively debates over watters vs dawkins between Munson and the .... :o
Quote from: Don Ho on December 24, 2015, 04:43:23 AM
Holy crap! Go back and read the first few pages of this thread. WTF happened to all these people? There's like 10 of us left.
Eventually it'll just be the hippos and
Jay, and
Big Brother keeping the site going so they have something in life to care about.
Merry Christmas dio
Ho ho ho.
That's Don Ho ho ho.
Quote from: Don Ho on December 24, 2015, 04:43:23 AM
Holy crap! Go back and read the first few pages of this thread. WTF happened to all these people? There's like 10 of us left.
i'll give you 2 guesses.
Quote from: hunt on December 28, 2015, 09:06:26 AM
Quote from: Don Ho on December 24, 2015, 04:43:23 AM
Holy crap! Go back and read the first few pages of this thread. WTF happened to all these people? There's like 10 of us left.
i'll give you 2 guesses.
Zombies ?
Quote from: hunt on December 28, 2015, 09:06:26 AM
Quote from: Don Ho on December 24, 2015, 04:43:23 AM
Holy crap! Go back and read the first few pages of this thread. WTF happened to all these people? There's like 10 of us left.
i'll give you 2 guesses.
Lol