Dead in 2012

[reese125]

This is the most nervous I've ever been. Do you guys think they will cancel this season?

[SD]

This is the most nervous I've ever been.. Do you guys think they will cancel this season?

They might. I can't wait until congress gets involved.

[phattymatty]

i always assumed smashing your head into things for years was good for you but now this changes everything.

[DH]

Does ESPN really need to show Seau's mom breaking down on the air?

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

i always assumed smashing your head into things for years was good for you but now this changes everything.

[Don Ho]

http://www.tmz.com/2012/05/02/junior-seau-dead/

Holy shtein!  He was teetering on the edge the past few years.

[hbionic]

How so Don?

[Sgt PSN]

Back in 09 or 10 he basically drove off a cliff and it was rumored to be a suicide attempt but Seau claimed he fell asleep at the wheel.  Whatever caused him to off himself has been bothering him for a while now.  Doubt it was anything new that just surfaced in his life. 

[phattymatty]

that seems like a reasonable assumption.

[SD]

Not to mention he's Samoan and they're crazy fargers as is

[hbionic]

Back in 09 or 10 he basically drove off a cliff and it was rumored to be a suicide attempt but Seau claimed he fell asleep at the wheel.  Whatever caused him to off himself has been bothering him for a while now.  Doubt it was anything new that just surfaced in his life.

I do remember this. I can't imagine what kind of complications they experience that could drive them to kill themselves.

[SunMo]

dementia is a pretty good complication to put at the top of the list

[Eagaholic]

he is the 8th member of the 94 chargers SB team to be dead. 

i feel like that is probably above average for most professions.

All before age 45. It's not like it's all CTE, either. Kinda freaky, especially the the dude that got hit by two bolts of lightening. Excellent way to go, if you were a Charger.

Five months after the team lost to the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIX, 28-year-old linebacker David Griggs died in a car crash in Florida. In 1996 running back Rodney Culver, 26, died when a ValuJet flight from Miami to Atlanta crashed into the Florida Everglades. Two years later, linebacker Doug Miller was struck by lightning - twice - in Colorado, killing him at age 28. In 2008, Curtis Whitley, 39, overdosed and defensive lineman Chris Mims, 38, died of a heart attack.

[hbionic]

Sounds like they all sold their sold to get to the Superbowl and the devil came to claim his pay.

I think this is the most rational explanation.

[QB Eagles]

he is the 8th member of the 94 chargers SB team to be dead. 

i feel like that is probably above average for most professions.

Eight is a high number for a group of 50-60 relatively young people over a span of 18 years, but given the large number of Super Bowl teams in history, it's not statistically unusual that one of those teams would have that many deaths. There's outliers on the high and low ends of any distribution. I don't think anyone from the 86' Giants is dead (for example), and they are all pretty much past 50.

Also worth noting that, contrary to popular belief, there's little evidence that NFL players have shorter lifespans than the general population. It seems to us like they die young more often because it's a population of hundreds of men whose lives we follow as fans of the game. If you followed the lives of everyone from your high school, you'd see a similar pattern of deaths -- fewer linked to head traumas and heart problems, but more from other causes.

I don't particularly care to defend the NFL or their safety culture (or lack thereof), but you can go too far when you start assuming everyone who kills themselves does it because of football injuries. Plenty of people commit suicide without CTE, and even in those with CTE, it may not be actually linked to their deaths. I hope some more third party studies are done on this topic really soon, because the odds of the greedy NFL beancounters, the ambulance-chasing lawyers of former players, and the dopey sports media accurately portraying the scale of this problem (and not ignoring other problems that should be on their radar) is zero.