Former NFL star Junior Seau, who took his own life last May, has become the latest example of the NFL’s concussion problem:
A team of scientists who analyzed the brain tissue of renowned NFL linebacker Junior Seau after his suicide last year have concluded the football player suffered a debilitating brain disease likely caused by two decades worth of hits to the head, researchers and his family exclusively told ABC News and ESPN.
In May, Seau, 43 — football’s monster in the middle, a perennial all-star and defensive icon in the 1990s whose passionate hits made him a dominant figure in the NFL — shot himself in the chest at his home in Oceanside, Calif., leaving behind four children and many unanswered questions.
Seau’s family donated his brain to neuroscientists at the National Institutes for Health who are conducting ongoing research on traumatic brain injury and football players.
A team of independent researchers who did not know they were studying Seau’s brain all concluded he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease typically caused by multiple hits to the head.
“What was found in Junior Seau’s brain was cellular changes consistent with CTE,” said Dr. Russell Lonser, chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at Ohio State University, who led the study of Seau’s brain while he was at NIH.
A team of independent researchers who did not know they were studying Seau’s brain all concluded he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease typically caused by multiple hits to the head.
“What was found in Junior Seau’s brain was cellular changes consistent with CTE,” said Dr. Russell Lonser, chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at Ohio State University, who led the study of Seau’s brain while he was at NIH.
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More than 30 NFL players have in recent years been diagnosed with CTE, a condition once known as “punch drunk” because it affected boxers who had taken multiple blows to the head. Last year, 4,000 retired players joined a class-action lawsuit against the league over its alleged failure to protect players from brain injuries.
The NFL has said it did not intentionally hide the dangers of concussions from players and is doing everything it can now to protect them.
Gina Seau said she and her ex-husband expected physical injuries from playing professional football but never thought “you’re putting your brain and your mental health at a greater risk.”
Junior Seau, she said, was never formally diagnosed with a concussion but routinely complained of symptoms associated with concussions after receiving hits to the head during games and in practices in 20 seasons in the NFL.
“The head-to-head contact, the collisions are just, they’re out of control,” Gina Seau said.
“He was a warrior and he loved the game,” she added. “But … I know that he didn’t love the end of his life.”
This is just the latest example of a problem that the NFL, and football organizations below it all the way down to the Pop Warner level, only now seem to be paying attention to. In the end, there’s no way to remove all threat of physical danger from the game without changing it so fundamentally that it would be a pale comparison of what it is today, but it seems rather obvious that greater attention needs to be paid to the dangers that players, especially younger players, are exposed to on a near daily basis.
