Dear Dad,
It’s me, Junior. It’s March 22, 2045, and since you can no longer respond to me, I figured it would be therapeutic to write you a letter, even though you can’t possibly comprehend my emotions. I write you as if it isn’t too late.
The NFL did this to you. Those years with the Broncos, even the thrilling Super Bowl-winning season of 2015, those years sucked the man out of you, the manliest of men.
You could beat the Chargers and the Patriots, but you couldn’t beat dementia. And now you spend much of the day slumped in a sofa chair, staring at the ceiling fan slowly spinning, round and round, hypnotizing, heartbreaking.
Of course, many of your old teammates are gone, 50-somethings and 60-somethings who died because of similar dementia or from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Men who died because they played in the NFL. Like you said just a few years ago — “Reunions used to be fun. Now they’re just reminders.”
Football, to make a poor pun, but an apt one, is “rushin’ roulette.”
I remember the stories you’d tell me of your teammates. “It won’t happen to me,” so many tough guys said back then. Sure, occasionally they’d hear stories about some wrinkled old dude squeezing a walker, and how this man was ruined by concussions and what they call subconcussive impact — a fancy description for “hit after hit after hit.” But then they’d say — “Come on, that guy played way back in the day! Times are different now, right?”
By 2015, players would point to protective concussion protocol and the sturdiness of their helmets and their own toughness and their own blind belief.
And, yes, it’s true, “it” didn’t happen to every player. I got a call just the other day from C.J. Anderson, checking up on you. All those years of banging helmets in the trenches, and ol’ C.J. is as spry and sharp as ever.
So, yeah, I can see how you and the guys would think back then everything would be all right. You’d think — you’re telling me I could retire like that 49ers guy Chris Borland did, because there’s a possibility I could have long-term brain damage? Or — I could play for a decade and make millions and live in a mansion as big as my hometown and date girls from magazine pages and never fly commercial again? And, maybe have some headaches when I’m 60?
For some, football was all they had. Football was all they could do. Football was a vehicle to take poor families from wrath to wealth. Could we blame them?
That’s why you played football, Dad.
Here’s the part that I grapple with, that fans grapple with, that football families grapple with, that I’m sure even commissioner Andrew Luck grapples with: We love football. It’s such an awesome sport. It intoxicates us. It’s a national pastime, even if those who watch it approach the viewing like it’s some gladiator fight from the ancient days.
And, yeah, back in your day, I know they had symposiums to help teach you all about player safety. And, yes, the number of concussions did decrease in the mid-2010s, the NFL said.
But nobody could calculate the effects of subconcussive impact. And nobody truly knew about the damage already done to brains before a young football player turns 13 — before that age, the neck isn’t as developed as the human head, thus it is less sturdy. Listen to me, I sound like half doctor, half preacher. But, shoot, I wish someone could’ve gotten through to you and your buddies back then, as well as the guys who played before you. The NFL? This big business lied for years about the true impact of concussions. They were just like a tobacco company lying about the effects of cigarette smoking.
I remember when I was in middle school, the teacher made reference to that University of Michigan study. That day changed my life. She said football players may be five times more likely than other men their age to suffer from dementia. That was the day. That was the day I went from thinking it was so cool my dad played football to thinking that football is what did these things that made my dad act weird and scary.
C.J. Anderson’s son is happy his dad took the gamble. C.J. came from a scary childhood — his home was literally shot at, bullets flying inside — but he persevered and used football as a way out. Now he has an awesome wife and family, and he’s living out a fairy-tale life.
And for a while, a lot of your teammates lived “the life.” But you know what — they thought they beat the system. Nah, man. The system beat them.
The system beat you.
I just wish you could have read this letter in 2015.
Sincerely, with love,
Junior
Benjamin Hochman: bhochman@denverpost.com or
