Junior Seau is dead

[NJ Fan]

He had a good restaurant out in San Diego, too. Good burgers.

It was a really good sports bar/restaurant and I, too, enjoyed the burgers. He held many fundraisers there.

[35Knucklecurve]

He said he fell asleep at the wheel when he went off the cliff and I guess there was some domestic violence issue too from what I heard on the radio. It's sad that he felt he had to commit suicide. Suicide is so damn scary.

That's what one of his closest friends, Marcellus Wiley said this morning during the Mike & Mike Show. He asked Seau after the accident to "be straight with me, man", so I don't know if he suspected Seau was having serious problems or not.

The O's former pitcher and FO guy, Mike Flanagan also killed himself with a gunshot to the chest. He, like Seau, suffered from depression, but no one ever suspected it.

I heard a very cool and toucing story from Eric Olsen about something that occured when he was a kid at football camp. Seau was then in his 10th year in the NLF and was one of the players lending their expertise to the boys. At the end of practice, the coach asked for "volunteers" to go one on one with Seau and Olsen's buddies all pushed him forward. Scared to death of not only Seau, but failing in front of everyone, Olsen saw Seau wink at his coach before the cadence was called out. Seau let Olsen flatten him and did it in such a way that everybody believed it was for real. Olsen said from that point on, he lived and breathed football.

[kan_t]

I don't think it's lip service. I think Goodell is the first commish to really look at the facts and statistics and do something about it. He's trying to be proactive both to head off any lawsuits and to preserve the future of the game. He knows that if things don't change, the NFL might not exist in 30 years as nobody will let their kids play football and the talent pool will dry up. The fact that the NFLPA didn't want to work with the league in studying head injuries shows that they're short sighted.

He's forced to take action because there are more than hundred lawsuits against the league. If he really cares about players' safety, I don't know why did he propose a 18-game season.

[Soriambi]

He's forced to take action because there are more than hundred lawsuits against the league. If he really cares about players' safety, I don't know why did he propose a 18-game season.

Yeah, and if it's true that they're hesitant to implement safer helmets due to inferior sound effects, that becomes even more obvious. I mean, I'm not saying that the guy doesn't care about head injuries or player's safety--I obviously don't think he wants players to get injured or anything--but some of what they've done seems like rather minimal steps, with the exception of more strictly enforcing certain blows to the head. Like you said, trying to extend the regular season is a terrible safety move. Even though they're looking to remove pre-season games to compensate for the increased regular season games, I think everyone knows it's pretty obvious that a pre-season game is different from a regular season game, even if only because of playing time.