Lupica: Too many football players are dying

Lupica: Too many football players are dying

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A man weeps as van with Junior Seau's body leaves Oceanside, Calif., home where former NFL great apparently took his own life.

Sometimes this is the violent end to a violent sport, another ex-football player, a great one this time, Junior Seau who had his best years with the San Diego Chargers, shooting himself in the chest in an apparent suicide.

Twenty years in the National Football League and he does not even make a few years of retirement before it ends like this for Seau, the way it ended not so terribly long ago for an old Chicago Bears safety named Dave Duerson, who also shot himself in the chest so that doctors could study his brain, find out the damage that a violent sport had done to him.

This is not to say that Junior Seau is Duerson, that somehow they are the same because they were football players and their lives took them to these lonely and brutal deaths. No one could ever say that with certainty, even if their lives brought them to this kind of moment with a gun.

But even one death like this is too many and now there is another one for an ex-football player and if there is no way of knowing at this time that Junior Seau, who came out of the University of Southern California to become one of the most famous defensive football players of his time, the Lawrence Taylor of the San Diego Chargers, was another ex-player suffering from some kind of traumatic brain injury.

But would anyone be surprised if he did suffer from that kind of injury? He played 20 years in the NFL. He had been taking shots to the head since he was a star high school player at Oceanside High School, and probably earlier than that. A big, fast, violent player in a violent sport. How many hits to the head is that, between Oceanside High and Junior Seau being found dead at his home in Oceanside yesterday morning?

Maybe it was something else with Junior Seau, maybe it is never just one thing. But now he is dead, at the age of 43. Another ex-football player shooting himself dead with his own gun. After all the cheering, in all the great stadiums of his sport, after being as big a star as there has ever been in San Diego, the last sound is the gun going off.

We believe it was a suicide, an Oceanside police lieutenant, Leonard Mata, said. There is no indication of foul play.

He played his game as hard as it could be played for longer than most defensive players have ever played it. Twenty years in the pros, and college before that, and high school football before that. Again: We dont know if brain injuries brought Junior Seau to yesterday, but we know that he wasnt just leading with his shoulder pads all those years.