Seven years ago, I went to Seau’s

When I woke up this morning, my Facebook Memories reminded me that seven years ago today, my wife and I went to Old Town San Diego, and also visited downtown and the waterfront.

 

Although I’m struggling with it having been seven years ago, it was fun, and San Diego as a whole is a beautiful city, but where we went to lunch that day was really a standout.

Being a (then) San Diego Chargers fan on the East Coast is fairly odd, so being in San Diego was always going to be fun from that perspective, but for Junior Seau, my favorite player, to have a restaurant less than a couple miles from our hotel?

Yeah, that was always going to be a must-stop.

There are several reasons why I don’t watch the NFL much anymore — I don’t watch a ton of college football, either, although not for all the same reasons — but looking back, Junior Seau’s suicide was one of the first steps in my disillusionment with the leauge.

It wasn’t just that my favorite player had killed himself, but that after a superstar who had only recently retired, an icon to many of today’s fans and players, killed himself, likely because of concussions, everyone involved with the league or who loved the league didn’t immediately stop and say, “Hold on, what are we doing here?” and pledged to do whatever they could about concussions immediately.

Sure, there have been some steps taken, but for every new rule seeking to lessen the number of concussions, a player is allowed to go back in after a concussion, even if he appeared to have a seizure on the field.

And for every attempt to make the game safer, there are people who will whine about it, up to including the man who eventually became president.

Regardless of political persuasion, everyone should want football to be as safe as humanly possible, and it bugs the hell out of me that’s not the case.

Advertisement