Football Under Fire in Wake of Seau Death
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Junior Seau. Junior Seau's suicide. I met Junior Seau just one time. It was one year at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic Golf Tournament. Dean Spanos, the Chargers owner, was playing in the tournament and I was playing with Fuzzy Zoeller and his crew that year. And we all had dinner one night after that day's round. And Junior Seau was everything everybody is saying about him. He was uplifting, he was funny, he was in a great mood. He was kind of in my face humorously over politics.
He was a big believer in the government doing as much as it could to help the poor and this kind of thing. He was just one of these people you like being around. So, now, how to explain the suicide? I have to tell you, I am amazed. Every channel I go to there's either a sports doctor or a psychiatrist or somebody explaining, "It has to have been all the concussions from playing in the NFL! It just had to be. There can't be any other reason." Well, I did hear one other reason, that he just couldn't adjust to not being in the spotlight, to not being on stage.
The football field's a huge stage and he was a big star. He just could not adjust to being a comparative nobody. He didn't leave a note so nobody knows. Here's Sanjay Gupta. He was on CNN so nobody heard it. That's why I want to play you this one. He was on Anderson Cooper 210 last night, which nobody saw. So I have to play the sound bite here for you. Anderson Cooper said, "Sanjay, several NFL players have committed suicide in recent years. Brain-related injuries they sustain while playing have been blamed.
"It's impossible to know what was going on in Junior Seau's mind at this point..." So, "impossible to know." It's impossible to know, but still: What was going on in his mind? It's impossible to know, Sanjay! We all know it's impossible to know, but is it possible? Even though it's impossible to know, "is it possible that past head traumas could have played a role in Seau's taking his own life?" It's "impossible to know what was going on in his mind," but nevertheless I want you to answer the question of why he did it.
GUPTA: We have enough evidence to say, "Yes," because you're starting to see, uh, a pattern of exactly what you're describing here, Anderson. This idea that the previous blows to the head -- uh, trauma, for example, sustained on a football field -- can accumulate over time and lead to something known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, CTE. Dave Duerson. You remember, you and I talked about him in 2011. He shot himself in the chest as well. It's a very unusual way -- uh, a rare way -- for one to commit suicide and just hard to talk about. But in Duerson's case he had left that note that Paul was sort of alluding to saying, "I shot myself in the chest. I'd like my brain to be studied." Duerson's brain was studied and in fact he did have exactly what he was concerned about: CTE. That was confirmed, you know, when they studied his brain.
RUSH: Now, Seau did not leave a note asking for his brain to be studied. Already doctors are asking for the brain of Seau to study it. But how many of you laughed at me when I told you some months ago that maybe not in our lifetimes (but it's gonna be close) somebody is seriously going to suggest banning the game of football. You can see we're heading in that direction. Now, every suicide is due to the game. "The game is killing people!" That's already been established here. So what's next, folks, with liberals in charge?
END TRANSCRIPT