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I’m a sports talk radio host.  You probably already know this.  You probably also think this means I say things I don’t really mean for reaction or polarization or both.  That is not true.  Do I at times use hyperbole or make extreme statements to drive a point home?  Sure.  But do I ever say something that I don’t really mean?  No, or, at least, I hope not.

This column isn’t about me, however.  I only start with that point because a few months ago I said something that many listeners and local writers—I’m looking at you Joe Tone of The Pitch—thought there was no way I could possibly mean.  I said, and I believe this was the quote in regard to NFL athletes, “I don’t care if a player dies on the field.”

To give this statement some context, it was said in the scope of the discussion of the NFL putting a renewed emphasis on “devastating hits” and helmet to helmet contact.  The NFL, it would like you to believe, was attempting to cut down on unnecessary contact to the head and concussions, because the league cared so much about its players.  I felt this to be a disingenuous attempt by an often disingenuous league to get the public on its side as it was attempting to force an 18-game schedule on the players.

But my statement had less to do with concussions or an 18-game season than it had to do with the overall brutality of the game.  My statement, that I didn’t care if a player died on the field, was based on the following sets of facts: Football, the NFL brand specifically, is quite simply, bad for your body and your health.  Additionally, there is no way—without drastically changing the structure of the game—to make playing professional football “safe.”  And any attempt to make it safer was purely PR, and would do little to help players’ long term.

You see, the real brutality of the game is not in an individual blow to the head.  It is in the repeated collisions that the game must have to survive.  And it was, and still is, my belief that people simply don’t want to see the real impact of the game.  They don’t want to see a player die during the game, but don’t really care if that same player dies a few years later due to injuries sustained in that game. I feel that this is a selfish position to hold.

To simply not want to see the damage done by the game we all love is self-serving.  If I don’t care that football is killing players in the long term, how can I be so self-centered to care that I might have to witness that damage in the short term?  That is where the, “I don’t care if a player dies on the field” statement came from.  Not from a selfish or callous place, but simply from an honest one.

I only bring all this up because this weekend, the damage that the NFL does reared its ugly head once again.  Dave Duerson, former Chicago Bear and Super Bowl champion, at just 50 years old, killed himself.  This would be noteworthy no matter what, but it’s the manner in which Duerson killed himself and the message beforehand that makes this especially chilling.

Duerson shot himself in the chest.  This was no accident.  Before he killed himself he reportedly texted family members that he wanted his brain studied by a group studying chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE for short.  CTE is something that has affected untold hundreds, if not thousands, of former football players that have seen dementia, impulse management and extreme depression hit them at young ages and at amazingly high rates.

You see, Duerson, unlike many, knew exactly what was happening to him.  He had been on committees trying to help former NFLers who are dealing with CTE from their playing careers—the ugly remnant of a playing career  that stays long after the fame and the money and women are gone.  Duerson saw himself falling into this devastating abyss and couldn’t deal with it.  He avoided it the only way he knew how—with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.

The NFL has a lot to deal with this off-season.  The players and owners are squabbling over what to do with the nine-plus billion dollars the league generates, and a lockout is potentially only two weeks away.  We are all hoping that the two sides can come to an agreement so we can have our football.  The reality is, that no matter how difficult this labor disagreement is, it is not nearly as difficult as the problem the NFL will have to address in the future—what do we do with a sport that ruins the lives of the people who play it?

The more I think about it, maybe I was lying when I said I don’t care if a player dies on the field.  Honestly, I’m not sure.  I know that I feel terribly about what happened to Duerson, and even worse about the fact that I clearly don’t care enough, as I will watch and support the NFL—whenever it comes back—knowing that I am undoubtedly watching a player or two or twenty who will be the next Dave Duerson.  And I can’t get past the feeling that dying on the field, doing what you love, not knowing it was coming and not knowing how it happened, is a better fate than what Dave Duerson dealt with last week.