Plankton
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/05/08/...cognitive-decline-nfl-head-trauma-concussions
They owned the lobby back then. Heads always turned. Men tried not to stare. Kids edged close. The women smiled wider, spoke a bit louder, and maybe their interest was innocent but they sure took the story back home with them, the one about—You won’t believe!—the big name they saw checking into the hotel.
Because in their prime they weren’t like the rest of us. They were larger, better looking—or maybe they just seemed that way because, come September, you saw their faces popping off the TV and in shiny magazines and newspapers. They were pro football players, weekend gods, loud and sure that they owned every room.
That feeling never fully dies. “Teddy!” Nick Buoniconti yells across the lobby of The Inn at Spanish Bay, near Pebble Beach.
It is a November Sunday in 2016, past twilight. The Hall of Fame linebacker, 75 but only slightly bent, is sitting with his wife, Lynn, at a polished table. The fresh faces behind the front desk don’t know Buoniconti; it has been 44 years since he co-captained the Dolphins to three straight Super Bowl seasons, including the league’s only perfect campaign, 17-0 in 1972. He’s not alone: Nearly two dozen greats from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s are here, wandering through the lobby toward the Grand Ballroom for the 26th annual Legends Invitational dinner. The oldest pass through mostly unnoticed.
But not by everyone. Not by anyone who grew up in the time when we knew little of players besides their names. Starr. Staubach. Tatum. Franco. Say just those words and an entire graying generation will transport back to the primordial highlight show, This Week in Pro Football, all operatic slo-mos and mythic narration.
In the next few hours a roster of venerables—Paul Warfield, Jan Stenerud, Jim Hart—will each utter a small shock at being remembered at all. This will at first seem odd, but it makes sense once they speak of how they missed out on free agency, or spent years fighting the league for better pensions, or are scrambling now to hack through the thicket of the NFL’s $1 billion concussion lawsuit settlement.
“Teddy!” Buoniconti yells again, and over comes Ted Hendricks, 69, along with his longtime partner, Linda Babl. Hendricks, the 6’7” linebacker dubbed “the Mad Stork” and “Kick ’Em in the Head Ted” for his loopy intensity on and off the field, played 15 years in the NFL, partied epically and never missed a game. Nick and Lynn stand.
Photo: Ben Hider/Getty Images for The Buoniconti Fund
Buoniconti speaks at the 2016 New York City gala for The Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis.
“How are you doing, Teddy?” Lynn asks.
“Good,” says Ted, grinning. At that, Buoniconti unleashes a deep sigh, one so operatic that at first it seems involuntary; but later, after spending hours with him, one comes to know it as his fallback signal of dismay and, quite often, a looming explosion. Linda’s head pivots.
“How’ve you been?” she says.
Buoniconti doesn’t explain that he can’t figure out how to knot a tie or towel his back. He doesn’t speak of his increasingly useless left hand, the increasingly frequent trips to the emergency room or how, just a few days earlier at his home on Long Island, he hurtled backward down a staircase and sprayed blood all over the hardwood, screaming afterward at Lynn, “I should just kill myself! It doesn’t matter!” He doesn’t mention the three staples subsequently crimped into his scalp, doesn’t explain that just yesterday—in a fit of unexplainable pique, and against his own doctor’s orders—he had another physician come to his hotel room and yank those staples out.
“You know,” Buoniconti says.
And he’s right. Like most everyone who’s close to a former NFL player, Linda is living some variation of the same story. They’ve all seen the big-budget concussion movie and the news clips; they’ve read about the deaths of Junior Seau and Dave Duerson; they’re comparing notes on Facebook about the damage caused by repeated head trauma. They study their men. They accompany them to brain studies and name-drop superstar CTE researchers like Julian Bailes, Bennet Omalu, Robert Cantu, Ann McKee.
“We went to see Dr. Bailes last month, because he’s in Chicago now,” Linda says. “He’s really impressive, as far as one-to-one. Ted’s been in his study in North Carolina, the neuro-feedback . . . .”
Buoniconti releases another sigh.
It’s so random. Hendricks has only minor memory lapses. Some of Buoniconti’s Dolphins teammates, meanwhile, are crumbling. Quarterback Earl Morrall, the supersub so key to the Perfect Season, died at 79, in 2014, with Stage 4 CTE. Running back Jim Kiick, 70, lived in squalor until he was placed in an assisted living facility last summer with dementia/early onset Alzheimer’s. Bill Stanfill, a defensive end who long suffered from dementia, died in November at 69. His brain and spine were sent to the CTE center at Boston University, where the disease has been found in 96% of players’ brains studied. (Granted, that’s 96% of a group whose medical or playing history already suggests some sort of brain disease.)
“Everybody’s searching,” Buoniconti says in an aside, dropping his voice. “Some go to North Carolina, some to BU, some to UCLA. And it’s all related. That’s why it’s so unnecessary, what the NFL is putting the players through by making us document the neurological deficiencies. Not everybody can afford to go through that. And they say they’ll pay for it—but do you know what that’s like, actually getting the money?”
Ted and Linda leave for the ballroom. Nick and Lynn sit. Hall of Fame Vikings defensive end Chris Doleman stops by. He talks about how even the most familiar routines have become confounding, how he wakes up in his own bed wondering, Am I in a hotel? “And I’m 55,” he says. “I don’t know what I’ll be like at 59 or 65.”
“At 55 I was very normal,” Buoniconti says. “I’m not normal anymore.”
They owned the lobby back then. Heads always turned. Men tried not to stare. Kids edged close. The women smiled wider, spoke a bit louder, and maybe their interest was innocent but they sure took the story back home with them, the one about—You won’t believe!—the big name they saw checking into the hotel.
Because in their prime they weren’t like the rest of us. They were larger, better looking—or maybe they just seemed that way because, come September, you saw their faces popping off the TV and in shiny magazines and newspapers. They were pro football players, weekend gods, loud and sure that they owned every room.
That feeling never fully dies. “Teddy!” Nick Buoniconti yells across the lobby of The Inn at Spanish Bay, near Pebble Beach.
It is a November Sunday in 2016, past twilight. The Hall of Fame linebacker, 75 but only slightly bent, is sitting with his wife, Lynn, at a polished table. The fresh faces behind the front desk don’t know Buoniconti; it has been 44 years since he co-captained the Dolphins to three straight Super Bowl seasons, including the league’s only perfect campaign, 17-0 in 1972. He’s not alone: Nearly two dozen greats from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s are here, wandering through the lobby toward the Grand Ballroom for the 26th annual Legends Invitational dinner. The oldest pass through mostly unnoticed.
But not by everyone. Not by anyone who grew up in the time when we knew little of players besides their names. Starr. Staubach. Tatum. Franco. Say just those words and an entire graying generation will transport back to the primordial highlight show, This Week in Pro Football, all operatic slo-mos and mythic narration.
In the next few hours a roster of venerables—Paul Warfield, Jan Stenerud, Jim Hart—will each utter a small shock at being remembered at all. This will at first seem odd, but it makes sense once they speak of how they missed out on free agency, or spent years fighting the league for better pensions, or are scrambling now to hack through the thicket of the NFL’s $1 billion concussion lawsuit settlement.
“Teddy!” Buoniconti yells again, and over comes Ted Hendricks, 69, along with his longtime partner, Linda Babl. Hendricks, the 6’7” linebacker dubbed “the Mad Stork” and “Kick ’Em in the Head Ted” for his loopy intensity on and off the field, played 15 years in the NFL, partied epically and never missed a game. Nick and Lynn stand.
Photo: Ben Hider/Getty Images for The Buoniconti Fund
Buoniconti speaks at the 2016 New York City gala for The Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis.
“How are you doing, Teddy?” Lynn asks.
“Good,” says Ted, grinning. At that, Buoniconti unleashes a deep sigh, one so operatic that at first it seems involuntary; but later, after spending hours with him, one comes to know it as his fallback signal of dismay and, quite often, a looming explosion. Linda’s head pivots.
“How’ve you been?” she says.
Buoniconti doesn’t explain that he can’t figure out how to knot a tie or towel his back. He doesn’t speak of his increasingly useless left hand, the increasingly frequent trips to the emergency room or how, just a few days earlier at his home on Long Island, he hurtled backward down a staircase and sprayed blood all over the hardwood, screaming afterward at Lynn, “I should just kill myself! It doesn’t matter!” He doesn’t mention the three staples subsequently crimped into his scalp, doesn’t explain that just yesterday—in a fit of unexplainable pique, and against his own doctor’s orders—he had another physician come to his hotel room and yank those staples out.
“You know,” Buoniconti says.
And he’s right. Like most everyone who’s close to a former NFL player, Linda is living some variation of the same story. They’ve all seen the big-budget concussion movie and the news clips; they’ve read about the deaths of Junior Seau and Dave Duerson; they’re comparing notes on Facebook about the damage caused by repeated head trauma. They study their men. They accompany them to brain studies and name-drop superstar CTE researchers like Julian Bailes, Bennet Omalu, Robert Cantu, Ann McKee.
“We went to see Dr. Bailes last month, because he’s in Chicago now,” Linda says. “He’s really impressive, as far as one-to-one. Ted’s been in his study in North Carolina, the neuro-feedback . . . .”
Buoniconti releases another sigh.
It’s so random. Hendricks has only minor memory lapses. Some of Buoniconti’s Dolphins teammates, meanwhile, are crumbling. Quarterback Earl Morrall, the supersub so key to the Perfect Season, died at 79, in 2014, with Stage 4 CTE. Running back Jim Kiick, 70, lived in squalor until he was placed in an assisted living facility last summer with dementia/early onset Alzheimer’s. Bill Stanfill, a defensive end who long suffered from dementia, died in November at 69. His brain and spine were sent to the CTE center at Boston University, where the disease has been found in 96% of players’ brains studied. (Granted, that’s 96% of a group whose medical or playing history already suggests some sort of brain disease.)
“Everybody’s searching,” Buoniconti says in an aside, dropping his voice. “Some go to North Carolina, some to BU, some to UCLA. And it’s all related. That’s why it’s so unnecessary, what the NFL is putting the players through by making us document the neurological deficiencies. Not everybody can afford to go through that. And they say they’ll pay for it—but do you know what that’s like, actually getting the money?”
Ted and Linda leave for the ballroom. Nick and Lynn sit. Hall of Fame Vikings defensive end Chris Doleman stops by. He talks about how even the most familiar routines have become confounding, how he wakes up in his own bed wondering, Am I in a hotel? “And I’m 55,” he says. “I don’t know what I’ll be like at 59 or 65.”
“At 55 I was very normal,” Buoniconti says. “I’m not normal anymore.”
