The football suicides
By 
Earlier today Junior Seau became at least the sixth seventh former NFL player to commit suicide since 2005, joining Terry Long, Shane Dronett, Dave Duerson, Andre Waters, Kenny McKinley, and Ray Easterling. (A side note: one in every six members of the 1994 San Diego Chargers Super Bowl team has now died — two in car “accidents.” The quotation marks reference the fact that Seau drove off a cliff two years ago in what at the time he denied was a suicide attempt).
In regard to this subject, Malcolm Gladwell’s 2009 New Yorker piece on football and brain injuries is essential reading. Duerson suffered so severely from the aftereffects of the concussive shocks to which the game subjected him that he donated his brain to science.
Because Seau was one of the greatest players of his generation his death is likely to throw particularly intense light on the darkest side of America’s favorite sport.