From what i know of US football he was one of the gods. RIP
Just a word tho, NFL players don't have long lifespans. Too many body building drugs is really bad for u and the beating your body takes playing also not good. Adds up to less life.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/living/columnists/art_carey/5038288.htm?1c
Art Carey | Big men of the NFL pay for their play later in life
By Art Carey
Inquirer Columnist
Now that the Super Bowl is over, we know which team is the best in the NFL. But a more important question remains: Is there life after football?
If you're a fan, the answer is yes. You'll find other distractions (the Pro Bowl) and entertainments (The Bachelorette).
If you're a player, the answer is not so easy. Yes, there is life after football, but in light of the pounding the body takes, how long and what kind?
Locker-room lore has it that the life expectancy of a typical pro football player is 55. Experts say that number is apocryphal, that it's more likely in the low to mid-60s. Still, that's a good 10 years shorter than the life expectancy of your typical pencil-necked geek or newsrag scribbler. Moreover, some retired players, especially linemen, spend their waning years as physical and mental wrecks.
In September, Mike Webster, who played center for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1974 to 1988, died at age 50. Webster epitomized toughness, playing six straight seasons without missing an offensive down. That's how he earned the nickname "Iron Mike."
But Webster paid a price. He took so many punishing hits and suffered so many concussions that by his 40s he literally began losing his mind. He had trouble performing simple tasks, and his mental state resembled that of a punch-drunk boxer.
What killed him, though, was not a broken brain. Iron Mike died of a clogged heart. In that and other ways, he's a poster boy for the fate that may befall many of his gridiron brethren.
Kevin Guskiewicz is a professor of exercise and sport science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes. A graduate of West Chester University, he worked for the Steelers for three years as a trainer.
Guskiewicz and his colleagues are studying the health and fitness of about 2,700 retired pro football players, ages 27 to 94. They are focusing on post-concussion mental decline, osteoarthritis, and cardiovascular disease.
Not surprisingly, the trench warriors, offensive and defensive linemen, are the most battered (average playing career of an offensive lineman is only 3.7 years). Nearly half suffer from achy joints and other skeletal ailments; roughly half over age 50 have high blood pressure and heart disease. Says Guskiewicz: "Those are some pretty alarming numbers."
They jibe with a 1994 study conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. After examining the medical records of more than 7,000 athletes who played in the NFL from 1959 to 1988, NIOSH researchers found that offensive and defensive linemen had a 52 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than the general population. Compared with other players, linemen were three times more likely to have heart trouble.
"Clearly, the increased body size typical of these positions is contributing to this substantial risk," the study says. Players in the largest body-size category, 64 percent of all linemen, were six times more likely to develop heart disease than folks of normal size.
(The New England Journal of Medicine reported last week that tests conducted last summer of 52 NFL players, 34 percent of them linebackers, showed evidence of sleep apnea, a breathing disorder that also may put them at risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.)
Football players over 300 pounds once were remarkable. Now, they're common. The number has climbed from about 50 in 1990 to more than 300 today, according to NFL figures.
The body mass index, or BMI, is a ratio used to assess whether you're carrying a desirable amount of weight for your size. A BMI in the low 20s is ideal. If your BMI is over 25, you're considered overweight. If it's over 30, you're considered obese and you're jeopardizing your health. The BMIs of most football linemen are in the mid to upper 30s.
"Beginning in the '70s, they began building football players bigger and stronger," Guskiewicz says. "We began seeing a linear trend of increasing BMIs that has yet to level off. They're packing more muscle on the frame, loading it with more weight, which puts more stress on the heart and joints. Once the cartilage breaks down, it's gone for good."
The BMIs of pro football players are misleading because so much of their mass is muscle. But to maintain it, many consume huge quantities of food - 6,000 to 10,000 calories a day, much of it rich in fat. And mobilizing that mass, whether brawn or flab, is a big strain on the heart. Says Pierce Scranton, former team doc for the Seattle Seahawks: "Three hundred pounds of pumping is still 300 pounds of pumping."
God may be an NFL fan, but no way did the Chief Engineer envision Jon Runyan versus Michael Strahan when he designed the body. Ask players how they feel the day after a game, and invariably they'll say, "Like I've been in a car wreck."
"These guys have amazing speed, and when you combine that speed with that mass, it creates a collision that exceeds normal human physiology," says Art Bartolozzi, former team physician for the Eagles. "I've seen ruptured tendons, knees ripped apart, very serious foot and ankle injuries, and everybody has a crooked finger."
"The hands are the body part that definitely hurts the most," Eagles defensive end Brandon Whiting says. "They get beat up all the time. I have fingers that don't bend all the way. Your fingers get jammed, they get caught between helmets and face masks."
Because of the nature of their work - exploding from a crouch or squat and bashing into a rampaging refrigerator - many retired linemen have bad backs, the result of cracked spines and ruptured disks. All the shocks and impacts register in the bones and joints, with cumulative consequences.
Guskiewicz, of the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes, talks of "a snowball effect." After retiring, many football players become depressed, he says. They deal with it by eating too much and not exercising. Some are so accustomed to pigging out, they can't cut back. Many don't exercise because they're crippled by arthritis. The heavier they become, the more difficult it is to move, the more painful their joints, and the more imperiled their hearts.
"A significant number of players have all these things occurring at once," Guskiewicz says. "By age 50, they're walking nightmares."
"You look at some of the guys who played in the NFL 10 or 15 years ago, and they all look so much older than they are because their bodies took such a beating," Whiting says. "It's a trade-off, a Faustian bargain. You get paid lots of money in your 20s to play a game you love. And you know by the time you turn 40 you'll have arthritis and a bad back and wake up every morning in pain."
