Recently, there has been a string of
suicides among former professional football players. Paul Oliver, a former NFL defensive
back committed suicide this week. Paul Oliver played for the San Diego
Chargers. His body was found, Tuesday, at the bottom of a set of stairs. The county medical examiner said the death was a suicide by
handgun.
Paul Oliver played for the
San Diego Chargers from 2007 to 2011 with 144 tackles in 57 games.
No one is sure why he
committed suicide, but in this tragedy he leaves behind a wife and two
children. How tragic. I feel for this family and hope they can find peace and
happiness soon.
The interesting thing about
Paul Oliver’s suicide is it does not relate to other former NFL players committing
suicide. Suicides of some other former NFL players involved brain injuries.
For example, NFL linebacker,
Junior Seau was 43 when he took his own life in May 2012. The National
Institutes of Health later found he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. CTE is a neurodegenerative brain disease that can
come from getting hit in the head multiple times. From this information, I
conclude that he was in too much suffering to deal with the pain anymore.
Again, another tragic story.
What is sad is that this
situation with Junior Seau, is that he obtained this medical disease from
playing a sport he loved for most of his life. Football is a very dangerous
sport, but really all sports are dangerous to some extent.
Being an athlete, myself,
this makes me sad thinking that I know the feeling of loving to do something
but knowing that if I got injured, I could suffer an injury that would cause me
to want to take my life, is very, very scary. Athletics are very dangerous and
everyone needs to take proper precautions with injuries.
Suicides are also a very
serious matter. I live a very happy life so in my opinion a person has to be
very depressed and mentally ill to want to take their own life. It just blows
my mind to think that someone could take their life because of an injury that
was causing them so much pain. But I do believe that this is possible. It’s
just very sad to me that a sport that Junior Seau loved caused him this pain. Rest
in Peace, Junior and Paul. Athletes everywhere feel for you and your families.
What if the sport you loved
hurt you like this? What would you do?
An article relating to the death of
Paul Oliver and with information on other NFL suicides can be found at: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/25/us/former-nfl-player-suicide/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
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