"Iron Mike" was the anchor of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a gritty job in one of the grittiest teams in American football.He played for the Steelers from 1974 to 1989, winning the Super Bowl - the annual championship of the National Football League (NFL) -- four times, three as captain. He was inducted into the pro football hall of fame, and came to be seen as an icon of the sport.All of which makes his demise all the more poignant. Even before he retired in 1990, he began to suffer mental problems. He displayed symptoms of dementia, memory loss and depression. As his behaviour grew more erratic, he found it hard to hold down a job and by his death in 2002 aged 50, he was reported to be sleeping homeless in railway stations or in the back of his pickup truck.Such an ignominious an end for so huge a personality marked a low point of American football. At the time of Webster's death, the condition from which he was suffering -- repetitive brain injury, later dubbed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE -- was not even recognised, let alone understood.But over the past eight years, partly as a result of Webster's death, pressure has mounted on the NFL, the professional sport's governing body, to confront what has been described as a ticking time-bomb that could be facing hundreds of thousands of players.
"Iron Mike" was the anchor of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a gritty job in one of the grittiest teams in American football.
He played for the Steelers from 1974 to 1989, winning the Super Bowl - the annual championship of the National Football League (NFL) -- four times, three as captain. He was inducted into the pro football hall of fame, and came to be seen as an icon of the sport.
All of which makes his demise all the more poignant. Even before he retired in 1990, he began to suffer mental problems. He displayed symptoms of dementia, memory loss and depression. As his behaviour grew more erratic, he found it hard to hold down a job and by his death in 2002 aged 50, he was reported to be sleeping homeless in railway stations or in the back of his pickup truck.
Such an ignominious an end for so huge a personality marked a low point of American football. At the time of Webster's death, the condition from which he was suffering -- repetitive brain injury, later dubbed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE -- was not even recognised, let alone understood.
But over the past eight years, partly as a result of Webster's death, pressure has mounted on the NFL, the professional sport's governing body, to confront what has been described as a ticking time-bomb that could be facing hundreds of thousands of players.
duh, there crumples another inflated icon, manly men playing rugby should think while they still can...
the cranium was built for more enlightened diversion! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
