Concussions and Brain trauma

By Scott Keith on May 4, 2012

With the recent suicide of Junior Seau, who at one point was the NFL's Man of the Year and all around respected and nice guy, more high profile deaths like this are being linked to brain injuries and concussions. Dave Duerson was another recent NFL suicide linked to brain injuries, and of course the hockey goons that have committed suicide (Wade Belak, etc.).
This all brings me back to Benoit, and how he and the WWE were just ripped to shreds over his incident even though his case seems to really be similar to these newer sports related suicides. I wonder what the story would have been had the incident happened say two months from now with these other cases shedding light on the problems of brain trauma in sports. It probably would still have been as bad because he took more than his own life, and Vince (and wrestling in general) will always deal with the carny stigma that will forever be attached to the product.

Yeah, if Benoit had just killed himself, it would be a tragedy, but he wouldn't have been erased from history, I'm willing to bet. It's really hard to apply any sort of sympathy given that he cold-bloodedly murdered his wife and child over a relatively long period of time for what was supposedly a temporary rage.

The hockey deaths are already starting to bring changes to the game, with really stiff penalties for headshots (Raffi Torres recently suspended a whopping 25 games, for instance, although Duncan Keith got off very lightly for taking Daniel Sedin out) and concussions are treated extremely seriously when they would have been glossed over in the past. It's been said that if the death rates in the major sports were anywhere even approaching those of wrestling, the government would have no chance but to step in and do something, and sadly we're almost getting to the point where that might have to happen now. Hell, look at how fast the hammer came down in baseball once the drug problems came to light, and baseball doesn't even have 10% of the issues that wrestling and MMA do.

Scary time to be a sports fan in a lot of ways.

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