Are the Chargers seriously using Junior Seau to market their football team?
Ted Berg writes the Morning Win newsletter for For The Win. Yell at him on Twitter at @OGTedBerg or via email at AskTedBerg@gmail.com.
Something in the Los Angeles Chargers' hype video to unveil their lovely powder blue uniforms gave me pause. And by "pause," I mean a stomachache, a grim sense of bewilderment, and actual, unironic outrage.
How are you using Junior Seau to market your football team!? How are you using Junior Seau to market your football team!? How are you using Junior Seau to market your football team!?
One angry San Diego fan replied to the video by claiming that Seau is "rolling over in his grave," and I think the implication is that Seau would be upset because he was a San Diego Charger for life and I feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode I cannot escape.
Junior Seau shot himself in the chest at age 43. His suicide recalled that of fellow ex-NFL star Dave Duerson, who wanted to leave his CTE-riddled brain intact upon his death so it could be studied. The National Institute of Health determined that Seau, too, suffered from the disease, which is caused by repeated head trauma. His family filed a wrongful death suit against the NFL. He left behind four kids. The Pro Football Hall of Fame was hesitant to allow Seau's daughter, Sydney, to speak at his posthumous induction.
And there's Junior Seau in the video, wearing that lovely powder blue uniform, leading the Chargers out of the tunnel, a gladiator. That's supposed to… make me want to buy this jersey?
Maybe it'd be worse to leave him out. Seau is arguably the Chargers' most recognizable franchise icon and was a Southern California lifer, and it'd seem a weird whitewashing of the organization's history to show highlights of Lance Alworth and LaDainian Tomlinson and exclude a guy who was a 12-time Pro Bowler with the team.
And I apologize if I'm starting your day with a darker topic than those I normally cover here, but this one - not Seau specifically, but the NFL's awful history of head injuries and cover-ups - is important to me. When I reference not knowing anything about the contemporary NFL, it's not because I never knew anything about the sport. Football was pretty much the only thing that mattered to me in high school, and I even coached JV ball for a couple years after college.
Knowing football and playing football means I can understand how stuff like this happens. Because it is, by nature, a violent sport, football's culture will always reward toughness, and people in and around it will always trumpet things like "the warrior mentality." I'll spare you the long story, but I'm pretty sure I got a concussion in a football game my sophomore year of high school, and I played through it and never told anybody because I was so proud to be playing varsity and feared missing time would cost me my starting job. And I was supposedly one of the smart kids on the team. I loved playing football and I regret precisely none of it, but it's hard to imagine the sport could ever really evolve into something kinder and gentler.
Though this site and many other sports media outlets are powered in large part by the United States' nationwide love for the NFL, I consciously avoided writing about football for several years out of some dumb, hypocritical sense of obligation.
I'm back to it now only because it seems like the league is finally making an earnest effort to protect its players, and, more importantly, because it seems like everyone knows enough about the risks to better curtail them in youth football. Where I once picked out a helmet by finding the one in the big pile of already used helmets that sort of fit me and had a facemask that looked cool, my nephew has to travel to some special helmet store out on Long Island to get one fitted for him. My friend who coaches high-school ball says they don't hit in practice at all anymore.
Still, stuff like, say, seeing Junior Seau used to market a color scheme still makes me feel pretty queasy about the whole enterprise. And if the Chargers are going to do that, I do feel like someone, somewhere, needs to remind people: That guy killed himself, and his family says it was because of the injuries he suffered playing football.
But hey, the jerseys look nice.
Tuesday's big winner: Patrick Beverly
The Clippers had a day off Tuesday after their wild comeback win over the Warriors on Monday, but our Andy Nesbitt made a compelling case that Beverley should be everyone's new favorite player. Charged with guarding Kevin Durant in the game, Beverley limited the 10-time All-Star to just eight shots. Asked after the game to name the key to guarding Durant, Beverley said, "Be Pat."
Quick hits: Acuña, Wilson, Darvish
- Ronald Acuña Jr. pulled an Adrian Beltre and homered from one knee. Acuña got off to a relatively slow start this season, but has caught fire over the past week and now has me feeling good about making him my preseason NL MVP pick. Dude is so good, and the too-early returns in 2019 suggest he's rapidly improving as a hitter.
- Steven Ruiz wrote a detailed examination of Russell Wilson's contract. I'm worried that some NFL team is going to hire Steven away from us, which would be cool for him but bad for me because he's funny in our work chatroom.
- Yu Darvish felled three men with one fastball.
- NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson averaged just over seven-minute miles in the Boston Marathon, which is pretty incredible. Asked how he felt afterward, he said, "Horrible."
Weird Sport Wednesday: Shrovetide football
It's hard to say if Shrovetide Football - also known as "hugball" - should be considered a sport or just some strange Mardi Gras tradition in the town of Ashbourne in England, but since it does tend to get extremely rowdy, I'm leaning toward sport. Basically everyone in the town plays, the game lasts two days, local shops have to close down and board up their windows while it's happening, and the goals are three miles apart. The first rule, according to Wikipedia, is no murder. The sport dates back to at least 1667 AD, and possibly much earlier.