Time out

Mike Webster's family continues to fight for his legacy, years after his death. Broderick Thomas' wife and kids only get to see a man who is a shadow of his former self and Terry Long's former teammates seem at a loss to describe what the former Pittsburgh Steelers' final days provided him before he died on June 7.

All three are stunning examples of what the rigours of life in the NFL — and the unexpected life without the NFL — can do to grown men whose status as icons put them in a rarified, and to be realistic, jaundiced standing.

Webster, long known for his steely toughness while wearing black and gold, died in September of 2002 but was left incapacitated six years prior to that due almost entirely to the pounding his body and mind took during a 16-year career in the trenches of the NFL. He was plagued by depression and lost on how to live in a world where football no longer defined him. Upon retiring in 1990, the once-revered Webster slipped off the radar and into a life tinged with homelessness and financial ruin.

Broderick Thomas is still alive — but he's attempted suicide twice. Since retiring Thomas barely has the inner will or physical strength to go about simple, everyday tasks. The former Nebraska Cornhusker all-American and NFL'er retired in 1997 with a myriad injuries that included complete degeneration of the cartilage in his knees and herniated discs that leave it impossible for him to sleep more than a half an hour at a time in any one position. His life was defined by being a star football player and while the pains of the game have ravaged his body, depression has taken over his mind, leaving him dependent on a handful of pills everyday to keep from finishing off the sad task he didn't complete twice before.

Terry Long's story is the cloudiest of the three, but no doubt just the same. Long also attempted suicide but, unlike Thomas, it came during his playing career, in 1991. He returned to the game that season but retired following it and, in total, two suicide attempts. He died this year at the age of 45, with autopsy results still pending. In the end, Long died as an unknown even to his former teammates, a friend that kept to himself, struggled with no longer having the identity he held for decades and riddled with depression and physical pain brought on by a sport and league that fails in its ability to prepare its players for life after the game.

Thomas called his sister before his first suicide attempt. Sobbing and apologetic, whole-heartedly convinced the only way to finally be at peace again was to put an end to the life that had recently brought him so much pain and suffering.

According to a Newsday report from earlier this year, within a year of being released from an NFL team, one-third of the players will report emotional problems, almost a third will be in financial trouble and of those who are divorced, half will get divorced in the first year of retirement. As a group, they commit suicide at a rate six times that of average Americans.

Football is a sport that rewards it warriors, lauds the ones that can play through the pain and shake off any adverse effects of the most physical game on the planet. It is also the sport that produces stories like Korey Stringer. And it presents daunting numbers that few people seem aware.

Broderick Thomas is still alive. Former Green Bay Packer Tom Neville isn't. After retirement, Neville was institutionalized with depression and alcoholism and, later armed with a gun, broke out of his treatment center, was chased, then shot and killed by police.

It shouldn't be a suprise that players who have spent their entire careers in a blinding glare of spotlight, often don't know where to walk when the lights go down.

Perhaps, because Broderick Thomas is still alive, his story can thankfully be known now as a testimony rather than an obituary.

And that light can be turned back on those who are regularly disregarded once they stop making headlines.