I
discovered Sports Illustrated magazine early in its life and was a faithful
subscriber for, maybe, 40 years. Back in the day, when the likes of Gilbert
Rogin, Dan Jenkins and Curry Kirkpatrick wrote for it, it epitomized good writing
in the sports field, albeit often with a smirky slant. Being a magazine it
almost always weighed in on events well after they’d occurred, but usually
found ways to add something to their discussion and was well worth whatever it
cost.
About 15
years ago, though, I fell out of the SI habit, and stopped reupping. So did
many others in our post-literate, sports-saturated age, and the magazine shrunk
and began appearing less often. It got cheaper, too, so cheap that two or three
years back it sent me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I mailed in my check and the
mag started coming. It hasn’t stopped, even though I can’t remember writing
another check.
I
mostly leaf through the SIs I get, not caring much about the subject matter,
but every third or fourth issue contains a piece I’m glad I read. One such is
in the issue of July 2-9. By the excellent Greg Bishop, it’s titled “The Search
For Why.” It’s about the recent suicide of Tyler Hilinski, a football
quarterback at Washington State University, and his family’s search to make
sense of an act that often seems senseless.
If
you’ve read about Hilinski’s suicide it’s probably because of the news that his
autopsy revealed evidence in his brain of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or
CTE. It’s a condition that has turned up in the brains of many former football
players. It can produce chronic and debilitating headaches and Alzheimer-like mental
confusion and memory loss, and sometimes leads to suicide. Hilinski, though,
was no veteran National Football League battering ram but a lean and agile 21-year-old
whose football history included only the youth and high-school sport in his
native La Verne, California, near Los Angeles, and a handful of appearances as
a sophomore backup QB in college. Bishop wrote that the young man never had a
verified concussion, although he suspected he might have suffered one in a
practice as a WSU freshman. His family said he’d shown none of the physical
symptoms associated with CTE.
A
further wrinkle is that Hilinski’s younger brother, Ryan, was a talented
high-school quarterback who soon will begin his freshman year playing football
at the University of South Carolina. The Hilinski family’s decision to allow
Ryan to play makes up a large part of the article.
Underlying
the piece is the quandary many parents like the Hilinskis face because of how
little is known about CTE. First diagnosed 1940s as the “punch-drunk syndrome,”
and thought to be associated mainly with boxing, the condition was tied
directly to football in the early 2000s by the work of Bennet Omalu, a
Nigerian-born pathologist in Pittsburgh who investigated the untimely deaths of
ex-Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster and, later, another former Steeler.
That caused a splash, but research into the
condition’s causes and consequences was delayed by the NFL’s attempts first to
discredit Omalu (dramatized in the 2015 movie “Concussion,” starring Will Smith)
and then to steer studies away from blaming the sport. While the football-CTE
link now is firmly established, as well as is the fact that
less-than-concussion-level head injuries can contribute to it, it’s still not
possible to identify CTE brain patterns in living humans, determine at what
levels symptoms kick in, or know which types of individuals are susceptible to
it and which aren’t. Many young suicides have no history of brain trauma, so
Tyler Hilinksi’s action may have had nothing to do with football.
The
article paints the Hilinski family as an affluent and educated one; dad Mark
founded a software company and mom Kym is a lawyer. The parents do not look to
sports as a “way out” of poverty or stilted ambition for their children; their
oldest son, Kelly, is a medical student about to become a physician. The three
boys played musical instruments and engaged in various sports as kids,
assertedly not pushed in any one direction.
Kym Hilinski said she’s always viewed her
sons’ football playing with trepidation. The couple is aware that if genetics
play a role in CTE susceptibility, son Ryan is more likely than most to be
harmed. If he were 10 years old “he wouldn’t play football because it’s too
scary for me,” she admits.
In the modern way, however, the
Hilinskis left the decision to Ryan, who is almost 18, and he’s decided to
play, partly because he loves and game and partly as a tribute to Tyler. “I’m
going to do everything that Tyler wanted to do with football,” he told Bishop.
“I’m going to do that to honor him.”
I’m sure that some other parents,
reading the article, will come to a different conclusion. Kids today have many
sports alternatives that don’t involve the constant bang-bang of football; ones
who like it rough can take up wrestling, whose physical contact is noncranial. In
the last few years more of us spectators now wince at rather than applaud the
frequent hard hits of the gridiron sport. If it will be difficult to watch Ryan
Hilinski play for South Carolina without that reaction, imagine what it will be
like for the Hilinskis.
