George Keporos was a specimen. The curly haired tackle stood 6-1, weighed 255 pounds, had 21-inch arms, a 22-inch neck, benched 350, and ran the 40 in 4.9. This was 40 years ago, before such things were common. Still, George sometimes got knocked around, as everyone who played Big Ten football did. In the 1971 Northwestern opener against Michigan at Dyche Stadium, he took a blow to the head and went down.
''I got knocked out before half, and they carried me off the field,'' he says now, as we sit in the living room of his compact but luxurious condo on Illinois Street. just east of Michigan Avenue. ''We were ahead, 6-0, when I went out, and I wake up on the bench and it's 21-6, Michigan!
He laughs at the silliness of the tale, the cartoon-like dreaminess that comes with getting the old bell rung. But George played hard and got dinged a few times. And some of the players around him were concerned.
When Eric Hutchinson, our All-America free safety, got a concussion in a 1970 game, he came to the sideline and was disoriented and done for the day. Tears trickled down his cheeks as he watched the game. ''Please don't make me like George,'' he pleaded to no one.
We all joked about each other's head collisions, about seeing stars, about birds tweeting, planets circling. Hutchinson was briefly out of his mind and had no idea what he was saying for that day. Brain trauma was not that big a deal back in that era, anyway, largely because no one understood the lingering or delayed or compounding effects of such unseen wounds.
It also was hard to take any injury seriously when the guy looked fine. That is rapidly changing. A recent Time Magazine cover story on the dangers of football states, ''No other sport gives rise to as many serious brain injuries as football. High school players alone suffer 43,000 to 67,000 concussions per year, though the true incidence is likely much higher.'' The reason the incidence is underreported is that most concussed players never say anything about their symptoms.
There is another, unwitting, culprit here. In a survey, college trainers stated that they observed concussions in only about 6 percent of the players under their watch. But when the college players were asked anonymously, more than 70 percent said they had experienced concussion-like symptoms. Clearly, it's hard for trainers to diagnose what they don't know much about and the wounded won't describe.
George Keporos, 60, looks good, feels good, and he's in good health. He's a big dude, but he has run in 14 marathons. His joints are fine. He's happy, has three beautiful daughters, ages 21 to 28, and because he's recently divorced, he is dating again.
But none of us know about our heads.
After Northwestern, Keporos had a free-agent tryout with the Bears, and then he got into the car business with his father. George proved to be an outstanding salesman and businessman. He and his dad built up their stores until they had successful Lincoln-Mercury, Honda, Ford and Accura dealerships in Chicago. When they sold out at the perfect time -- 2007 -- George walked away with millions.
But what does the future hold? We all know the horror stories about former NFL players like Andre Waters, who shot himself at 44, and was found to have brain tissue resembling that of an 85-year-old man, with characteristics of early stage Alzheimer's.
But that's the NFL. Waters was a banger for a dozen years after college. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a long term for what boxers call dementia pugilistica, or plain old punch drunk. Yet it doesn't matter if you get the blows from a glove or a helmet, or, for that matter, fastballs or hockey checks. CTE can apparently strike anyone who has had repeated and violent brain trauma.
Our middle linebacker John Voorhees likes to talk about the punch drunk boxer who used to loiter in front of the Busy Bee hamburger joint in downtown Peoria, near where John went to high school. The boxer was harmless, but he talked crazy stuff to the Spaulding guys when they came by for hot dogs, and he just seemed like a funny aberration.
I talked to Freddie Roach in Los Angeles recently. He's superstar boxer Manny Pacquiao's trainer, and he has trained 25 world champions. But he was once a ferocious pro fighter himself. Though he was only 49 when we talked, Roach staggered about because of Parkinson's syndrome caused by boxing too long. His first symptoms appeared at age 27.
''They told me to retire, and I had five more fights and got knocked out in two of them,'' he says. ''I probably have dementia -- pugilistica dementia. I do respond to Dopamine two times a day. But I have tremors, I have drop-foot, I trip a lot.''
It's hard to get out on top, isn't it? I say to him.
He smiles ruefully. ''Only one of my fighters retired as a champion.''
But such stories might be irrelevant to us former college football players. We didn't play for years and years. We didn't exclusively hit each other in the heads.
Talk about good brains? There were 31 players on our freshman team in 1967, and 18 made it to our senior season. Among the 18, we have three post-graduate education degrees, a doctorate of veterinary science, four MBAs, three law degrees and two Ph.Ds. (I'm sorry for bringing the curve down with my lowly B.A.)
By almost any measure, George Keporos, in the class behind me that has two MDs among its ranks, has been a success in life. While we were talking, his youngest daughter, Kelly, a 6-1 recently graduated scholarship volleyball player at Northwestern, entered the apartment, dropped off a few things, hugged her pop, said, ''I love you,'' and left. Their affection was obvious. George's life is good.
But we're talking about maybes here. Kelly, after all, has two bad knees, and George says she'll likely need replacement surgery in her 30s. Sports competition carries its toll. I ask George if he has had any brain issues.
''My memory isn't what it used to be,'' he says. ''I have to jot things down to remember them. I leave things on the counter over there and forget to pick them up. My memory loss is getting worse. Is that because I'm getting old?''
I laugh. I looked for my reading glasses for five minutes the other day, and they were on my head. I put the orange-juice in the cereal cabinet. I'm no judge.
George and I look at an old photo of him sacking the Syracuse quarterback. We study the enlarged and framed newspaper page with photos of the Illinois 1967 All-State High School football team, with George there as well as Peoria's Voorhees, Elmhurst's Jack Derning and Moline's Randy Anderson, all of whom would be terrific players for Northwestern.
''You know, five years ago, I had amnesia,'' George says. ''From 9 to 5 of that day I have no memory.''
I look at him. I think about this. ''Then how do you know it happened?''
''I'd gone to work and the manager at the store said I was walking in circles,'' he says. ''He asked me if I was OK, and I kept saying, 'I don't know.' He drove me to the hospital, and at the hospital they asked me who the president was and I didn't know. I couldn't remember anything in the present. There's a name for what I had. But they couldn't find any reason for it, and it went away that day. I'm thinking, 'How about that hit in college?'''
A half hour after I leave, George calls my cell phone.
''I remembered it,'' he says. ''It's called transient global amnesia.''
Transient global amnesia, or TGA, has been described by neurologist Oliver Sacks as temporary ''amnesia for the amnesia,'' in that for a brief time one can't remember that one has no memory. It's unknown what causes it, but stress, migraines, head injuries, compromised blood flow to the brain, sudden immersion in cold water, even sexual intercourse are believed to be possible catalysts.
It strikes me in a silly way that during the time when George was trying to recall the name of the episode, he displayed amnesia to the third level. Not true. As the Mayo Clinic describes it, TGA ''is rare, seemingly harmless and unlikely to happen again. Episodes are usually short-lived, and afterward your memory is fine.''
George is fine. As we all are for now. Until, as Sacks puts it, the ''final amnesia'' comes calling.
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