Are the 1994 AFC Champion San Diego Chargers a cursed team,
or just a reflection of a growing trend toward chronic disease and early death
in America?
Led by running back Natrone Means and linebacker Junior Seau,
the
1994 Chargers won the AFC West with a record of 11 wins and 5 losses, and beat
the Miami Dolphins and Pittsburgh Steelers to reach the Super Bowl. The 53 players on the active roster averaged
26 years of age.
According to 1995 life
expectancy tables, a 26 year old male could expect to live to the age 75.
But when 42 year old Lew
Bush – a linebacker on that Super Bowl team – died on December 9, 2011, he was
the 7th member of the team to die more than 30 years prematurely.
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| Source: ESPN Official 2011 Roster Information |
There is talk that these 1994 Chargers are cursed. The first player to die, linebacker David
Griggs, was 28 when his car slid off an expressway ramp in Ft. Lauderdale
and crashed into a pole in June, 1995. The
second, running back Rodney Culver, died in a plane crash in 1996. He was 26.
Young people most often die of injuries. So those two deaths, while untimely and
tragic, didn’t make anyone think “curse.”
The third one did. In 1998, linebacker Doug Miller, also
just 28, died when he was struck twice by lightning while on a camping
vacation.
For the next decade, “curse”
talk faded as the surviving 50 players went about their lives and careers.
Then, in 2008, two more Chargers died. Center Curtis Whitley was 39 when he died of
a reported drug overdose, and defensive lineman Chris Mims was 38 when he died
of heart failure. Mims – a relatively
svelt 288 pounds for a six foot, five inch lineman in 1994 – was reported to
weigh 456 pounds when he died.
Defensive lineman Shaun Lee was the sixth to die, on March 1st
of last year. He was 44 when he lost a
battle with pneumonia. He was reported
to weigh over 300 pounds and suffer from diabetes at the time of his death.
And when Lew Bush died of a heart attack in December, these
seven men together had lost 280 years from their expected life spans when they
played in their Super Bowl – the equivalent of nearly four full lifetimes.
Are the untimely
deaths of these young men a curse or a reflection of what causes
premature death in America?
According to the NFL Players Association, the average life
expectancy for an NFL football player is under 60 years. Traumatic football injuries, such as
concussions, are blamed for this. They are
a factor, but the common conditions of life in America today – including obesity,
chronic disease, and non-football injuries – have been the “curse” of the
Chargers.
Even if all 46 remaining members of the team now live to
their normal life expectancy, the team as a whole will still have lost 5.3
years of life per player to premature death.
NFL football players don’t
have a life expectancy that is approximately 20 years less than the norm just
because they played football.
Like many other young people in our society, their lives are
being claimed before their time by the cardiovascular diseases, behavioral
illnesses, and other chronic conditions that result from poor diets, stress,
and unhealthy habits.
This problem is real, and isn’t going to go away on its own.
The average weight of the 44 linemen, excluding tight ends,
on the 2011-2012
AFC Champion New England Patriots and the 2011-2012
NFC Champion New York Giants is 306 pounds.
They are a year older than the 1994 Chargers were. But they also weigh an average of 17 pounds
more than the twenty Chargers who played the same positions in 1994.
To what do they have to look forward as they age? If you believe the NFL Players Association,
they will be walking advertisements for premature death.
They are not the only
ones.
According to AHRQ data, 60% of all Americans have at least
one chronic condition, 38% have two or more, and 16% have at least three. In this one way, we are all just like the
Chargers.
Like most Americans, I enjoy watching the Super Bowl and celebrating
this unique American holiday. But we
should embrace not just the game, but the light it can shed on the real curse
that affects us all. That is the curse
of both men and women dying young for reasons we could have, and should have,
prevented.
Update: When Junior Seau died on May 2, 2012, he became the eighth member of the 1994 Chargers to die before the age of 45. His death was an apparent suicide. There is widespread speculation as to whether the suicide was brain trauma related. Suicide is also commonly linked to mental illness - another significant cause of premature death in America, known to reduce life expectancy by over 25 years.
Update: When Junior Seau died on May 2, 2012, he became the eighth member of the 1994 Chargers to die before the age of 45. His death was an apparent suicide. There is widespread speculation as to whether the suicide was brain trauma related. Suicide is also commonly linked to mental illness - another significant cause of premature death in America, known to reduce life expectancy by over 25 years.
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What a great article... very good read.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to let you know how ridiculous the plot/graph in this article is. First of all, it's nearly impossible to read accurately. Secondly, there is not a third dimension to the data, so why is the graph in 3-D? And finally, by starting the y-axis at 280 pounds instead of 0 it effectively looks like the 2011 Patriots and Chargers offensive lines had an average weight three-times that of the 1994 Chargers.
ReplyDeleteJust a ridiculous lack of professionalism.
Sorry you had so much trouble with the chart scale, Zack, but it looks like you eventually figured it out. Hopefully, most people will understand the chart's relationship to the column. The Chargers are dying young for many of the same reasons many other people die young today (including complications from obesity). The fact that today's players are starting off significantly heavier (something that would not have been clear, given space constraints, if the chart scale began at zero) may put them at even greater risk of dying young in the future, whether or not the football head injury problem is solved.
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