The features writer for The Athletic on his piece about former Utah DL Greg Newman, The 15 years he lived with CTE, The risk of playing contact sports like football + more
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Speaker 1 (00:19):
You were listening to the Sean O'Connell show, Friends of
Murdoch Hyundai Studio of ESPN seven hundred and ninety two
one half am.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Number three of the Shawn o'connells Show. Welcome Back Utah
is number one sports talk. You're home of the Utes.
Question is still out there your breakout players for the
year on offense and defense for the University of Utah.
I want you to get on the record before Kyle
Whittingham starts his post practice media availabilities during camp and
(00:52):
says so and so is having a great camp so far.
This guy really impressed me. Hopefully they'll be a true friend.
Schman or two that cracked the depth chart that is
usually promising for the pipeline. You don't want too many
of them, though obviously offensive and defensive. Eight breakout players
eight seven seven, three five three zero seven hundred at
(01:12):
real oc Sports. If you want to tweet at us.
Hopefully you took some time as I suggested, you should
to go read the Chris Camaradnie article about Greg Newman,
former Utah football player who is unfortunately no longer with
us after he passed. The cause of death was multiple
(01:33):
organ failure because of a I think you pronounced a
kre tome excessive use of kraton or however you say it,
a stimulant. He had been he'd been dealing with some
mental health issues, and it seems like in hindsight a
lot of those may have been exacerbated by CTE and
(01:57):
Chris did a really I think X piece of writing,
but also an important piece of writing for all of
us who are huge fans of college football, and most
of you listening probably at one point at least we're
huge fans of Greg Newman and his work as a
member of that Sugar Bowl defense. Chris com Ronnie the
Athletic joins us. Now I'm the Sean O'Connell show. Hey, Chris, welcome,
(02:18):
How are.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
You, Hey, Sean? How's it going? Man? Thanks for having me?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, I appreciate you taking the time to join us.
I appreciate you. You know, I'm a big fan of
your writing. Uh, And we've got to know each other
a little bit, and this is, uh, this was I
think the hardest piece I've had of yours to read
for me because I knew Greg a little bit, and
you know, the head trauma thing gets close to home
(02:42):
for people who played sports like football and maybe did
MMA or boxing or something as well like I did.
And uh, I know for you you're a professional about this,
but but I imagine this was not an easy piece
to write, no.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
And I think what first attracted me to the topic
was I was the beat writer for the Crownie that
year in two thousand and eight, so this was back
when Kyle allowed reporters to watch practice to report on practice.
They often had practice at rice Cycles, So I have
vivid memories of walking down the long concrete you know,
(03:23):
tunnel down to practice and talking to guys. And Greg
was one of the guys that I talked to quite
a bit. And obviously I traveled the country, you know,
following that team that year they went undefeated. And Greg
was my age. We graduated at the same time. He
was in the Huntsman Center and his cap and gown
the same time I was that may you know nine,
And like so many other people, I forgot about Kreer
(03:49):
and and I think in our in our line of work,
you're you're usually instructed to write about the most tantilizing prospect,
the person or player with the highest ceiling, or just
the most skilled, intriguing player. And you know, when I
(04:09):
saw that Greg passed last May, I just felt compelled
like I needed to find out more. So this was
a reporting journey that lasted seventeen months in totality, and
it was really illuminating, heartbreaking on too many levels to
(04:30):
really count, and it was I just want to make
clear that I've had a lot of great feedback in
lieu of the article, and it's gotten so many, you know,
glowing reviews. But all of this is due to the
fact that Greg's family was willing to be transparent about
(04:50):
what he went through the last fifteen years. Because if not,
if they're not willing to sit down with me month
after month for over a year and talk about the
hardest stuff imaginable, this story doesn't get written and his
story doesn't get told. And like like I've said before,
you know, these guys once upon a time starred with
the brightest of lights shining on Earth, and a lot
(05:11):
of them their stories end in the dark. And I
wanted to kind of bring light into the darkness through
Greg's lens and the experience that he unfortunately had.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
So take me a little bit deeper into that the
you know, there's some details in the article, obviously, but
one of the maybe most pernicious things about the whole
CTE threat is that you don't know exactly how it's
going to manifest from one person to another. You don't
know when it's going to be most I guess acute.
(05:44):
You don't know what situations might exacerbate it might make
it worse, what substances people might use, or whatever. And
it seems like with Greg's story there was an interplay
of a lot of factors there. So in in this
particular case, when did the signs really start for Greg Newman?
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, and that Sean was like, among the most troubling
initial shock waves for me was a year after we
graduated from college. You know, his mom and sister started
telling me that that's when Greg started having symptoms, just
a year after he started playing football and ended his
college football career. And Greg, mind you, was, like most
(06:27):
every other football player in this country, started playing around
the age of ten, and you know, he was fortunate
enough to play through college, so he had a thirteen
year tackle football career, which might seem like a lot,
but it's not that out of the ordinary for kids
who go on to play college football, and the fact
that he started showing symptoms around the age of twenty
(06:47):
four was astounding to me, and to have them really
detailed the timeline of how these things manifested, with voices
starting to percolate in his mind, with severe bouts of
catatonia where he just would not be present for minutes
on end for talking to people who weren't there talking
(07:08):
to the wall. I mean is it was extremely difficult
to have to make you know, multiple loved ones relive
that because I mean, I think a lot of people
if they've experienced kind of the mental deterioration of a
loved one, whether it be through you know, Alzheimer's or
dementia or even in this case of Greg's with CTE IS,
(07:30):
it is among the most painful because that eventually becomes
that your memory, fair or not, remembers that version of
the person, and it's harder to remember the person they
were before the symptoms started. So for the past fifteen years,
Greg was on the downslope. The decline wasn't swift, It
took time. There were times where he had really good
(07:52):
stretches where he went five to six seven months with
you know, not too many episodes, and then there would
be times where it was just like this, this is
not the Greg that we know. And his family always
kind of believed in the back of their minds, like
because there's no, you know, serious history of mental illness
in their family, because he showed no signs of it
(08:13):
as a as a teenager and as a young adult
before he stopped stopp playing football, they felt like his
playing career had to do something with this, Like there,
it just made the most logical sense that for Greg
to change and to experience something so drastic and such
a short amount of time that like the likelihood was
the repetitive head trauma that he suffered during his playing career.
(08:35):
And you know, as you mentioned, we we still don't
know so much about you know, CTE, and it is
a it's a buzzword for a lot of people. Some
some fans have been very turned off by the prevalence
of it, and it's harder for them to watch football.
And then there's some fans who say it's an overblown
kind of you know, science talking point and to be
(08:57):
able to report the story firsthand for so long, long
over the last year, it's it is. It was, you
know really heartbreaking. But it's also interesting to meet too,
Sean that like, we don't we still don't know why
it affected somebody like Greg, and you know you talk
about that oh wait, Sugar Bowl defense. I mean they
had seven guys drafted, like Greg. Greg was the only
(09:19):
guy on that defensive line that started in the Sugar
Bowl that wasn't drafted. So many of those guys went
on to play five, six, seven, eight, ten years in
the NFL, and by all accounts, they're doing okay. So
where we find ourselves with the study of this trauma
and this disease is you know, they're they're doing a
lot better, but there's still so many unknowns. But to
(09:42):
hear about the day in, the day out, the weekly bouts,
the monthly bouts, and then just to see it kind
of descend into a state of mania over the last
fifteen years of his life was really difficult.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Uh, something that I at least want to bring to
the air because it was an important thing for me
to read in the article, which is probably a personal flaw.
I have mutual friends with Greg. We knew each other
in passing where social media friends, so to speak, and
we would occasionally chat like on Facebook. He followed my
fighting career, and I obviously was a big fan of
(10:17):
his when he played football and things like that. I
wasn't a real life friend of Greg, but I would see,
you know, you see posts, and again I'm telling on
myself here, but I would see what looked like, oh man,
he's losing it. This guy's on drugs. And the reason
I say that, and I admit that, is because in
(10:39):
the article it seems correct me if I'm wrong, but
it seems like that, like self medication actually was not
part of his journey until very late in this process
and long after I would have seen, or people maybe
who followed him on social media or whatever would have
seen and maybe assumed, like I shouldn't have assumed, but
I did, like, oh, you know, he's in New York
(11:02):
working for this bank. And then the next thing you
see is him posting stuff that makes no sense at
all and seems very delusional. And my immediate assumption was not,
oh ct, is this maybe the root cause of this
or you know, head trauma accumulated accumulated over years could
be affecting him. My assumption was, oh man, he's fallen
(11:25):
on substance abuse or something like that, and in the
article it seems like that wasn't the case.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
It was not the case. But it's interesting you say that, Sean,
when we talk about a story of this scope and
sky is like, believe it or not. I think the
story ended up around like thirty five hundred words, which
in sports journalism is like probably like way too long
for ninety nine percent of the editors. But this story
in reality could have been ten thousand words long, just
(11:54):
because of the amount of you know, powerful anecdotes and
things that people talk to me about. And one of
the most powerful things that was the hardest thing for
me to cut was the fact that after he died,
his sister Laura and brother in law Jeff got access
to his phone and they had assumed that, you know
(12:14):
a lot of people had kind of forgotten about Greg,
and you know, his teammates weren't checking in on him.
But when they went into his social media accounts, there
was just like endless scrolls of unread messages from friends
and former teammates asking what's like, what's going on? How
can I help? And Greg didn't read him because he
wasn't in the right frame of mind. And in the
(12:35):
last year of his life. That's correct, Like he started
self medicating when he was living on the street, but
it wasn't the first fourteen years of his unfortunate journey
through CT did not feature substance abuse issues. So that
was was was very hard to hear because the kind
(12:55):
of the idea of Greg's life ending the way it
did was so many fans forget about Greg. So many
teammates might have forgotten about Greg, and a lot of
people do. That's just the nature of the sport. College
football is so cyclical, especially in today's day and age,
that it's impossible to try to ask a fan to
remember one of the eighty five scholarship players or whatever
(13:16):
the number is now. It's changed so much. And I
understand that two thousand and eight now is much further
away than it was, you know, a few years ago.
But the fact that people were trying to reach out
to Greg, the fact that people were trying to like
get to him and they noticed this, but he wasn't
of sound mind enough to click on it and see
it and try to respond, is you know one of
(13:40):
you know, dozens of really heart wrenching anecdotes that come
along with the story.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And The reason I wanted to bring that up is
because I think that when we don't know the details
of how some of these things go, we assume the
wrong things and maybe attribute it to like some kind
of character flaw in the person. And I felt guilty
about that that, you know. I was like, first of all,
substance abuse, that like addiction issues, are their own illness,
(14:09):
and so I should be a lot more charitable than
those things as well. But it's like, I don't know,
I just I thought it was important to say because
there are people that will listen to conversations like this
or read arkirles like this, and they'll say, oh, well,
if you would have done this instead, if you hadn't,
if you hadn't been into drugs or hadn't been drinking,
then the brain would be able to withstand some of
(14:30):
that damage and stuff. And I wanted to because that
wasn't this, That's not.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
What this was.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Maybe it is for other people. For Greg Newman, that
was not the case. That was not the reason why
it went so south.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Well, and even if it was, Sean like, the common
denominator is the traumatic brain damage that forced Gregg's actual
chemical the tissue in his brain. It cost him to
change who he was over time, gradually, so much so
that you know, like you said, so, I think a
(15:03):
lot of people who knew Greg came across social media
posts in recent years and noticed that it wasn't just
it didn't just seem odd, it was gibberish. It was
beyond comprehension, and like, listen, i I've like had to,
you know, tell myself the importance of the story ad
(15:24):
nauseam over the last year. But like the anecdotes in
the story speak for itself, speak for themselves, and like
like here's Greg Newman, a starter on one of the
best stories in college football in the last twenty five years,
had a sack in the Sugar Bowl. Thirteen million people
watched his guy sack John Parker Wilson. And last year
he's home in his hometown in southern California, another unhoused
(15:48):
person with a with a big beard, trying to sell
pictures of dragons, and he drew thinking that it's going
to turn the time, thinking that the dragons might come
back to life, Like this is something that like people
need to understand that while we don't know the science
of why it affects some people and why it doesn't.
(16:08):
This is the toll it can take and once you
go down this road, even as you know, even as
a journalist, like it is hard to ignore this type
of stuff. Like this season, I'll just like be honest, like,
this football season will be different for me because I've
always been kind of the sports writer that takes pride
(16:29):
on not buying into the macho mentality of the sports
that I cover, football being the most obvious one because
it's the main part of my job. But this season
will be different because I've seen up close what this
can do to somebody at such a young age. I mean,
these things were manifesting in Gregg at age twenty four.
There are probably some twenty four year olds going to
There are twenty four year olds playing college football this year,
(16:50):
so this is this is a very sensitive issue. It's
an important topic, and I think the fact that Greg's
family was willing to talk to me through all the
painful stuff that they went through and saw Greg go
through only will hopefully shine light on who Greg was
as a person before the symptoms started, as well as
(17:13):
what happened to him afterwards, because both things need to
be told.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I'm gonna ask you a really unfair question, but how
how should a story like this and unfortunately there's thousands
of them? Probably, how should a story like this affect
our relationship with what has become America's past time? I
mean it is football is our passion now and not
(17:38):
just college football, NFL football, Little league football, et cetera.
How should how can we be responsible as fans and
also realistically not just cut football out of our lives
because most of us won't. Again, it's an unfair question.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Well, based on the folks that be you that I
talked to, like doctor and McHugh's on the cutting edge
technology of CTE study, Like she said, really, the only
way you find a way to eradicate this is by
eliminating contact sports. And this is a specific to football.
Football is the easiest one because it's the most obvious one.
But you know, my colleagues at the Times a few
(18:19):
years ago ran maybe the hardest series that I've ever
had to read, and it was a series of teenagers
and people in their twenties who were diagnosed with ct
who played high school football, high school soccer, high school hockey. Like,
this is not specific to football. It is usually more
specific to football, but you're never going to get rid
(18:41):
of it. It is going to be up to the individual.
It's going to be up to the parents. Really, at
the end of the day, Greg's mom, Yvonne, who was
you know, amazing throughout this whole process, just said that,
you know, in her opinion, she would love to be
able to see kids not play tackle football so they
get to the high school level and see how that goes.
(19:06):
I don't think that's realistic in this country, just because,
like you said, it's a cultural component. It is who
we are. But it would be cool to be able
to have kind of a coalition of some sort or
an independent group of people, former players, current players, doctors, whomever,
(19:27):
to be able to really talk through the impact this
can have on young people, because we're seeing it impacting
people younger and younger. Whereas I think when CTE first
started percolating, you know, you know, fifteen twenty years ago
with the Concussion movie, like, it was a lot of
folks who you know, were in their fifties and sixties,
(19:49):
and you know, then Junior sau came along, and the
Aaron Hernandez case came along, and we're just seeing this
in younger people. So I'm not the right person to ask, Sean.
I just think, like it would be nice to be
able to have people tackle this no pun intended like
issue on a more grandiose level. But it's it's difficult
(20:09):
because you're talking about a billion dollar entertainment industry and
it dominates our air waves unlike any other sport we
have in this country. And like, I think you can
make an argument that second secondary to politics, football is
like the second most talk of that thing in the
news cycle, like twenty four to seven. So yeah, I
just hope that Greg's story gets gets read by people,
(20:31):
and and that people can understand the toll that the
that it can take on some people, and the fact
that you know, to your point, not assume if somebody
is going through something and and just try to you know,
try to figure it out, try to think outside the box,
so to speak.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Uh, this is several years ago now, but we had
at the time the head of the Boston Brain Bank
on the show I was doing, and talked about, you know,
there's no way to diagnose this while someone's alive, and
this is all post mortem, you know, autopsy type stuff
where you discover whether or not somebody's brain shows the
signs of CTE. Do we know if we're any closer
(21:15):
to finding a I guess, a living test to determine
whether ct is present in a human.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
It sounds like, based on some reporting from folks in
the science department at the Times, in recent years, they
are getting closer to a potential blood test or brain scan.
But the pathology behind CTE is so intense and so
invasive that you know, you're you're basically studying pieces of
(21:42):
the brain that you've cut over a year's worth of time,
which is which is you know, takes a lot of time.
So I hope so I would imagine that we'll get
there eventually, But I don't think if there's I don't
think there's currently anything around the corner.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
The the technology of helmets is different. Those dummy caps
or whatever they're called that you pointed out in the
article are now they're kind of ubiquitous. I mean, everyone's
wearing them at least for practices, and some guys wear
them in competition. Do we know the science on how
significant the difference those will make.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
We do not yet. I mean the Guardian caps only
burst on the scene A couple of years ago, and
I think you can correct me if I'm wrong, Sean,
But I think coaches in general have really toned down
practice like live drills anyways. So I think you would
have to like get hard data from from people who
are wearing them in games, because that's when you literally
(22:40):
can't like slow down, like the whole purpose is to
either run away from the person or to bring that
person down to the ground by any means necessary. So
I think the guardian caps are positive, but I just
don't know what kind of data they'll have with the
near future.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
What's the next will you take another venture into this?
Particular to.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
I, it's you know, it has been a heavy load,
to say the least, because like you just you don't
you just take so much time, your due diligence goes
into something that lasts like this for over a year.
And to be able to do it as a pleasure
and it's a privilege, and it's it's definitely going to
go down as one of my most rewarding stories. But uh,
(23:25):
it takes an emotional toll, especially as a parent. Now,
you know, I'd be lying if I said like it,
Like there were times where I would be sitting there
with this family and like, you know, myself get choked
up and you just get you It's human nature to
see somebody describe some of the hardest days or years
of their life and just sit there and be stoic.
I'd like to pretend like I am a very stoic
(23:47):
person that I might present that way outside, but it
was it was a heavy lift. So I'm I'm probably
going to take a break and venture back into the
realm of silliness for a while just because I need,
I need to uh lighten it up a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Has the Utah football community done right by the Newman family?
Speaker 3 (24:06):
I think so, because you know, they were part of
the family. Was invited to the reunion that Slide put
together in April. Not everybody showed up. I mean, it's
been almost twenty years now, but they did an interview
with Yvonne and Greg's sister Laura. As part of the
presentation for folks who were there, they gave the family
(24:28):
that they're cool Letterman jackets and signed a team ball
and gave it to his mom, who has it displayed
in her home along with Greg's frame number fifty six
years from the Sugar Bowl these are this is a
tricky thing. I mean, the family wanted to make clear
from day one that they don't blame Utah. They don't
blame anybody at the school. This is a byproduct of football,
(24:51):
and Greg believe it. Like Greg would later tell his
mom that he wished he hadn't played football. But when
you're a nineteen to twenty three year old kid who's
really good at something, it's impossible to tell somebody, hey,
you might be really good at this, but it's probably
in your best interest to stop doing it. And if
you know, another interesting part of the story is like
(25:11):
Greg horus hamstering leading up to the Combine in nine,
considering how good Utah's defense was in nine, Like Greg
definitely would have been an undrafted free agent at minimum
going into that camp because even though he was undersized,
he was a big guy. He probably got could have
got another look at a different position. But yeah, this
is this is a tricky subject, and you know, they
(25:32):
wanted to make clear that, you know, nobody's to blame.
This is just the reality that can befall somebody who
played football, and unfortunately it hit Greg.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Well, I could talk to you for another twenty minutes
we're up against it. I appreciate you giving us the time.
Another incredible piece. I appreciate everything you do. You're one
of the best in the business. And thanks man, really
really incredible stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Thank you, Sean. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
That's great, Camaraie of the Athletic the article. As James
said earlier, he found his place in the world through football,
but CTE would lead to fifteen years of suffering. It's
it's a really well executed piece about Greg Newman, who
was an important part of that Sugar Bowl defense. I
know that, you know, the hardcore Utah football fans actually
(26:22):
will not have forgotten Greg at all because he was
He was the one of these things is not like
the other. He was the guy without the NFL body
who was giving you big time production on that Sugar
Bowl team.
You were listening to the Sean O'Connell show, Friends of
Murdoch Hyundai Studio of ESPN seven hundred and ninety two
one half am.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Number three of the Shawn o'connells Show. Welcome Back Utah
is number one sports talk. You're home of the Utes.
Question is still out there your breakout players for the
year on offense and defense for the University of Utah.
I want you to get on the record before Kyle
Whittingham starts his post practice media availabilities during camp and
(00:52):
says so and so is having a great camp so far.
This guy really impressed me. Hopefully they'll be a true friend.
Schman or two that cracked the depth chart that is
usually promising for the pipeline. You don't want too many
of them, though obviously offensive and defensive. Eight breakout players
eight seven seven, three five three zero seven hundred at
(01:12):
real oc Sports. If you want to tweet at us.
Hopefully you took some time as I suggested, you should
to go read the Chris Camaradnie article about Greg Newman,
former Utah football player who is unfortunately no longer with
us after he passed. The cause of death was multiple
(01:33):
organ failure because of a I think you pronounced a
kre tome excessive use of kraton or however you say it,
a stimulant. He had been he'd been dealing with some
mental health issues, and it seems like in hindsight a
lot of those may have been exacerbated by CTE and
(01:57):
Chris did a really I think X piece of writing,
but also an important piece of writing for all of
us who are huge fans of college football, and most
of you listening probably at one point at least we're
huge fans of Greg Newman and his work as a
member of that Sugar Bowl defense. Chris com Ronnie the
Athletic joins us. Now I'm the Sean O'Connell show. Hey, Chris, welcome,
(02:18):
How are.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
You, Hey, Sean? How's it going? Man? Thanks for having me?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Well, I appreciate you taking the time to join us.
I appreciate you. You know, I'm a big fan of
your writing. Uh, And we've got to know each other
a little bit, and this is, uh, this was I
think the hardest piece I've had of yours to read
for me because I knew Greg a little bit, and
you know, the head trauma thing gets close to home
(02:42):
for people who played sports like football and maybe did
MMA or boxing or something as well like I did.
And uh, I know for you you're a professional about this,
but but I imagine this was not an easy piece
to write, no.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
And I think what first attracted me to the topic
was I was the beat writer for the Crownie that
year in two thousand and eight, so this was back
when Kyle allowed reporters to watch practice to report on practice.
They often had practice at rice Cycles, So I have
vivid memories of walking down the long concrete you know,
(03:23):
tunnel down to practice and talking to guys. And Greg
was one of the guys that I talked to quite
a bit. And obviously I traveled the country, you know,
following that team that year they went undefeated. And Greg
was my age. We graduated at the same time. He
was in the Huntsman Center and his cap and gown
the same time I was that may you know nine,
And like so many other people, I forgot about Kreer
(03:49):
and and I think in our in our line of work,
you're you're usually instructed to write about the most tantilizing prospect,
the person or player with the highest ceiling, or just
the most skilled, intriguing player. And you know, when I
(04:09):
saw that Greg passed last May, I just felt compelled
like I needed to find out more. So this was
a reporting journey that lasted seventeen months in totality, and
it was really illuminating, heartbreaking on too many levels to
(04:30):
really count, and it was I just want to make
clear that I've had a lot of great feedback in
lieu of the article, and it's gotten so many, you know,
glowing reviews. But all of this is due to the
fact that Greg's family was willing to be transparent about
(04:50):
what he went through the last fifteen years. Because if not,
if they're not willing to sit down with me month
after month for over a year and talk about the
hardest stuff imaginable, this story doesn't get written and his
story doesn't get told. And like like I've said before,
you know, these guys once upon a time starred with
the brightest of lights shining on Earth, and a lot
(05:11):
of them their stories end in the dark. And I
wanted to kind of bring light into the darkness through
Greg's lens and the experience that he unfortunately had.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
So take me a little bit deeper into that the
you know, there's some details in the article, obviously, but
one of the maybe most pernicious things about the whole
CTE threat is that you don't know exactly how it's
going to manifest from one person to another. You don't
know when it's going to be most I guess acute.
(05:44):
You don't know what situations might exacerbate it might make
it worse, what substances people might use, or whatever. And
it seems like with Greg's story there was an interplay
of a lot of factors there. So in in this
particular case, when did the signs really start for Greg Newman?
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, and that Sean was like, among the most troubling
initial shock waves for me was a year after we
graduated from college. You know, his mom and sister started
telling me that that's when Greg started having symptoms, just
a year after he started playing football and ended his
college football career. And Greg, mind you, was, like most
(06:27):
every other football player in this country, started playing around
the age of ten, and you know, he was fortunate
enough to play through college, so he had a thirteen
year tackle football career, which might seem like a lot,
but it's not that out of the ordinary for kids
who go on to play college football, and the fact
that he started showing symptoms around the age of twenty
(06:47):
four was astounding to me, and to have them really
detailed the timeline of how these things manifested, with voices
starting to percolate in his mind, with severe bouts of
catatonia where he just would not be present for minutes
on end for talking to people who weren't there talking
(07:08):
to the wall. I mean is it was extremely difficult
to have to make you know, multiple loved ones relive
that because I mean, I think a lot of people
if they've experienced kind of the mental deterioration of a
loved one, whether it be through you know, Alzheimer's or
dementia or even in this case of Greg's with CTE IS,
(07:30):
it is among the most painful because that eventually becomes
that your memory, fair or not, remembers that version of
the person, and it's harder to remember the person they
were before the symptoms started. So for the past fifteen years,
Greg was on the downslope. The decline wasn't swift, It
took time. There were times where he had really good
(07:52):
stretches where he went five to six seven months with
you know, not too many episodes, and then there would
be times where it was just like this, this is
not the Greg that we know. And his family always
kind of believed in the back of their minds, like
because there's no, you know, serious history of mental illness
in their family, because he showed no signs of it
(08:13):
as a as a teenager and as a young adult
before he stopped stopp playing football, they felt like his
playing career had to do something with this, Like there,
it just made the most logical sense that for Greg
to change and to experience something so drastic and such
a short amount of time that like the likelihood was
the repetitive head trauma that he suffered during his playing career.
(08:35):
And you know, as you mentioned, we we still don't
know so much about you know, CTE, and it is
a it's a buzzword for a lot of people. Some
some fans have been very turned off by the prevalence
of it, and it's harder for them to watch football.
And then there's some fans who say it's an overblown
kind of you know, science talking point and to be
(08:57):
able to report the story firsthand for so long, long
over the last year, it's it is. It was, you
know really heartbreaking. But it's also interesting to meet too,
Sean that like, we don't we still don't know why
it affected somebody like Greg, and you know you talk
about that oh wait, Sugar Bowl defense. I mean they
had seven guys drafted, like Greg. Greg was the only
(09:19):
guy on that defensive line that started in the Sugar
Bowl that wasn't drafted. So many of those guys went
on to play five, six, seven, eight, ten years in
the NFL, and by all accounts, they're doing okay. So
where we find ourselves with the study of this trauma
and this disease is you know, they're they're doing a
lot better, but there's still so many unknowns. But to
(09:42):
hear about the day in, the day out, the weekly bouts,
the monthly bouts, and then just to see it kind
of descend into a state of mania over the last
fifteen years of his life was really difficult.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Uh, something that I at least want to bring to
the air because it was an important thing for me
to read in the article, which is probably a personal flaw.
I have mutual friends with Greg. We knew each other
in passing where social media friends, so to speak, and
we would occasionally chat like on Facebook. He followed my
fighting career, and I obviously was a big fan of
(10:17):
his when he played football and things like that. I
wasn't a real life friend of Greg, but I would see,
you know, you see posts, and again I'm telling on
myself here, but I would see what looked like, oh man,
he's losing it. This guy's on drugs. And the reason
I say that, and I admit that, is because in
(10:39):
the article it seems correct me if I'm wrong, but
it seems like that, like self medication actually was not
part of his journey until very late in this process
and long after I would have seen, or people maybe
who followed him on social media or whatever would have
seen and maybe assumed, like I shouldn't have assumed, but
I did, like, oh, you know, he's in New York
(11:02):
working for this bank. And then the next thing you
see is him posting stuff that makes no sense at
all and seems very delusional. And my immediate assumption was not,
oh ct, is this maybe the root cause of this
or you know, head trauma accumulated accumulated over years could
be affecting him. My assumption was, oh man, he's fallen
(11:25):
on substance abuse or something like that, and in the
article it seems like that wasn't the case.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
It was not the case. But it's interesting you say that, Sean,
when we talk about a story of this scope and
sky is like, believe it or not. I think the
story ended up around like thirty five hundred words, which
in sports journalism is like probably like way too long
for ninety nine percent of the editors. But this story
in reality could have been ten thousand words long, just
(11:54):
because of the amount of you know, powerful anecdotes and
things that people talk to me about. And one of
the most powerful things that was the hardest thing for
me to cut was the fact that after he died,
his sister Laura and brother in law Jeff got access
to his phone and they had assumed that, you know
(12:14):
a lot of people had kind of forgotten about Greg,
and you know, his teammates weren't checking in on him.
But when they went into his social media accounts, there
was just like endless scrolls of unread messages from friends
and former teammates asking what's like, what's going on? How
can I help? And Greg didn't read him because he
wasn't in the right frame of mind. And in the
(12:35):
last year of his life. That's correct, Like he started
self medicating when he was living on the street, but
it wasn't the first fourteen years of his unfortunate journey
through CT did not feature substance abuse issues. So that
was was was very hard to hear because the kind
(12:55):
of the idea of Greg's life ending the way it
did was so many fans forget about Greg. So many
teammates might have forgotten about Greg, and a lot of
people do. That's just the nature of the sport. College
football is so cyclical, especially in today's day and age,
that it's impossible to try to ask a fan to
remember one of the eighty five scholarship players or whatever
(13:16):
the number is now. It's changed so much. And I
understand that two thousand and eight now is much further
away than it was, you know, a few years ago.
But the fact that people were trying to reach out
to Greg, the fact that people were trying to like
get to him and they noticed this, but he wasn't
of sound mind enough to click on it and see
it and try to respond, is you know one of
(13:40):
you know, dozens of really heart wrenching anecdotes that come
along with the story.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And The reason I wanted to bring that up is
because I think that when we don't know the details
of how some of these things go, we assume the
wrong things and maybe attribute it to like some kind
of character flaw in the person. And I felt guilty
about that that, you know. I was like, first of all,
substance abuse, that like addiction issues, are their own illness,
(14:09):
and so I should be a lot more charitable than
those things as well. But it's like, I don't know,
I just I thought it was important to say because
there are people that will listen to conversations like this
or read arkirles like this, and they'll say, oh, well,
if you would have done this instead, if you hadn't,
if you hadn't been into drugs or hadn't been drinking,
then the brain would be able to withstand some of
(14:30):
that damage and stuff. And I wanted to because that
wasn't this, That's not.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
What this was.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Maybe it is for other people. For Greg Newman, that
was not the case. That was not the reason why
it went so south.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Well, and even if it was, Sean like, the common
denominator is the traumatic brain damage that forced Gregg's actual
chemical the tissue in his brain. It cost him to
change who he was over time, gradually, so much so
that you know, like you said, so, I think a
(15:03):
lot of people who knew Greg came across social media
posts in recent years and noticed that it wasn't just
it didn't just seem odd, it was gibberish. It was
beyond comprehension, and like, listen, i I've like had to,
you know, tell myself the importance of the story ad
(15:24):
nauseam over the last year. But like the anecdotes in
the story speak for itself, speak for themselves, and like
like here's Greg Newman, a starter on one of the
best stories in college football in the last twenty five years,
had a sack in the Sugar Bowl. Thirteen million people
watched his guy sack John Parker Wilson. And last year
he's home in his hometown in southern California, another unhoused
(15:48):
person with a with a big beard, trying to sell
pictures of dragons, and he drew thinking that it's going
to turn the time, thinking that the dragons might come
back to life, Like this is something that like people
need to understand that while we don't know the science
of why it affects some people and why it doesn't.
(16:08):
This is the toll it can take and once you
go down this road, even as you know, even as
a journalist, like it is hard to ignore this type
of stuff. Like this season, I'll just like be honest, like,
this football season will be different for me because I've
always been kind of the sports writer that takes pride
(16:29):
on not buying into the macho mentality of the sports
that I cover, football being the most obvious one because
it's the main part of my job. But this season
will be different because I've seen up close what this
can do to somebody at such a young age. I mean,
these things were manifesting in Gregg at age twenty four.
There are probably some twenty four year olds going to
There are twenty four year olds playing college football this year,
(16:50):
so this is this is a very sensitive issue. It's
an important topic, and I think the fact that Greg's
family was willing to talk to me through all the
painful stuff that they went through and saw Greg go
through only will hopefully shine light on who Greg was
as a person before the symptoms started, as well as
(17:13):
what happened to him afterwards, because both things need to
be told.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I'm gonna ask you a really unfair question, but how
how should a story like this and unfortunately there's thousands
of them? Probably, how should a story like this affect
our relationship with what has become America's past time? I
mean it is football is our passion now and not
(17:38):
just college football, NFL football, Little league football, et cetera.
How should how can we be responsible as fans and
also realistically not just cut football out of our lives
because most of us won't. Again, it's an unfair question.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Well, based on the folks that be you that I
talked to, like doctor and McHugh's on the cutting edge
technology of CTE study, Like she said, really, the only
way you find a way to eradicate this is by
eliminating contact sports. And this is a specific to football.
Football is the easiest one because it's the most obvious one.
But you know, my colleagues at the Times a few
(18:19):
years ago ran maybe the hardest series that I've ever
had to read, and it was a series of teenagers
and people in their twenties who were diagnosed with ct
who played high school football, high school soccer, high school hockey. Like,
this is not specific to football. It is usually more
specific to football, but you're never going to get rid
(18:41):
of it. It is going to be up to the individual.
It's going to be up to the parents. Really, at
the end of the day, Greg's mom, Yvonne, who was
you know, amazing throughout this whole process, just said that,
you know, in her opinion, she would love to be
able to see kids not play tackle football so they
get to the high school level and see how that goes.
(19:06):
I don't think that's realistic in this country, just because,
like you said, it's a cultural component. It is who
we are. But it would be cool to be able
to have kind of a coalition of some sort or
an independent group of people, former players, current players, doctors, whomever,
(19:27):
to be able to really talk through the impact this
can have on young people, because we're seeing it impacting
people younger and younger. Whereas I think when CTE first
started percolating, you know, you know, fifteen twenty years ago
with the Concussion movie, like, it was a lot of
folks who you know, were in their fifties and sixties,
(19:49):
and you know, then Junior sau came along, and the
Aaron Hernandez case came along, and we're just seeing this
in younger people. So I'm not the right person to ask, Sean.
I just think, like it would be nice to be
able to have people tackle this no pun intended like
issue on a more grandiose level. But it's it's difficult
(20:09):
because you're talking about a billion dollar entertainment industry and
it dominates our air waves unlike any other sport we
have in this country. And like, I think you can
make an argument that second secondary to politics, football is
like the second most talk of that thing in the
news cycle, like twenty four to seven. So yeah, I
just hope that Greg's story gets gets read by people,
(20:31):
and and that people can understand the toll that the
that it can take on some people, and the fact
that you know, to your point, not assume if somebody
is going through something and and just try to you know,
try to figure it out, try to think outside the box,
so to speak.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Uh, this is several years ago now, but we had
at the time the head of the Boston Brain Bank
on the show I was doing, and talked about, you know,
there's no way to diagnose this while someone's alive, and
this is all post mortem, you know, autopsy type stuff
where you discover whether or not somebody's brain shows the
signs of CTE. Do we know if we're any closer
(21:15):
to finding a I guess, a living test to determine
whether ct is present in a human.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
It sounds like, based on some reporting from folks in
the science department at the Times, in recent years, they
are getting closer to a potential blood test or brain scan.
But the pathology behind CTE is so intense and so
invasive that you know, you're you're basically studying pieces of
(21:42):
the brain that you've cut over a year's worth of time,
which is which is you know, takes a lot of time.
So I hope so I would imagine that we'll get
there eventually, But I don't think if there's I don't
think there's currently anything around the corner.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
The the technology of helmets is different. Those dummy caps
or whatever they're called that you pointed out in the
article are now they're kind of ubiquitous. I mean, everyone's
wearing them at least for practices, and some guys wear
them in competition. Do we know the science on how
significant the difference those will make.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
We do not yet. I mean the Guardian caps only
burst on the scene A couple of years ago, and
I think you can correct me if I'm wrong, Sean,
But I think coaches in general have really toned down
practice like live drills anyways. So I think you would
have to like get hard data from from people who
are wearing them in games, because that's when you literally
(22:40):
can't like slow down, like the whole purpose is to
either run away from the person or to bring that
person down to the ground by any means necessary. So
I think the guardian caps are positive, but I just
don't know what kind of data they'll have with the
near future.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
What's the next will you take another venture into this?
Particular to.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
I, it's you know, it has been a heavy load,
to say the least, because like you just you don't
you just take so much time, your due diligence goes
into something that lasts like this for over a year.
And to be able to do it as a pleasure
and it's a privilege, and it's it's definitely going to
go down as one of my most rewarding stories. But uh,
(23:25):
it takes an emotional toll, especially as a parent. Now,
you know, I'd be lying if I said like it,
Like there were times where I would be sitting there
with this family and like, you know, myself get choked
up and you just get you It's human nature to
see somebody describe some of the hardest days or years
of their life and just sit there and be stoic.
I'd like to pretend like I am a very stoic
(23:47):
person that I might present that way outside, but it
was it was a heavy lift. So I'm I'm probably
going to take a break and venture back into the
realm of silliness for a while just because I need,
I need to uh lighten it up a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Has the Utah football community done right by the Newman family?
Speaker 3 (24:06):
I think so, because you know, they were part of
the family. Was invited to the reunion that Slide put
together in April. Not everybody showed up. I mean, it's
been almost twenty years now, but they did an interview
with Yvonne and Greg's sister Laura. As part of the
presentation for folks who were there, they gave the family
(24:28):
that they're cool Letterman jackets and signed a team ball
and gave it to his mom, who has it displayed
in her home along with Greg's frame number fifty six
years from the Sugar Bowl these are this is a
tricky thing. I mean, the family wanted to make clear
from day one that they don't blame Utah. They don't
blame anybody at the school. This is a byproduct of football,
(24:51):
and Greg believe it. Like Greg would later tell his
mom that he wished he hadn't played football. But when
you're a nineteen to twenty three year old kid who's
really good at something, it's impossible to tell somebody, hey,
you might be really good at this, but it's probably
in your best interest to stop doing it. And if
you know, another interesting part of the story is like
(25:11):
Greg horus hamstering leading up to the Combine in nine,
considering how good Utah's defense was in nine, Like Greg
definitely would have been an undrafted free agent at minimum
going into that camp because even though he was undersized,
he was a big guy. He probably got could have
got another look at a different position. But yeah, this
is this is a tricky subject, and you know, they
(25:32):
wanted to make clear that, you know, nobody's to blame.
This is just the reality that can befall somebody who
played football, and unfortunately it hit Greg.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Well, I could talk to you for another twenty minutes
we're up against it. I appreciate you giving us the time.
Another incredible piece. I appreciate everything you do. You're one
of the best in the business. And thanks man, really
really incredible stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Thank you, Sean. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
That's great, Camaraie of the Athletic the article. As James
said earlier, he found his place in the world through football,
but CTE would lead to fifteen years of suffering. It's
it's a really well executed piece about Greg Newman, who
was an important part of that Sugar Bowl defense. I
know that, you know, the hardcore Utah football fans actually
(26:22):
will not have forgotten Greg at all because he was
He was the one of these things is not like
the other. He was the guy without the NFL body
who was giving you big time production on that Sugar
Bowl team.
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