Kyle Turley's fight for the mind

Former San Diego State tackle Kyle Turley works to overcome his own cognitive issues while raising a voice for retired NFL players.

It disturbs Kyle Turley, knowing how close he came.

While most would dare not believe they can understand Junior Seau's state of mind a year ago this Thursday, dare not attempt to solve the rationale why the retired Chargers linebacker ended his own life in an Oceanside community where he was so loved, Turley says he identifies with Seau.

He believes he knows where he's been. He's stood on that same ledge.

It took a phone call in a Nashville parking lot to save him.

“I've got young kids,” said Turley, a father of a 2-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son. “It's scary as hell. It keeps me up at night. It's something that weighs on me heavily.”

The retired All-Pro offensive tackle and former All-American at San Diego State has a message, and it's flagged as urgent. He takes two pills a day, morning and night, to control a mind he fears will prove degenerative over time. He fights intense impulses that unpredictably come and go. As for where all this is headed, he fears the worst.

What he doesn't want is to shove his cognitive issues into the dark, never to be talked about.

What he doesn't want is to accept a culture he perceived as problematic as it relates to concussions during his career.

He wants to have a conversation.

Is it football?

The 37-year-old Turley is a self-described outspoken Alpha male. He wears that label on a 6-foot-5, 250-pound frame riddled with scars from an extensive football career, including New Orleans, St. Louis, and Kansas City in the NFL.

The scars are his badges, so he doesn't complain.

Not about scheduled knee scopes or the roughly 30 bone chips that recently were removed from his left shoulder. He's proud of all that and all the others.

“The doctor said it looked like a snow globe,” Turley said of the shoulder in a phone interview this week from Nashville.

It's his brain that has him asking questions.

Special Report- Life After the NFL

Turley was diagnosed with two concussions in his NFL career, but after having learned what constitutes a concussion, he says there were many, many more along the way. One of the diagnosed ones knocked him out cold in 2003, he said, before he went on to play the next week.

The 1998 first-round pick says things got worse after the concussion. In particular, his bouts with vertigo became more frequent. Shades shield his eyes from light sensitivity.

This is not a tale of what football did to one man; such a thing cannot be proven. But Turley believes that is his story.

The closest thing to this in his family was his grandfather who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosishere (ALS), but even then, in himself, he sees something new.

“No one in my family has ever gone crazy and killed themselves or thought about that,” Turley said. “I have. It's not a thought that is fleeting. It's a thought that goes away when I'm on my medication, and the thought of doing a lot of crazy things as well and making unbelievable decisions.”


