Bears’ McClellin not thinking about future health

Rookies don’t have time to ponder the NFL’s health and safety issue.

“Just block it out,” Bears first-round draft choice Shea McClellin said Sunday when asked how he deals with it.

McClellin and other Bears prospects were glad to do so as they frolicked through a weekend of rookie minicamp.

Otherwise they could be concussed just from reading the papers, listening to sports-talk radio or cruising the Internet.

Concussion chatter escalated recently when 20-season NFL player Junior Seau committed suicide. Many assume that he suffered from football-related head trauma.

But nobody knows for sure yet whether the troubled Seau’s troubles were due to football blows to the brain or a combination of life experiences.

To me, the most chilling aspect of the Seau chapter has been that his family had to ponder whether to donate his brain to science.

First they would. Then they wouldn’t. Then they decided but delayed an announcement.

Yikes!

What an ordeal for a family to endure.

There’s a disconnect between former players, a couple thousand of which are suing the league over concussions, and future players who can’t wait to hit and be hit.

“I think for us rookies coming in,” McClellin said, “you just have to take it as is. We’re new so we can’t say much about the situation.”

Silence on the subject was golden on this day, which blended nicely with the blue skies and green grass. Nobody wondered, at least not out loud, what color a concussion is.

McClellin and the other new kids on the block-it-out are so eager to make this team and play this game that you would think they were interviewing for something less dangerous like, say, clergyman.

Most of them have had NFL dreams for years, and McClellin already has signed a contract worth more than most of us — some of us combined, actually — will be paid in a lifetime.

But money is only a part, however big or small, of the equation for rookies.

The bigger deal is just putting on an NFL uniform. It’s running through the tunnel with 60,000 fans cheering or booing. It’s the ecstasy of victory and even the agony of defeat.

Many men my age and probably a few women would exchange everything they have accomplished in life to play one professional football game. I’m saying doctors and lawyers and, yes, even a few clergymen would.

That was the case when the potential danger was walking with a limp later in life. It’s still the case when brain damage is added to the list of consequences.

Who thinks about these matters at age 22 especially? Certainly not McClellin, not after being drafted in the first round by the Bears and becoming one of the wealthiest men in his home state of Idaho.

“No,” McClellin said when asked whether he worries about his future well-being. “They’re making better helmets to deal with concussions.”

It’s as simple as that for NFL rookies. Most figure there’ll be a cure for brain damage before their careers end.

In America today if you can play in the NFL, you play in the NFL, unless you’re Jeff Samardzija and pitching for the Cubs is an option.

“I’m here to play football,” McClellin said matter-of-factly.

I almost felt guilty raising the subject of health and safety to Shea McClellin just to satisfy my curiosity.

After all, NFL rookies don’t want to hear such talk.

mimrem@dailyherald.com