When the Last Lion Leaves: Tedy Bruschi to Announce His NFL Retirement

It's one of those funny old things, growing up a sports fan.

When you're a kid, athletes just don't seem real.

They pop in and out of your lives, flickering across the screen; four-inch-tall Adonises, larger than life.

Theirs is a world where you just play—where the lights don't go out and mom is never calling you home.

They play and play, and when it's all said and done, they go to Disney World.

You stand in your backyard and count down from five. You pretend to be them. You catch imaginary interceptions from imaginary quarterbacks to win imaginary Super Bowls.

You don't think about the other side. The sheer dedication. The losses, off the field and on. The time away from their family. The brutal side of the game, of life.

Your team never loses; it just runs out of time. There's no end to consider, no after.

You don't think about those things—things like strokes. You don't even know what that word means.

Yet for many in New England just growing up with that Patriot dynasty, their first real winning team, Tedy Bruschi became a very hard lesson.

I can't imagine the thoughts that went through his mind after suffering a stroke, a young man at the height of his athletic life. 

Just a week after playing with his kids on the turf before the Super Bowl, Tedy Bruschi was suddenly playing chicken with his own mortality, asking the questions that I can only imagine kept him up many nights.

Why did this happen? What do I do next? Did football cause this? Can I still play? What about my family?

Maybe his years in football caused him to have a stroke. Maybe not. I don't know that. But I know that when news broke of his stroke, everyone in New England suddenly realized how worthless a trophy can seem.

Now, new news is breaking. Tedy Bruschi, his ability no longer of equal measure with his desire, is surplus to requirements. Tedy Bruschi is retiring.

It's a funny old thing, growing up a sports fan; watching your Sunday heroes grow into real people with real problems, with ACLs that tear and bones that break and careers that end.

Call it a favor. Call it New England being nice and giving Tedy the dignity of choosing his own way to leave.

Call it what you want, but even the cynic in me has to give the guy credit for walking out the door instead of finding his name on a cut list.

Where his life goes from here is impossible to say. Maybe he'll "unretire." Maybe he'll take a well-deserved break.

Who knows? We only know where his life has been, where it has led him: to here, to now, to a place where football no longer needs him.

I'd call it a damn shame, but that's not the truth.

The truth is Tedy Bruschi no longer needs football.

It was lucky to have him, and there's no shame in that.