RIP Rashaan Salaam

On December 5th just before 9pm, Rashaan Salaam was found dead in the parking lot of Eben G. Fine Park in Boulder, Colorado. The public park is located less than two miles away from Folsom Field, where Salaam starred as a running back for the CU Boulder Buffaloes football team around 20 years earlier. No foul play was suspected in his death, and Salaam's mother told USA Today that the Boulder Police department had found a suicide note. He was 42.

Salaam was awarded Heisman Trophy in 1994 and rushed for a school-record 2,055 yards while leading the Buffs to an 11-1 record and a victory in the Fiesta Bowl against Notre Dame. His professional career never lived up to expectations, as he battled injuries and drug use while bouncing from team to team in the NFL, XFL, and CFL.

As a former high school player from San Diego, I'd heard of Salaam well before the tragic news of his passing hit the national spotlight. He actually played for one of my school's main rivals, and it's inspiring to know that a player could go from a small high school to being named the best college football player in the entire country. It was an incredibly sad moment to hear of Salaam's passing, and one of the first thoughts that popped into my head was how similar this situation was to that of Junior Seau.

Both Seau and Salaam were born in San Diego and grew up in rougher areas of the county (Salaam in Skyline and Seau in Oceanside), and both were outstanding high school players in San Diego (Salaam actually still holds the county's record for career rushing touchdowns with 105). They both went on to have incredible college careers and made it to the NFL, and both unfortunately committed suicide in their early 40s. As is one of the most well-documented cases of the disease, Seau was diagnosed post-mortum with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head and discovered in many other former NFL players (I'll be writing a blog post or two on CTE in the near future). A major symptom of CTE is depression, and the nature of Salaam's death makes me fear that he may have had the disease, too. I'm sure Chris Nowinski and other folks over at the Boston University CTE center are already in the process of contacting Salaam's family to have the brain examined.

Unfortunately, CTE can only be diagnosed by looking at the brain post-mortum, and without his family's consent we'll never know if Salaam suffered from the disease. But as ugly a reality as it is, I think the diagnosis might give his family some solace in knowing what he was going through in the later years of his life, and it would increase the public's understanding and familiarity with the disease.

My condolences go out to Rashaan Salaam and his family. He was a true San Diego legend and one of the best running backs to ever play the college game. He won't be forgotten.