Longford Leader columnist Mattie Fox: Ryan Miller’s sad story highlights need to stamp out head high hits

The global audience remember him as a massively powerful, 6ft 8inches broad shouldered giant, who could take on and charge past anything, or anyone in his way.

Yet, Ryan himself doesn’t remember everything clearly anymore. His brain is damaged from the many hits he took in his playing days.

This story is a frightening example of how sports can be allowed become so physical, that young men are seriously threatened, health wise, with the severest brain damage.

In Ireland many sports are extraordinarily physical - we have gaelic games, soccer, rugby along with less dangerous athletics.
Gaelic games and rugby are the ones most threatened.

Gaelic games are becoming more and more physical as players are conditioned out of all normality, whilst rugby looks already out of control.

Just look at any rugby player, nobody can claim that this is how natural physique develops. For rugby players, most are conditioned to become fearsome specimens, and it is hard to believe that nobody is taking supplements.

There are a few notable exceptions, such as Johnny Sexton, who still looks quite natural.

The same can be said of many gaelic players.

Back to Ryan Miller. This is a star lineman on a state championship team in high school, and for the University of Colorado Buffaloes, where he set a record for starts and minutes played. A wonderful article in The New York Times, by New Yorker Michael Powell, who is the Sports of The Times columnist, and a Polk Award and Pulitzer prize winner, inspired this story.

The picture above isn’t one you will see in any of the general columns about sport. This is a recent one, as he looks today.
Hits, concussive and subconcussive, have laid him low.

His head bursts at times, with nausea rising, he pleads “please shut off the lights, please”.

In 2017, preparing for an interview, Miller spent over an hour in a darkened room, breathing slowly. This he learned to do as part of his treatment to ease the pain.

Often, he’d get into his car and sit for hours, trying to remember where he intended to go.

He would walk into airports, and lights and noise caused him to curl up into a fetal ball.

He’s improved with therapy, and diet, and has lost a lot of weight.

He recounted to Michael Powell: “I don’t live as much in fear of what will happen next, and it’s been a year since I had the last seizure.”

The brutal nature of how NFL football has become well known. But for the period a player spends in college, in Miller's case including a tenure in the savage trenches of an offensive line, causes incredible damage and that raises an obvious question:
How can universities and other places masquerading under the banner of “higher learning” that are devoted to young minds, that in some cases spend millions of dollars researching the ill effects of brain injuries, justify running multi-million-dollar football machines that put those brains at risk of lifelong damage?

The University of Colorado has a better record than most on health, yet, former Buffaloes players have suffered brain and emotional damage, and some have even taken their own lives.

I realise that sport is something that is a free choice, but it’s time it was controlled in a responsible way.

That is not happening at the moment. Despite reams and reams of study, nobody at the top level of administration is listening. The silence is deafening.

In Ireland we had some deaths that were greeted with an eerie silence. Yet, anyone tuned in to reality would know that repeated concussive hits must have taken their toll. Guys noted for absorbing shocking physical abuse have in some cases died young, some quite suddenly. The sport concerned adopts silence.

Ryan Miller, asked did he get concussed? He shrugs. “A couple. It didn’t feel great”. He pauses, “I mean I always played the next game.”

Those who study concussions speak of a cumulative toll, like a woodpecker tap-tapping at a skull.

Miller was drafted 160th over all, by the Cleveland Browns. One year later he was in summer drills, took a hit and fell to the ground. He lay motionless and unconscious for five minutes before being strapped to a gurney and taken to hospital.

“It took me six months to feel normal again,” he revealed.

The Browns cut him loose, and he became a journeyman lineman, signing with San Diego, Denver, and Dallas.

He was in the Dallas camp when it happened again, on a move he had made a thousand times before. “Face to face,” he recounts…”A normal hit, just like high school or college.”

That night he phoned his wife, bawling hysterically, hanging up he began to vomit. “My head felt the most incredible pressure, like lava and sulphur coming out of my ears. It was like someone was hitting me with an anvil. I wanted to die. I thought I was dying.”

These days, he feels better, but sometimes in between times he feels like a zombie, staring vacantly.

Sport can be a highly uplifting experience, and rugby and gaelic are both a bit behind such stress in terms of hits.

Yet they are both increasingly being ramped up to dangerous levels. Administration in both codes should look more honestly at their own games, and see what’s going on. More and more head high hits are occurring. They must be stamped out.

I found Ryan Miller’s story sickening.