Suffering from cognitive issues, Tony Dorsett is touting ways to make the sport safer.

Cognitive issues mean ‘good days, bad days’ for Dallas great

The ballroom went as quiet as a locker room during a halftime speech. Tony Dorsett looked down at the podium, staring at nothing. He had not prepared his remarks or for this moment in front of what most would deem the toughest football coaches in America.

Dorsett needed to think. He needed seconds to gather his words.

Then he choked up.

“I… I have children,” he said slowly. “I have daughters. Young daughters. And now, I’m a grandfather. I have a grandson.”

Another long pause. “For a long time …”

Then Dorsett changed direction.

“Football is a great game,” he said. “If we make stupid decisions and we don’t make the right decisions, you’ll be in the situation like I am.”

That “situation” is one of the first diagnoses of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in a living football player.

CTE detection debate

Individuals with CTE experience cognitive difficulties resulting from repetitive brain trauma. Many neurosurgeons contend it can’t be diagnosed in a living person but can be found only by slicing open a brain postmortem. But researchers at UCLA believe that through brain scans and clinical evaluation, they can detect CTE in a living player, and the Dallas Cowboys’ Hall of Fame running back and one-time Super Bowl champion displays all the symptoms.

Again and again Tuesday, Dorsett told attendees of the Texas High School Coaches Association Convention and Coaching School in the George R. Brown Center’s George Bush Ballroom that he has good days and bad. The good days are when he can remember the name of everyone in the room. The bad days are when he can’t remember a single place he’s visited in the last 20 years.

He feels embarrassed if, on one of those bad days, he walks into a room of his friends and can’t remember their names.

But the worst aspect of CTE, what takes him to his tipping point, is life involving his family.

Dorsett wipes his eyes and sniffles.

“I didn’t know what I was going to say today, guys,” he says, “and I didn’t expect to be doing this.”

This isn’t an act. Although Practice like Pros founder Terry O’Neil goes all over the country giving his speech on how to make football practices safer by reducing contact, the organization usually includes a football player central to the location. Dorsett seemed the perfect man to talk, and he was.

One by one, coaches pulled out their phones, recording a motivational message they could replay to those they lead.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to walk my daughter down the aisle and know what the hell I’m doing,” Dorsett said. “I’m wondering if I’m going to get to see my grandson play football or play sports or do whatever he wants to do and if I can be there to support him and know what I’m doing.”

Dorsett, who as a Pitt senior won the 1976 Heisman Trophy, claims to have been knocked out cold at all levels of the game and that football badly affected his health. And speaking to the gathered coaches, he had the perfect audience.

“I just wanted to let you guys know that you as coaches have some responsibility and you need to protect those guys,” he said. “I’m bad, but I’m not real bad. I have a lot of good days. I think I have a lot of good days ahead of me.”

After Dorsett spoke, coaches crowded around him for a photo or just a moment with a man who at times during his talk had a distant look.

Baytown Christian athletic director Derek Martin realized Dorsett was part of the talk about 30 minutes before its start. He grabbed a seat in the front row and was the first to get a photo with him.

“I’ve been waiting for that moment since I was 7 years old,” Martin said.

Martin’s takeaway from the session was that everything Dorsett mentioned — safer tackling, healthier players — is possible.

Sense of humor intact

Dorsett still had a wit to him, saying, “No, you can’t tackle me,” to a coach walking toward a microphone to solicit Dorsett’s best advice to the coaches.

“We are tough people,” Dorsett said. “We are tough human beings. We can overcome obstacles and being in pain. You as a coach have to make them have an understanding that if they come to me with some type of a problem or injury, they don’t have to be afraid that yes, I’m going to bench them or move them down the ladder.”

Dorsett grabbed a paper towel, blew his nose and asked for another question, but the session had already run over.

“All right,” he said. “Have a great day.

“And I was just getting started.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to walk my daughter down the aisle and know what the hell I’m doing. I’m wondering if I’m going to get to see my grandson play football.” Pro Football Hall of Fame RB Tony Dorsett