The Best American Sports Writing 2015

by Wright Thompson

  Jerry and Gene Jones have helped the Library of Congress replace the books lost in an 1851 fire that destroyed two-thirds of Jefferson’s library. What Jones doesn’t say is that he and Gene routinely write checks, quietly, to people in need with one request: don’t tell anyone where you got the help. Publicly, they also donate millions of dollars to an array of charities in Texas, Arkansas, and beyond.

  I follow Jones downstairs to his pub room, with two taps (Miller Lite and Miller, the stadium’s $15-million-a-year exclusive beer sponsor) and a gargantuan projection flat-screen. “It’s fun,” he says. Next is the billiards room, fortified with painted footballs from the Cowboys’ glory years and framed photos. You can’t miss Troy, Emmitt, and Michael doing their thing, but I don’t see Jimmy (apparently there’s one). Over there is the wine cellar stocked with 1,300 vintages. Down a long hallway I notice a framed photo of Jerry, Gene, and Kevin Costner, all looking at least a decade younger. “Look at her,” Jones says, deadpan. “I’ve never seen Gene looking happier as she is right there looking at that other man.”

  We end up outside at the edge of the drive, gazing at the immaculately groomed gardens stretching far into the darkness. Jones points out the guest house, shielded by a stand of tall oak trees. His mother lived there until her death, in 2012, at age 90. For a few quiet moments, we stand side by side—me imagining what it must be like to have your mother living in a guest house in your backyard and Jones recalling, perhaps, the reality of that arrangement. As I begin to ask about his mother, Jones interrupts, saying, “Well, Don, I enjoyed this very much. But tomorrow is another day.” Over my shoulder, I see Roosevelt Riley standing down the circular driveway, the engine of Jones’s Lexus purring, as if my exit was arranged by some invisible force.

  “Take your drink with you,” Jones says and pats me on the shoulder.

  “Thanks for everything, sir.” I move down the circular driveway for the ride to my hotel. I stop, turn, and watch Jerry Jones walk back into his lit-up mansion. Tomorrow is another day, another season. His head down, his stride a beat slower but still purposeful, his right hand swaying his nearly drained tumbler. In that light, I’d swear, the glass of Blue is half full.

  TIM GRAHAM

  Broke and Broken

  FROM THE BUFFALO NEWS

  ORLANDO, FLA.—Those closest to Darryl Talley are terrified. His wife, daughters, and former teammates openly cry for him. They lament what has befallen him. They dread what his future might hold.

  Talley’s life is in tatters. Loved ones say his mind is deteriorating. He’s begrudgingly starting to agree.

  He’s 54, but his body is a wreck and continues to crumble. He suspects collisions from playing linebacker for 14 NFL seasons, a dozen with the Buffalo Bills, have damaged his brain. He’s often depressed beyond the point of tears.

  He’s bitter at the National Football League for discarding him and denying that he’s too disabled to work anymore. He says the Bills have jilted him too.

  He learned after he retired that he’d played with a broken neck.

  He had a heart attack in his 40s.

  He lost his business. The bank foreclosed on the Talleys’ home of 17 years. Against her husband’s pride, Janine Talley has accepted money from friends to pay the bills.

  He contemplates killing himself.

  “I’ve thought about it,” Darryl Talley flatly said last month on the patio of the house he and Janine rent. “When you go through the s—t that I’ve gone through, you start to wonder: Is this really worth it? Is it worth being here, worth being tortured anymore?

  “It would be just as easy to call it a day. But there are two reasons why I won’t. First of all, my parents didn’t raise a coward. The most important is I want to be around for my grandkids.”

  Bruce Smith is among those most frightened for Talley.

  Although they thrived alongside each other during the franchise’s glory days and consider themselves brothers forever, Smith isn’t willing to trust Talley’s rationalizations.

  “A moment of weakness, a moment of darkness, a moment of hopelessness,” Smith said from his home in Virginia. “Those are pretty powerful things that can come into play that makes one forget about how we were raised or what state we would leave the rest of the family and friends in.”

  Talley, like Smith and the rest of their mates from the Super Bowl era, maintain a mythological presence with Bills fans. They’re like superheroes leaping off the pages of a Marvel comic book. One of Talley’s trademarks was the Spider-Man ski suit he wore under his uniform.

  Buffalo’s football legends, however, are not indestructible cartoon characters. They are mortals, as we’ve been reminded through Jim Kelly’s cancer ordeal or 50-year-old Kent Hull’s death from liver failure in 2011.

  Talley is the first Bill from the Super Bowl years to disclose ominous mental, physical, and financial difficulties seemingly rooted in playing football.

  “I never thought this would be our life, but this is the reality of it,” Janine Talley said. She met Darryl at West Virginia University; they’ve been together 34 years. “I don’t see it getting any better. This’ll kill him one way or the other.

  “His mental issues have accelerated a lot in the last year. I don’t know what the future holds for either one of us. I don’t know if in a few years dementia will set in. I don’t know if I’ll be able to care for him.”

  Gabrielle Talley, the younger of their two daughters, said through tears, “Hope is not in abundance right now.”

  Other teams have suffered tragedies linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma.

  San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson, Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters, New Orleans Saints safety Gene Atkins, and Pittsburgh Steelers guard Terry Long are among Talley contemporaries who committed suicide and were found afterward to have CTE.

  “We’re talking about real tragedies of life,” Smith said. “Through Darryl, the Bills and their fans can actually identify a face with the problem now. It’s an ugly problem.

  “Hopefully this will never happen with Darryl, but we know what path Junior Seau went down. There are a number of other players that chose to take that route and not endure or get back on track.”

  The CTE Center, an independent academic research center at Boston University, explains on its website the disease “is associated with memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse-control problems, aggression, depression and eventually progressive dementia.”

  West Seneca native Justin Strzelczyk, a retired Steelers lineman, was in CTE’s early stages. He was only 36 when he died in September 2004 at the end of a high-speed police chase on the Thruway. Strzelczyk’s pickup truck collided with a tractor-trailer and exploded. He had been hearing voices.

  Talley has not been diagnosed with CTE. That can be determined for sure only through an autopsy, although advancements give researchers hope it can be detected in the living. A pilot study last year at UCLA indicated Bills Hall of Fame guard Joe DeLamielleure’s brain carried the abnormal protein characterized by CTE damage.

  There are dark clues surrounding Talley.

  “I’m not convinced that I’m dead yet,” Darryl Talley said. “But the future doesn’t look bright. People say these are supposed to be the twilight years of your life. When are they coming? The stars aren’t twinkling.

  “It’s the damnedest thing to think . . . to think that . . . it’s over? Not yet, but it’s close. I’m not ready to call it quits yet or phone it in.

  “But it’s just an unbelievable fight to deal with the pain.”

  A Warrior Laid Bare

  Talley’s street is under construction. He and Janine live in an area of Orlando called Doctor Phillips, about 14 miles from Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. From the main road, barriers and heavy equipment prevent a quick turn toward their home.

  Instead, you must take a detour down Bittersweet
Lane.

  All of this reads like a poetic metaphor, but it’s the truth.

  “You never had to worry about Darryl when we played,” former Bills linebacker Cornelius Bennett said. “He just threw caution to the wind and did whatever he had to do to play on Sunday.

  “I worry about him now.”

  Talley’s family and friends know how serious his issues have been. They’ve advocated for him. They’ve encouraged him to come forward and admit he needs support.

  A significant hurdle, though, is one of the undeniable traits that made Talley such a remarkable player, a two-time Pro Bowler despite an astounding list of injuries.

  Pride has kept Talley from speaking up, from accepting his circumstances, from seeking relief.

  Talley remained his typical, stubborn self until agreeing to sit down with the Buffalo News last month for an exclusive interview about his hardships.

  When told her father was hosting a reporter, Gabrielle Talley thought, There’s no way Daddy’s going to go for it. The 21-year-old predicted he would back out. Alexandra Talley, 27, didn’t want to discuss her father because she was too distressed over him.

  Bennett broke down in tears and called it “a shock” when informed Darryl Talley finally wanted to talk.

  “This . . . this . . . this . . . this just took me by . . .” Bennett said, his voice breaking. “For Darryl to talk about it and get help, to hear him say, ‘I want to get help, and I want to talk about it,’ that is the most . . . that is what it’s about.”

  The Talleys are nervous how people will react to their situation. Darryl is particularly uneasy about revealing that his brain isn’t working as well as it should, that his body won’t let him be the man he wants to be, that his business failed.

  Most of all, it has been difficult for him to concede the delicate spot his family is in.

  “I’ve struggled with the idea of speaking out,” Talley said in his favorite wicker chair, which allows him to sit for longer than a few minutes. His neck was rolled back and his legs fully extended, almost as if lying down.

  “If you tell people you’ve been concussed so many times and forget what you’ve walked into a room for, they’re going to go, ‘Oh, there’s a scarlet letter!’”

  His hope is to salvage a more tolerable future and to shine a light on the truth many former players face long after they have served their purpose to the NFL.

  Talley received the NFL’s total-permanent disability B plan, which pays $50,000 a year. The league ruled he didn’t file his paperwork in time to qualify for the A plan, which pays $120,000 a year. The Talleys contend he applied for his disability benefits in accordance with the collective-bargaining agreement that he played under.

  “When you’re done playing,” Darryl Talley said, “you’re like a piece of meat. They treat you like, ‘None of what you say is our fault. None of these injuries happened from playing football.’

  “They tell you whether or not you hurt. Ain’t none of them son of a bitches took a hit . . . took a knife cut.

  “None of us playing this game is normal. To compare an NFL player’s pain threshold to the average person who’s never done it? They’re going to tell me I don’t hurt?”

  Without naming names, Talley claimed to know several retired players who tanked their disability exams or lied throughout the process to gain full benefits.

  The doctor who evaluated Talley’s disability case ruled he was capable of working at a job where sitting or standing was required. A significant problem, Talley insisted, is that his body can do one or the other for only a few minutes at a time. He wondered aloud if some company would hire him to be a staggering receptionist.

  “I want to let everybody know what this has done to me,” Talley said. “A lot of people don’t have a voice. There are a lot of guys that didn’t say anything before they died.

  “Somebody’s got to ring the bell.”

  Behind Closed Doors

  A visitor to the Talleys’ ranch home wouldn’t detect anything amiss. Darryl and Janine reside in a prim gated community dotted with gorgeous palm trees. The front lawn is thick. Their backyard is on a golf course.

  Theo, their Shih Tzu–Maltese mix, rambunctiously trots around with a golf ball in his mouth, eager to play.

  Janine Talley confessed they don’t own this house, which is half the size of the one they were evicted from last year.

  The Talleys are tenants now. They’ve had to move twice in the past 17 months. Their credit is so nuked from the foreclosure and the failed business that their landlord required them to pay three months’ rent in advance. They didn’t have the money.

  Darryl Talley used to own superb credit. On just a signature, banks would lend him whatever money he needed for his business or personal needs.

  To move into their home, three old friends—Smith, Bennett, and Thurman Thomas—gathered the rent deposit and gave it to Janine without Darryl’s knowledge because they knew he would be too proud to accept it. When Darryl learned where the money came from, he cried.

  The Talleys are convinced their lives would be different if the NFL institution took proper care of its own.

  “It’s the most disappointing thing ever to go out and play and to stand up for that shield and then to have them f—k you the way they do,” Darryl Talley said. “I put team and league in front of everything, in front of my family.

  “Where are the team and league to back me up now?”

  Darryl Victor Talley’s toughness is unquestioned.

  He was a 146-pound linebacker with a 28-inch waist at Shaw High in East Cleveland. He played much larger, a sideline-to-sideline berserker.

  His nickname was Big Chief from his Native American bloodlines and resemblance to the One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest character. Both front teeth were knocked out when he ran into a telephone pole to catch a football in his neighborhood.

  Scholarship offers were limited because he played only 10 varsity games. A broken ankle kept his senior season to three games.

  Even so, West Virginia was amazed by Talley’s tenacity.

  He became WVU’s first consensus All-American in nearly three decades. The College Football Hall of Fame inducted him in 2011.

  The Bills drafted him 39th overall in 1983. He missed one game in 12 years for the Bills (not counting the three-game NFL strike in 1987) and five his entire career, which included one-year stops with the Atlanta Falcons and Minnesota Vikings before he retired in 1997.

  “The league is full of tough guys,” former Bills special-teams coordinator Bruce DeHaven said. “But if I had to go down a dark alley and could pick one guy to go with me, it’d be Darryl Talley.

  “I don’t know if he’s the best fighter, but I know two things: he’d have my back, and he’d stay there until they killed him.”

  Early in the 1990 offseason, Talley underwent surgeries on each elbow and one knee on the same day. He then had surgery to repair a torn meniscus two weeks before starting in the season opener.

  He recalled resetting his own mangled right ring finger after it got entangled in Miami Dolphins guard Keith Sims’s jersey and breaking his left middle finger so he could remove it from Los Angeles Raiders fullback Steve Smith’s face mask.

  Then there was the time Talley, while with the Vikings, walked six snowy blocks back to the hotel after knee surgery.

  Talley emits his infectious, warbling laugh when he blithely explains how he handled myriad injuries and 14 surgeries.

  But he and his wife were dumbfounded to learn during a 1998 postretirement NFL Line of Duty disability examination that years earlier he’d suffered a broken neck.

  He can remember only two major neck injuries: versus Washington in 1987 and Pittsburgh in 1991. Each time, the Bills’ medical staff cleared him for the next game.

  On the drive home from his Line of Duty exam, the Talleys phoned the Bills to request medical records pertaining to his neck. The Talleys said the Bills told them those files no longer exist.

 
The Bills declined to respond to the Talleys’ allegation about missing medical records.

  “Our alumni play a very important role in the Bills organization, and each individual is unique in his own way,” the Bills said in a statement to the News for this story. “Darryl Talley has always been one of our favorites throughout our storied history, but we believe, respectfully, that some of the accounts for this story are factually incorrect.

  “Additionally, the Bills organization is very proud to have assisted many former players, either personally or with their various endeavors, that dates back to the 1960s. The fact that our organization currently employs three of Darryl’s former teammates should also be noted.”

  The Bills’ statement didn’t impress the Talleys.

  “The Bills’ response is disappointing and comes off to me, Darryl, and our daughters as dismissive,” Janine Talley said. “We were specific, but they’re not specifying what they debate to be inaccurate.

  “Why would we lie?”

  Darryl Talley noted an NFL team wouldn’t draft a college prospect with X-rays that showed he once had a broken neck. Yet he’s convinced he played for Buffalo with that serious injury.

  “He loved being the person nothing could stop,” Gabrielle Talley said. “That man wasn’t stopping until a doctor or a coach told him he wasn’t allowed. Nobody ever did.

  “It’s the NFL culture. As much as I resent my dad for not having his own well-being in mind when he played, that’s what medical professionals are there for. Trainers and doctors went to school for that, to be the responsible voice of reason.”