Lendale White was a monster in the backfield at USC. Reggie Bush was the headliner, but White totaled a remarkable 57 touchdowns for the Trojans with his bruising and relentless style of running.
The Los Angeles Times did an extensive feature detailing White’s plight. From his glory days at USC, to a four year stint in the NFL, White describes a morbid reality of how football ravaged his body.
White estimates he sustained 20 to 30 concussions, about one every other game. But he can’t be sure. Only one was diagnosed, he says.
“You lose consciousness and then all of a sudden it’s like shoooo-ooooof,” White says, making a slurping noise, his eyes growing wide as he described the sensation. “Like, that’s how it sounds, like shhhhhhloooof, and then all of a sudden you hear the play again.” He’d wander around in a haze, Young directing him to the right spot until he regained his senses.
His head throbbed. His body ached. When his career began to slide, he slipped into a funk. Pain pills, he found, dulled the misery.
“And I don’t mean like popping a pain pill because I’m hurt,” White says. “I mean popping scripts. Like 10 Vicodins at a time type [stuff]. You know what I mean? To feel it, like I’m high. To feel the numbness.”
The piece went on to further detail White’s struggles with depression.
The mental pain was worse. (Anita White Taylor, LenDale’s mother) sat him down and talked about depression. She’d gone through bouts, too, she told him. She asked him to see someone. She saw a commercial about the brain injury chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, on television. She begged him to get checked out. She asked him: Why don’t you find something else to devote your life to?
“He told me, ‘Mom, football is all I know,’” Taylor says. “‘That’s all I know.’”
After retirement, football wrecks havoc on the quality of life for it’s former players. Lendale hits on the unfortunate matter for many. Even with the discoveries of head trauma, football is still a means for many kids to escape their environment and provide for their friends and family. Hopefully things turn around for the better for Lendale.