RandBall: Brett Favre, Tommy Kramer and the uncomfortable price of football glory

At the end of a heartfelt and rather beautiful social media post on X on Wednesday, during which Tommy Kramer announced he had been diagnosed with dementia, the former Vikings quarterback said this:

“Thank you for all the support and always remember, ‘We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time.’”

The occasion for his announcement, which Kramer said came a year after his diagnosis, was a similarly grim revelation from another ex-Vikings quarterback. Brett Favre earlier this week, in the midst of a congressional hearing, said he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.

Favre is 54 and Kramer is 69. Both former quarterbacks played with a gunslinger’s mentality and took countless hits to the head — repeated blows associated with conditions like the ones they are now battling.

Favre also battled a painkiller addiction while Kramer was known as a hard drinker during his younger days but says he has been sober for about a year since his diagnosis.

Both QBs played during an era when far less was known about the consequences of head trauma. As more information has come to light and even with rules and equipment designed to make a violent sport somewhat safer, anyone associated with high-level football has had to come to terms with an uncomfortable question: Why keep going with this when we know what might happen?

The answer is nuanced, but Kramer cut to the point in his long tweet, which I talked about on Thursday’s Daily Delivery podcast.

“Please, no sympathy. I’ve lived a great life and wouldn’t change a thing,” Kramer wrote in part of his message. “Nobody wanted to win more than me and I never gave up, and that’s exactly how I’m going to battle this. Football is the life we chose to live and sometimes stuff like this can happen.”

Violent sports continue, yes, because fans still want them. A few players have walked away early.

But football continues to exist only because even with the knowledge of what might happen to them down the road, the ability to compete, achieve, win, earn millions, gain fame and live an amazing life for however long it lasts is enough to drown out the dark side of a distant future.

“It’s unfortunately part of our game,” Jets QB Aaron Rodgers said when asked about Favre, his former teammate. “That’s part of the risk of playing in the league, and we all in the back of our minds know that could be a reality at some point. We hope medicine at some point can catch up and either make the symptoms easier or eradicate some of these issues that we have.”

It’s an uncomfortable thought for a lot of us to digest. A lot of us are more risk-averse, aspiring to have good health for as long as possible — making trade-offs that might rob us of short-term good times when we are younger for the hope of being here a long time. Many of us earn our living with our minds more than our physical gifts. Almost all of us compete on a much smaller scale and earn far less.

Kramer played football the same way he has lived his life — and the same way many of us might want to live ours if we were being honest and had the chance: a little bit reckless, but with the understanding that the highest highs would make up for the lowest lows and leave space for no regrets whenever the end might come.