Days away from the start of Oregon football, the game brings joy, anticipation and grief

Football has a broken side. Yesterday at William Jewell College, which happens to be Dan Lanning's alma mater, junior running back Micah Jo Burnett collapsed on the sideline after scoring a touchdown against Fort Lewis in the first quarter, taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead.

Barnett was 20 years old.

Meanwhile this week the British Medical Journal released a study that revealed that at least one in four NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had the degenerative brain disease CTE. The brains of 235 were examined with evidence of CTE found in 216, 91%.

Do the risks of the game challenge its beauty and excitement?

Football kills people. It's a sport full of pageantry and rich history but it can be deadly for the participants with documented dangers to their long term health and well-being. College football players can make millions now, but a portion of them will leave the game wrecked and ruined, impaired for life.

Fans love the game but hate some of its risks and realities.

A week ago Autzen Zoo and The Oregon Fan Show conducted an exclusive interview with Ken Goe, for 44 years a sportswriter at the Oregonian, recently retired. Goe covered several Olympics, assigned to both Oregon State and Oregon football in stints over his long career.

He wrote a series of brilliant, crisply-written stories about the 1994 team and the Ducks' dramatic win in the Civil War that year, receiver Cristin McLemore taken by golf cart to receive treatment in the second half, hand puffed up to twice its size after being crushed between two helmets.

"They needed to get X-rays and and that was, in the prehistory of college where that equipment wasn't available at the stadium," Goe said. "So Oregon State's people actually put him on a cart and took him across campus to where they actually had X-ray machine to get the X-ray taken. So, I guess he was driving across campus through the crowd which was heavily Beavers and there was a lot of stuff going back and forth, but the Oregon State people actually rushed him there, got the X-ray taken, found he was good to go, rode him back again through all the fans to the to the game."

Bandaged up and warding off insults from passing Beaver fans, McLemore returned to the field to catch a long pass in Oregon's final drive. Dino Philyaw's 19-yard scamper with a screen pass sent the Ducks to their first Rose Bowl in 37 years as PAC-10 Conference Champions.

While Goe spent a long career depicting the glory and drama of the game, he also experienced first-hand its cruelty.

His son Justin suffered a brain injury during a high school football game while a sophomore at Rex Putnam, delivering a hit on a bigger player while filling in for the varsity on the kickoff team.

"He and I bonded pretty early on because of his love of sports. His first word was ball. So that sort of gives you an idea. And he was a a pretty good athlete. Not, he wasn't going to be a major college player or anything or a probably a professional player, but he was a good for his level always, little league, Babe Ruth, freshman level of high school."

"As a high school sophomore they pulled him up to the varsity against Lake Oswego which at that time Lake Oswego is still a power but they definitely were then."

"And he got knocked around pretty good in that game. He was complaining of a headache the next week and we asked him to go talk to the trainer about it. I don't think he ever did. And then the the next week they were playing a a junior varsity game against Sunset and he made the tackle on the kickoff and then came off the field complaining about his head and then collapsed and he uh nearly died there on the sidelines."

"Fortunately, they had the trainer picked up on it really fast and they had a paramedics there and they got him to OSHU and had an emergency surgery for a subdural hematoma. That was a scary time because the surgeon at the time told us that if he recovered completely, if he had a full recovery from that, it would be a miracle. But then he said, 'I believe in miracles.'"

Justin spent two months in the hospital, the first two weeks in OHSU.

"He was in a coma, medically induced coma to try to let the brain swelling go down. Actually removed a part of his skull so the brain could swell without it being constricted and putting pressure on the brain stem. And then in a rehab at Emanuel's rehab center, he had to relearn everything. How to walk, uh, how to speak, how to eat. I mean, it was just had to start over, basically."

"But he did. After six weeks, he was able to return to school."

"His recovery probably took two years probably before he he got to the point where he he wasn't recovering anymore. And he never was able to play sports again. But he graduated on time with his class."

"He wasn't mentally disabled in any outward sort of way. But one of the side effects of of having a brain injury like that often is depression. And he did battle depression later in life. And then he lived at home with us. He didn't ever really hold a job for a super amount of time."

"He basically always worked, but the jobs didn't last. And he was working as a food delivery driver."

Time passed. Justin fell behind his classmates and friends, who were building careers and starting families.

"My wife and I went down to Southern California where one of our grandsons was graduating from college. And while we were there, back the day after the graduation, I got a call from a deputy sheriff saying he'd had some really bad news and they had found Justin dead at home."

He was 38, a popular kid with a sarcastic wit and a ready smile, but some hidden darkness and regret. He loved music, movies and sports.

"He had overdosed. He he'd been with some people and they offered him something and he did a very stupid thing and took it without knowing what it was and it was laced with fentanyl and so he was part of that fentanyl epidemic."

Football didn't kill Justin, but the aftermath of a limiting brain injury set him on the path of depression and experimenting with recreational drugs. I asked Goe if he felt any bitterness toward the game.

No, he said, because over his long career he also seen the way sacrifice, discipline and courage had done many great things in the lives of the men who played it.

When Justin was in the hospital, the entire Lake Oswego team came to visit. Rick Neuheisel, the coach at Washington at the time, sent over a signed helmet.

Within a few days after his death, his sister Courtney and some close friends had raised money for a memorial bench in Risley Park, the Oak Grove neighborhood park where Ken taught Justin to hit a baseball.

The inscription on the bench reads, "Justin Donald Goe, March 22, 1985- May 6, 2023. Justin played in this park like it was his backyard."

Ken remembers something his son used to say, "Always be kind. It might make a difference in someone's day."

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