(RNN) – A former NFL linebacker has declined enshrinement into the Montana Football Hall of Fame, disavowing the sport and saying concussions have left him “depressed” among other effects.
Corey Widmer played 114 NFL games with the New York Giants between 1992-99. That followed a four-year college career where he starred at Montana State.
Now 49, Widmer told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle: “I’d never want to give somebody the impression that football is safe and that the injuries are short term. They’re not. I’m proof of that.”
He told the paper he was now “depressed to the Nth degree.” He cautioned that while outsiders might see the money and fame as worth the long-term cost, he says, “I just tell them to watch what they wish for.”
Widmer added: “If someone could’ve explained all of this to me when I was 14, I would’ve given it all back in a heartbeat. I would’ve wished for something else.”
Widmer’s Giants went 11-5 in 1993 and won their first-round playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings. He played 11 games that season. He started all 16 in 1997, when they again made the playoffs, making 68 tackles.
He retired in 1999. That same year Sports Illustrated named him the fifth-greatest sports figure in Montana’s history.
Nearly 20 years later, the state’s football hall of fame was set to honor him alongside eight others, including Casey FitzSimmons, who played seven seasons with the Detroit Lions from 2003-09.
Widmer told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle he suffers from twitching, occasional gets overwhelmed by crowds, has spotty memory, and frequently experiences “frustration, anger, irritability.”
He said it has affected his relationships.
Widmer said the idea of going to the ceremony and accepting the hall of fame jacket would make him “probably puke.” He said he decided to stay away rather than make “some political statement” and cast a shadow over the ceremony.
Rick Halmes, the chairman of the group that founded the hall of fame a few years ago, told 406 MT Sports: “It’s his choice. We just talked about it and said if he’s uncomfortable with this and he wants to sit this one out, let’s let him.”
Widner told 406 he wants to keep kids out of football now. He said full-contact youth football numbers “should be zero.”
“I can’t even be associated with it,” he said of football. “Honest to God, if you gave me a million dollars a year to talk about football, I’d pass it up. I could use the money, but I wouldn’t touch it with a thousand-foot pole.”
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