Chicago sportscaster Mike Adamle has post-traumatic epilepsy, dementia and the symptoms of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the result of years playing football, he revealed in an interview with NBC-5 colleague Peggy Kusinski.
"It shook my world and it just got kind of a little bit worse sometimes every day," Adamle, 67, said in the interview, first broadcast Tuesday night.
The former Bears and Northwestern running back was to continue his discussion with Kusinski on Wednesday night’s broadcast.
Adamle has been off the air since March 13.
"(My doctor said) we see some things that are concurrent with CTE," Adamle said. "And I’m going, ‘What? How can you say that? I thought it was supposed to happen after you pass away.’"
CTE is a degenerative brain disease whose symptoms include confusion, mood swings, impaired judgment and eventually dementia.
Also this week former Titans tight end Frank Wycheck told a Nashville television station that he’s certain he has CTE, which has been linked to repeated brain trauma and diagnosed in hundreds of former football players. Several former players have been diagnosed posthumously with CTE, including Steelers center Mike Webster, Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler, Bears center Mike Pyle and Bears safety Dave Duerson, who committed suicide in 2011 at 50.
Adamle, a former running back, played in the NFL for six years, including the 1975 and ’76 seasons with the Bears. The Chiefs drafted him out of Northwestern in 1971. Adamle launched his broadcast career with NBC Sports in 1977, has held a variety of local and national TV roles and has been back at NBC-5 since 2004.
During the interview, Adamle thought back to one on-air recap of a Bulls game, when he said his brain felt like a "tidal wave coming in and the next thing I knew I was in the office," though he had finished the broadcast despite the attack.
It wasn’t the first time he had a "black-out" episode. As a Wildcat, Adamle was knocked out on a play he plowed into the end zone against Illinois. Reporters later asked how he did it. "I said, ‘What touchdown?’"
That reckless abandon carried over into the pros, particularly as a special teams gunner. "Our job was to break the wedge," he says in a video clip on NBC-5’s website. "Before the game started in the locker room, we painted rising sun flags on our chest. We had a little thing of sake. We went out there and it was like kamikaze planes. … We didn’t think anything about it. it was like, man, this is the greatest thing in the world: Take me off the battlefield, put me back in again, I can’t wait to break up the wedge again. Duh!"
Doctors convinced him that those hits eventually took a toll on his brain.
"It’s an accumulation," said Adamle, who couldn’t account for how many times he was concussed.
Adamle tried to resume his role at NBC-5 in March, but he had another seizure. The effects of his condition have limited what he can do each day — going to work is out of the question.
He can "take out garbage, sweep the floor. When you do that and realize that’s all can you do, you get really mad at yourself. You get really depressed and you have to go outside. I have to go run, I have to get out of here. This is nuts. (Bleep) this. … I know there are so many guys like that, former players," said Adamle, who added he wants to be the "poster person" for athletes living with CTE symptoms. "We’re not fun to be married to or not fun to see our kids watching that happen."
Adamle has seen an outpouring of support on social media. Longtime Chicago broadcaster Chet Coppock posted on Facebook, "my prayers go out to mike adamle … i’ve known this man’s man for almost 40 years … tonight on channel 5 mike will discuss the medical issues that have plagued him … i know what to expect. #PrayforMike"
"My guy!" Laurence Holmes, a WSCR-AM 670 radio host and NBC-5 contributor, wrote on Facebook. "And I’m glad he feels comfortable enough to talk about what’s going on with him …"
Adamle said he’s "no hero" but "there are a lot of us out here and there are a lot you can do to mitigate some of these things."
plthompson@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @_phil_thompson
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