Saying goodbye to Junior Seau, hopefully for the last time

Yahoo! Sports

Thu Jan 14 08:15am EST

Saying goodbye to Junior Seau, hopefully for the last time

Junior Seau (notes), who spent his Jordan-with-the-Wizards years with the New England Patriots, is again retiring from professional football. Personally, I love the guy, but if he attempts to have another to have another big, elaborate retirement press conference, someone should give him a wedgie. You only get one.

As you may recall, this is not Junior's first retirement. For the first, he had a big, fancy, well-decorated room and gave a long speech about he was "graduating," as opposed to retiring. It was all really sweet, until four days later, when he signed with the New England Patriots. Junior chose to call it "graduate school," but since he was a shadow of the player he was once, I looked at it like "repeating the 12th grade."

Seau spent his gravy years with the Chargers, who drafted him in 1990. He made his first Pro Bowl in 1991, and then made the next 11. His playing style in his younger years was unmistakable. Before every play, we was always hopping around like he was hooked up to a wide-open Red Bull IV. He was up at the line of scrimmage, twitching and shaking, trying to time the snap count. If he was on your side, he was terribly fun to watch.

Then the Dolphins got him for three years, and the Patriots got him year-to-year for three more, but he wasn't the same guy. He wasn't useless, of course -- far from it. He just wasn't an every down player and wasn't the athlete he once was.

These days, Junior has a show on Versus where he travels around doing various sports jobs, like caddying for a golfer or being a cornerman for a UFC fighter. Also, he gets run over by bulls.

Thanks for a terrific career, Junior. We'll see at at your Hall of Fame induction in five years, and I'm sure you won't make yourself scarce in the meantime.