Mike Webster

Early life

Webster was born in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, on March 18, 1952, the second of six children, and grew up on a 640-acre potato farm near Harshaw, Wisconsin. As a child he was a devoted Green Bay Packers fan who admired fullback Jim Taylor. When he was 10, his parents—both alcoholics—divorced, and a year later the family home burned down, leaving them temporarily homeless. Webster found refuge in sports, which gave him a sense of family.

He attended Rhinelander High School in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, earning awards in wrestling and track and field; one of his ears suffered permanent damage from being slammed on the wrestling mat. Because of farm responsibilities, he did not start playing football until his junior year. His head coach Dave Lechnir drove him home after practice so he could do his chores. Despite his late start, Webster quickly learned to command the offensive line and earned a football scholarship.

College career

After finishing high school in 1970, Mike Webster chose to play for the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was about 6'1" and 230 pounds when he started college, eventually adding weight to reach 255 pounds as a Badger. For three seasons he was the starting center, becoming team captain in his final year. He was named the team's Most Valuable Player and made the All-Big Ten squad. Webster also appeared in several all-star contests, such as the College All-Star Game, East-West Shrine Bowl, Hula Bowl, Senior Bowl, and the Coaches All-America Game.

Professional career

At 6 ft and 255 lbs, Webster was selected in the fifth round of the 1974 NFL draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He served as a backup at center and guard for two years while being mentored by veteran center Ray Mansfield. Webster became the team's starting center in 1976, where he remained for 150 consecutive games. He was the Steelers' offensive captain for nine years.

That streak ended in 1986 when he dislocated his elbow, causing him to sit out for four games. The Steelers won Super Bowls IX, X, XIII, and XIV, and Webster holds the record for most Super Bowl championships by a center. He was honored as an All-Pro seven times and played in the Pro Bowl nine times. An avid weightlifter, Webster played with bare arms regardless of weather to keep opponents from grabbing his sleeves; this technique, intended to reduce holding calls, eventually led teams and athletic suppliers to shorten jersey sleeves to the point they were nonexistent, and several teams' jersey stripes (including the Steelers') no longer went around the sleeve.

Webster became a free agent after the 1988 season and was signed by the Kansas City Chiefs, who initially made him an assistant offensive line coach before allowing him to return as the starting center. He played two seasons in Kansas City before announcing his retirement on March 11, 1991, after a 17-year career with 245 games played at center. At the time of his retirement, he was the last active player to have played on all four Super Bowl winning teams of the 1970s Steelers, and he had played more seasons as a Steeler (15) than anyone else in franchise history.

Webster's No. 52 has not been reissued by the Steelers since he retired. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him number 75 on its list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. The football stadium at Rhinelander High School is named Mike Webster Stadium in his honor. He was posthumously elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007.

Post-football life

Before he even left the NFL, Mike Webster was officially considered disabled. Once his playing days were over, he suffered from amnesia, dementia, depression, and severe pain in his bones and muscles. He often slept in his pickup truck or in train stations, bouncing between Wisconsin and Pittsburgh. Friends and former teammates offered to pay for apartments, but he kept vanishing for weeks at a time without telling anyone.

His behavior grew strange and restless; he was so agitated that he would use electroshock weapons on himself just to fall asleep. In his final years, his youngest son Garrett—still a teenager—moved from Wisconsin to Pittsburgh to take care of him. Webster’s wife, Pamela, divorced him six months before he died. He passed away from a heart attack at age 50 on September 24, 2002.

His body was cremated, and his ashes went to his ex-wife and their five children: two sons and three daughters. After his death, doctors diagnosed Webster with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease that destroys nerve tissue. He became the first former NFL player ever found to have CTE. Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic neuropathologist, studied brain tissue from Webster and eight other NFL players.

He found damage in all of them that looked like advanced Alzheimer’s or dementia, and also resembled the brains of boxers with “dementia pugilistica,” or punch-drunk syndrome. The NFL mostly ignored Omalu’s findings until 2009, when Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry was diagnosed with CTE after his death at 26. Today, Webster’s son Garrett runs the Brain Injury Research Institute in Pittsburgh, urging people with head trauma to donate their brains after death and advocating for players with conditions like his father’s.