Former Dallas Cowboys RB Tony Dorsett Is Losing His Mind

[Birnin Zana]

Tony Dorsett Is Losing His Mind

Unexplained fits of rage. Forgetting where he was yesterday. A Dallas Cowboys great begins to discover the price of football.

By Zac Crain From D Magazine February 2014 Photography by Elizabeth Lavin

COLLISION COURSE: Dorsett, photographed in his home December 19, 2013, faces his old, battle-scarred helmet

Dorsett grew up wanting to be a running back like his older brothers at Hopewell High School in Alquippa, Pennsylvania. But he wasn’t like them. He was better. What pushed him further than Melvin, Ernie, Tyrone, and Keith—to three All-American selections and the Heisman Trophy in 1976, to the Cowboys and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1994—was his mind. He studied his playbook until he was prepared for every outcome. He visualized himself in every situation, until he felt like he’d already been through it.

“And your recall is like—bam—nanoseconds,” he says. “Bam.”

Do you remember? Tony Dorsett does.

But even if you were inclined to lazily resort to cliche and say he remembers this play from 30 years ago like it was yesterday, you can’t. Because Dorsett doesn’t remember what he did yesterday. He has days where he wonders how he got here, from a steel town outside of Pittsburgh to a spot in the Cowboys’ Ring of Honor. On the worst days, he literally wonders: How did I get here?

By 2009, it had become a daily struggle for Dorsett. The practice fields and gyms he had been taking his daughters to all their lives—now he had to stop and ask for directions. A roomful of people he “had been around for a zillion years”—now they were almost strangers, familiar faces with no names attached, the vague familiarity making it worse.

“To be, you know, to be—sometimes, man, I would get—it’s the weirdest feeling, man,” he finally settles on. “When I’m out there, I’m on a cloud. It’s like a fog, man. It’s like a fog. That’s the only way I can explain it. I can’t get out of it, and I know—it’s just a weird feeling, dude. I hate it, and I get really, really—and that can make me get real frustrated, if I’m not careful. I get mad at myself for certain things. Not knowing how to get certain places, forgetting where I’m going, driving somewhere then forgetting where I’m going. That kind of craziness, man. So I’ve learned to write notes. Or speak into my phone, write notes on it. Write it down.” He never makes a move unless he has written it down in the planner he keeps at home.

In October, Dorsett boarded a plane bound for Los Angeles. But when he sat down, he couldn’t remember where he was going, or why.

He was going to have his brain tested.

Maybe doctors won’t know for sure until they have his brain under a microscope. But do you want to tell him he doesn’t have it, or that two decades on a football field didn’t cause it? That no one knows why he started yelling at his daughter out of the blue, or why he can’t remember on a Wednesday that the Cowboys played the Chicago Bears on a Monday? Do you need to? Maybe if you’re handling his insurance claims. Maybe if you want to believe that a sport as violent as football doesn’t exact a cost.

Damn...

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