Junior Seau

He was born Tiaina Baul Seau, Jr. in San Diego, CA, the last of five children of Samoan immigrants Tiaina and Luisa Mauga Seau. The family returned to American Samoa for a time, but settled again in the San Diego area for Junior's grade school years. The handsome teen later attended Oceanside High School up the coast, where he blossomed into an imposing all-around athlete in basketball, track and football and excelled equally in his schoolwork with a 3.6 grade point average. He won a scholarship to play linebacker for USC, and in his junior season, garnered an astonishing 19 sacks and first-team All-America honors. Declaring early for the NFL draft, Seau was selected fifth overall by the San Diego Chargers. He recorded 85 tackles during his rookie campaign and wowed footballs wags as a hybrid player whose quickness allowed him to take gambles and cover large tracks of ground to blow up plays. Logging 129 tackles and seven sacks in the 1991 season, he increasingly drew cameras with his ferocious zeal and tendency to showboat after big plays and made his first of 12 trips to the post-season Pro Bowl. He racked up a career-high 155 tackles during San Diego's Cinderella 1994 season. The team went 11-5 to win the AFC West and defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in a defensive battle in the AFC Championship game. In that game alone, Seau accounted for 16 tackles in spite of playing with a pinched nerve in his neck. The team advanced to Super Bowl XXIX where San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young torched them for 325 yards and six touchdowns in a 49-26 Niners win. But, established on a national stage, Seau had transcended local stardom and even took on advertising duties for his footwear endorsee Nike.The Chargers limped into the playoffs the next year, then fell into a run of sub-.500 seasons and, in 2003, traded Seau to the Miami Dolphins. After three injury-plagued seasons, he announced his retirement in spring 2006, but the powerhouse New England Patriots lured him back to football. Seau played a key reserve role in the Pats' undefeated 2007 regular season. But Seau's quest for a ring ended with the New York Giants' remarkable underdog win in Super Bowl XLII. After two more one-year deals with the Patriots and steady erosion of playing time, Seau retired again in January 2010. He tended to his entrepreneurial businesses and took a shot at TV work in 2009 as the host of short-lived Versus reality show "Sports Jobs" - but his retirement proved a troubled one. He struggled with insomnia and bouts of depression and made headlines with a domestic dispute and a strange accident in which his car went over a cliff. On May 2, 2012, his girlfriend found him dead in his home in what was ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He left no note but his method smacked of the 2011 suicide of NFL vet Dave Duerson, who requested his brain be studied. Many gleaned that Seau, with his suicide, was weighing into a contentious issue over whether the NFL had disregarded a pattern of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) diagnosed among former players. Seau's family donated his brain tissue to the National Institute of Health for further research. The Chargers retired his No. 55 jersey in their home opener of the 2012 season. In early 2013, the family released the NIH's report, which found that Seau's brain showed signs of CTE, and sued the NFL and helmet maker Riddell in California Superior Court in San Diego for culpability in Seau's death.By Matthew Grimm