After the Cheering Stops: An NFL Wife’s Story of Concussions, Loss, and the Faith That Saw Her Through

Feasel, the wife of former Seattle Seahawks center Grant Feasel, recounts her husband’s descent into alcoholism and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), in this disturbing story of what happens when the lights go off and the cheering stops. Grant Feasel played pro football from 1983 to 1992. During that time, it seemed as if Cyndy Feasel led a charmed life. She was a traditional Southern Christian woman married to an NFL center and long snapper. She joined NFL wives during games, wore a mink coat, and owned a lovely, but modest, house in Texas. But beneath the lights and glamour, Feasel’s life descended into an isolated domestic nightmare, shaped by her husband’s addiction, domestic violence, and CTE. Linked to the helmet-to-helmet collisions players experience in the NFL, CTE is a degenerative brain disease associated with aggression, impulse-control problems, and depression. Feasel’s tale is a stark analysis of the high cost of fame: hours-long pregame taping and rehabilitation rituals, frightening slams on the field, and drinks and painkillers back at home. Though not deeply introspective, Feasel’s memoir offers a searing moment-by-moment recounting of the horrors of codependency, domestic violence, and the ways addiction ravages the soul. (Nov.)