Former Colt Ben Utecht deals with traumatic brain injury

Indianapolis Star
Karyn and Ben Utecht pose with their children Elleora, Amy Joan, and Katriel, in their Lakeville, Minnesota home, Wednesday, November 12, 2014.

LAKEVILLE, Minn. -- There is a love letter hidden somewhere in Ben Utecht's house.

It's a heartbreaking, agonizing missive he hopes his wife never reads.

He's asked her to open that letter only if what he fears most comes to pass. If his mind slips away to the unknown. If he no longer recognizes her face. Or the names of his three sweet daughters.

If he becomes oblivious that the world he's living in is his world.

I'm in here counting the days, while my mind is slipping away

I'll hold on as long as I can

Utecht, 33, was a tight end for the Indianapolis Colts when the team won the Super Bowl in 2006. He was a star at the University of Minnesota, offered a scholarship at the age of 16.

Football was a blessing for Utecht. And it was his worst curse. He suffered five documented concussions playing the sport he loved. He left the NFL in 2009, released after a season in Cincinnati with an injury settlement.

It was time to go. He had traumatic brain injury.

"It's unlike any other injury in the sense that it truly affects the soul," Utecht said. "Many doctors will tell you that the thing they fear the most is a neurological disorder or disease because it is the deterioration of the identity of a person."

Inside his Lakeville, Minn., home on a picturesque wooded lot of snow-covered trees, Utecht stutters at times as he talks. It takes him longer to get his words out. Sometimes, what he wants to say just doesn't come to mind.

He has long-term memory lapses, gaps in family history. When he's performing on stage, he forgets lyrics. They're songs he's been singing forever, but he now has to tape a paper with the words to the stage when he performs.

Utecht has been a musician his whole life; a member of five choirs in high school, singing national anthems at NFL games, playing the piano and guitar, classically trained and performing with symphonies. Now, with his football career behind him and the unknown ahead, he is throwing himself into his love of music full time.

He has an album, "Ben Utecht: Man Up," set to release in December. A single from that album, "You Will Always Be My Girls," is based on that hidden love letter.

It's what he wants his wife, Karyn, 5-year-old Elleora and 4-year-old twins Katriel and Amy Joan, to remember about his love for them, should he no longer be able to say it himself.

I may not remember your name or the smell of a cool summer rain

Everything and nothing has changed, nothing has changed

The song, for Karyn, is a heart-wrenching reminder of what may come in the future. It touched her the first time she heard it.

"It grew to have more of an emotional reaction for me as I realize ..." Karyn trails off.

As she realizes the husband who was her college sweetheart, that rugged, strong NFL star, may one day not be the same man.

Her dream man.

Karyn said she knew Utecht would be perfect for her the minute she laid eyes on him. She watched him sing the national anthem before she ever met him.

"I thought, 'Why can't I meet a guy like that?'" she said. "By God's grace, He let me."

And I will remember your smile and your laughter

Long ever after this moment is gone

Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri remembers Utecht always singing in the locker room when he played with the team from 2004-07.

"You can't really rag on a guy," he said with a smile, "when he sounds that good."

Vinatieri has talked to Utecht on the phone and that smile doesn't stay for long when he thinks about what Utecht is going through.

"It's tough when guys are putting their hearts into it," he said, "and get banged up like that."

Beyond the five documented concussions, Utecht thinks he endured more than he can count. "I really can't put a number on how many," he said.

His first concussion, though, he's sure came early. He was in middle school in Hastings, Minn. Like almost every player across the country at the time, Utecht was doing a drill called "bull in the ring." The drill has been around as long as football but it is now banned nearly everywhere.

Team members form a ring around a single player. The player in the middle shuffles, preparing for oncoming attacks. One at a time, players slam into him at full force. He is the target of blow after blow, and if he moves too slowly, the hits can be punishing.

After that first concussion, Utecht soon came to realize the symptoms all too well. There was the one in Cincinnati. He took a shot in practice from a blitzing linebacker during a regular offensive drill.

"And you know, my vision went blurry on the field, headache on the field," he said.

That night, he couldn't sleep and had horrible night sweats, completely drenching the sheets.

"I knew for sure. I sat up in bed," he said. "I remember thinking, 'Man, I have a concussion.'"

But instead of taking a break from football, telling the team he was out, Utecht played through it. He had already missed eight games with rib fractures and a torn plantar fascia in his foot.

"So I wasn't about to walk in the next day and say, 'Umm, I can't play,'" he said. "That's what players deal with at every single level. There is so much pressure. And there are some injuries that you can play through, absolutely. But not brain injuries."

Utecht knows now that he should have stopped. Should not have played through it. Maybe the brain trauma would have been lessened. Maybe he wouldn't be 33 and wondering what his life will be like 10 years from now, when his daughters are teenagers and need their dad the most.

You will always be my girls, you're the beauty of my world

No matter how tomorrow unfurls, you will always be my girls

The good news is Utecht hasn't been given a specific diagnosis of a progressive brain disease.

"That's an answer to prayer and it's one that I hope never comes," he said. "But my vulnerability and my openness comes out of what is to come."

He sees former players in their 40s and 50s diagnosed with devastating diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease of the brain that ultimately leads to severe dementia. He wonders if those repetitive hits to his head may one day mean Alzheimer's disease for him.

"I'm just thinking to myself, 'Man, if I have some of these minor things now?'" he said. "Sometimes, I just pray that it never manifests itself the way it has with some of these other unfortunate players."

Utecht tries not to dwell too much on what could happen.

"You can go down that path. I really try not to," he said. "We're a really faith-based family. I'm very much at peace with the future and what's in store."

But, of course, he does have lingering thoughts of what could happen.

"It definitely does make me sad to think about what they're going to have to go through if the worst ever happens to me down the road," he said. "What is that going to be like for them is more of my concern than what I'm going to go through."

His daughters hang on him. They call his name over and over — "Daddy look. Daddy, daddy look" — to watch their ballerina twirls and balloon bouncing. He sings to them every night before they go to bed.

"It feels like I am sleeping under the stars," Elleora said.

They know nothing of their dad's football injuries, his worries about his future.

"Honestly, I think that my focus for them is just to create the most loving environment that I can as a husband and a father," he said.

Karyn, a former Miss Minnesota, says they were once living a fairy tale life. Ben in the NFL, winning a Super Bowl. Karyn competing in the Miss America pageant.

"Sometimes I would have to pinch myself," she said.

And they still are living a fairy tale — just a different one. Love, devotion, family and for better or worse.

I can still feel you here in this place beyond all tears

Where love does what it does ... it stays

Utecht grew up, as he describes it, a river rat. Hastings is a small agricultural town located where the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers meet.

He also grew up the son of a Methodist minister. His family — parents, Jeff and Lori, and younger sister, Ashley — lived in a parsonage on the church parking lot.

Inside the home, the order went something like this: faith, family, music (his dad had gone to school to be a choir teacher and his mom is a classically trained singer) and, of course, sports.

Utecht played baseball, hockey and football, but he had a real knack for football.

He received a scholarship offer from the University of Minnesota at age 16, which was far rarer at the time. It came after Utecht played at a summer camp at the college.

He remembers that camp. All of it. He was 6-5 and weighed 205 pounds. Because his high school was so small, they used a rushing-dominant offense. That meant few chances for Utecht to catch the ball.

But he could catch the ball and showed it during that camp. One play in particular stood out to everyone who was there.

"They threw a fade route up along the sideline. I went up with this guy and I just completely jumped up and over him and just ripped the ball right out of his hands," Utecht said. "The wide receiver coach at the time just went screaming and running on the field and jumped on me."

Utecht was called into the office where then-head coach Glen Mason made the offer on the spot.

"It was a huge surprise. You come out of a really humble home when you're pastor's family," he said. "You have to do a tremendous amount of schooling in order to make a humble living."

His parents couldn't afford to help him much with college expenses, "so that was like a dream come true," he said.

He bought his mom, a family counselor, a Golden Gophers sweatshirt, presenting it to her with the news when he returned home.

"She just lost it, like sit down weeping," he said. "It was great."

But something happened to Utecht after that. That humble, river rat, pastor's kid wasn't so humble anymore.

"I was a pretty prideful kid, pretty arrogant for quite a while," he said. "Until, I believe, God used my injuries to really bring that humility to my life."

Seasons turned and turned again

Till they became remember when

The injuries. The conversation always seems to return to the injuries.

Utecht wants to make a difference, not only in brain injury research but in bringing awareness and changes to football at every level — from youth to the NFL.

If he had a son, he would not let him play football until he was at least in high school.

He wants a national organization created that oversees all of youth football. He wants that organization to create a high-level, non-contact football program.

He wants no contact for kids during the most developmental stages of their brains. He wants no contact for kids so their bodies — especially their necks — can be strengthened.


He's heard of parents being called weak for not letting their sons play football. All you have to do, he said, is go online and watch videos of people suffering from brain disease, what their families are going through.

"They're unrecognizable," he said. "And if you have parents that are calling out your children for being weak or you for being weak for keeping them out? Then, in my opinion, they're advocating for brain disease. And there is no way you can win that argument."

The love in your heart made this man complete

My Cinderellas you danced on my feet

Utecht has one thing that he wants heard. And he wants it heard loud and clear.

He has nothing against football and nothing against the NFL.

"I've been very careful. I want people to know that I love this game," he said. "I'm so appreciative of the NFL for the chance to play and the chance to give me a head start on life outside of football with my family.

"But it doesn't mean they can't do things better. It doesn't mean they don't need to find a way to take better care of our players."

There has been no criticism from the NFL, or anyone else for that matter, on Utecht's stance. On his platform. On his speaking out. On his testifying at Senate committee hearings.

He is the national spokesperson for the American Brain Foundation and the American Academy of Neurology. In April, he was awarded their 2014 Public Leadership in Neurology Award.

What Utecht brings to his position is a heartbreaking story that touches people — touches the scientists, the researchers, the politicians, said Catherine Rydell, chief executive of the academy.

They hear the medical jargon and statistics. But Utecht is the face, the real story.

When he received that award, he told his story in front of 1,500 neurologists, scientists and researchers.

"I can tell you," Rydell said. "There wasn't a dry eye in the place."

You're the only thing that matters, that matters to me

You will always be the ones I come running to

One in six are affected by brain disorders. That's more than 60 million people in America. Plenty of NFL players have become part of those statistics.

"You can't play football without concussions (so) I believe that a righteous organization would make sure that they take care not only of the past retired players but of their future players," Utecht said. "That they would take care of their brain health."

When you realize your brain is no longer healthy, it's devastating. That happened to Utecht when he was with the Colts in 2007. It was his fourth documented concussion. But this is one he doesn't remember getting.

"That's when I first noticed memory loss," he said. "My first serious bout of amnesia."

He has watched that concussion happen on camera. And still can't remember. The Colts were playing the Denver Broncos. It was halfway through the first quarter and Utecht ended up on the ground. A pursuing defender jumped over him and clipped the back of his helmet with his foot.

"It was not a hard hit. It was just a very specific hit and my head bobbed down," he said. "And the next thing you know, my whole body went limp."

Teammates surrounded him. He finally came to, got up and talked to players. He sprinted to the coaches on the sidelines and talked to them.

He remembers none of it. Not one second of it. His first memory of that game is halftime. The offseason after that game is when he and Karyn started noticing the subtle changes in Utecht's behavior.

"They were minor cognitive changes that were somewhat puzzling and frustrating," he said. "From memory retention, sometimes stuttering a little bit in speech or struggling to get out what you are trying to say. And even some memory gaps."

No matter how tomorrow unfurls

To the moment I am done with this world

Utecht had never been able to sing "You Will Always Be My Girls" to Karyn live. He knew he wouldn't be able to get through it. She listened to it for the first time in the car.

"She just lost it," he said. "It was tough. It was really hard."

And it's gotten harder.

Each time Utecht stutters. When he forgets the lyrics to songs he's sung a thousand times on stage. Or when he has to ask her to remember something for him.

Then, the words to that song are haunting. They are, after all, based on that love letter.

"I hope," said Karyn, "to never read that letter."

My yesterday babies in curls

You will always be my girls

Follow Dana Benbow on Twitter: @DanaBenbow.