Concussions derailed the NFL career of wide receiver Austin Collie, and now that Collie has decided to walk away from the Canadian Football League, he’ll have more time to devote to concussion research.
Collie informed the British Columbia Lions that he is retiring, the team announced this week. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Collie lives in Utah and has been working with a concussion research clinic based in Provo, where he attended BYU.
Once a very promising young player, Collie had more than 50 catches and more than 500 yards in each of his first three NFL seasons. But he had a series of concussions, including one particularly ugly incident that left him motionless on the ground for several minutes, and NFL teams shied away from signing him.
Collie himself insisted that he was healthy enough to play and disliked the concussion-prone label, and he played fairly well at first when he went to the CFL. But now he’s walking away from the game, at the age of 30.
