Due to the size and speed of today's football players, the kinetic energy they generate during hits can have long-term consequences. Here's my story.

My football career began at age 11 in 1970 when I suited up for the West Stockton Bear Cubs, the first Pee Wee Pop Warner team fielded in Stockton, Calif. Of the 29 kids on the team, three went on to sign NFL contracts in 1980 (myself -- sixth round, New York Jets; Jack Cosgrove -- eighth round, Seattle Seahawks; Pat Bowe -- free agent, Green Bay Packers).

During my third year of Pop Warner, I was hospitalized when I knocked myself unconscious during a tackling drill. The exercise was a needless bull-in-the-ring drill that was more of a gladiator competition for the coaches' amusement than a means of teaching useful techniques to young players.

The coaches had us form a big circle about 25 yards across and numbered the 40 of us 1 to 20 on each side. When your number was called, you and the player on the other side with the same number sprinted directly at each other and hit head-to-head.

Concussions followed throughout my high school career, though I never missed a game or practice. In my senior year, we went 11-0 and ranked No. 3 in California. I was selected to the All-America Top 100 Team.

I entered the University of Colorado on a football scholarship in 1976 as a 6-foot, 5-inch 235-pound defensive tackle, majoring in biology. I was a starter for three years and suffered a number of minor concussions, but I never missed a play except after leg injuries.

In 1980, I was drafted into the NFL by the New York Jets at 259 pounds. The Jets had me beef up to 275 pounds. I was cut at the end of preseason but was picked up by the San Francisco 49ers early in the regular season.

On my first play with the 49ers in the first quarter against Dallas, I suffered a major concussion but played the entire game. The trainers told me afterward I went through 25 to 30 smelling salts on the sidelines. They would give me a handful each time I came out, I'd pop a couple, clear the cobwebs and go back in. We laughed about it as I watched the game films the next day and didn't remember a single play. Still, I never missed a practice.

Early in my second season with the 49ers, a few weeks after my first knee surgery, I developed hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and underwent emergency surgery to put a shunt in my brain that would drain trapped spinal fluid. I turned 23 lying in intensive care at Stanford Hospital.

Four months after we won Super Bowl XVI my shunt failed while on a fishing trip to Mexico with my brother Mel. He brought me back to the states in a coma. I had back-to-back emergency brain surgeries 10 hours apart and was given last rites the next day. I also was given the hospital bills and ended up suing the 49ers for workers compensation.

For nearly five years I fought off creditors for the massive hospital bills while undergoing two more knee surgeries, including an experimental GoreTex ACL transplant. The workers comp case was settled in 1986, so at least my medical bills finally were covered.

That year I also returned to school at Sacramento State University to complete my biology degree. In 1987, while taking a full course load, I survived four more brain surgeries and several gran mal seizures, including a 55-minute seizure while sitting in organic chemistry class.

In 1990 I graduated at age 32 with a degree in biological conservation and have since been working as a wildlife biologist and environmental consultant.

Now 52, I suffer major short-term memory problems and have survived nine football-related emergency brain surgeries and multiple gran mal seizures. To combat seizures I take Lamictil, the sixth anti-seizure medicine I have taken due to horrible side effects from previous ones.

Over the years I have assembled an arsenal of coping mechanisms.

For 20-some years, I've written everything I do in Rite-In-The-Rain notebooks -- small waterproof notebooks I began using for field notes when I first became a biologist -- because I can't remember much of anything from day to day. I always carry one in my back pocket and write several pages a day, including the time and content of each phone call.

Every few days I review the prior week or so of notes to recall what I've done. I tell everyone I work with to never fear hurting my feelings if they have to remind me of an appointment. My home, truck and office are littered with Post-It notes. I set beeping reminders on my computer and phone, and still struggle to stay on top of commitments.

I also take fish-oil supplements, drink concentrated fruit and seaweed juices and take daily one-and-a-half hour treatments inside a pressurized chamber of pure oxygen to reduce inflammation in my brain and improve my memory.

Dr. Richard G. Ellenbogen, co-chair of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Medical Committee, contacted me last spring and asked me to share my suggestions as to how players' heads could be better protected.

Several of my recommendations are being implemented thanks to Dr. Ellenbogen and his fellow co-chair, Dr. H. Hunt Batjer, including the controversial new standards on helmet-to-helmet hits (although I would make the penalties much tougher). They truly are trying to change the culture of football to protect players, especially younger players who emulate what they see on TV.

I recently coordinated a meeting with Dr. Ellenbogen and Steve Reimers of the Hyperbaric Oxygen Medical Association in an attempt to get hyperbaric chambers installed in all NFL locker rooms.

In October, Nathan Stiles, a 17-year-old high school football star and homecoming king in Kansas, died of post-concussion syndrome after intercepting a pass and slamming his head on the turf during a typical tackle. He'd suffered a concussion earlier in the month during the homecoming game.

My heart goes out to his family and friends.

It's time we realize the human brain was not meant to be used as a weapon or repeatedly banged into the ground.

One of my suggestions that probably will never happen: Get rid of helmets. All the new technology makes one feel that much more invincible to injury.

I know I did.