A decade and a half. That Chris Conte’s tolerance.

That is the amount of breathing and blood pumping the Chicago Bears safety is willing to forfeit for the sake of being on an NFL roster. His candor with Chicago’s WBBM radio prior to Monday night’s game against the New Orleans Saints — one for which Conte did not dress due to injury — was surprisingly blunt and goes against every natural self-preservation instinct in the human condition.

Whatever his reason, the fourth-year player out of Cal has chosen to stake territory on a particularly slippery slope of real estate. Normally, professional athletes — football players, especially, and faceless, assassin-like defensive backs even more so — are tacitly asked to do their jobs without waxing philosophical about their existence as modern-day gladiators for entertainment. When one of their kind breaks ranks, so to speak, and shows that he thinks for himself and is self-aware, pearls are clutched and opinions are tweeted and columned.

Conte, though, is an exception to the exception — both recognizing his own mortality and how his profession likely compromises it. But instead of following in the footsteps of Troy Aikman, Bart Scott, Brett Favre, and (gasp!) even Adrian Peterson (just a few who have said they would take issue with their son wanting to play football), Conte managed to acknowledge his potentially diminished lifespan while still endorsing the hell out of the path he’s chosen.

Comparing the Xs and Os of football to actual war is a bad idea (unless you’re Robert Downey, Jr. in Back to School), but the parallels between the mentality behind Conte’s stance and that of a soldier’s willingness to sacrifice his or her own life for a perceived greater good cannot be ignored. Conte’s effectively saying “I signed up for this. I’m risking the well-being of my body and mind for something beyond my body and mind, and I’m fully compliant with and conscious of it.”

Yet, there is no greater good here. Entertaining people? The clown nobility of professional sports hardly exists anymore. The athlete is more emotional property of the audience than a gift to it. Perform well and you will be (temporarily) appreciated; play poorly and you will be destroyed on social media, be booed mercilessly until you retire and are forgotten. And, hell, Conte is breaking his back and concussing himself for the leaguewide joke that is the Bears, and for a fan base that hates him and the rest of Chicago’s defense. Those super classy fans actually cheered when it was announced at Soldier Field that Conte wouldn’t be returning after an injury.

Loyalty to some brainwashed notion of an ideal masking the cult of NFL football? The Bears and the league don’t care about Conte any more than he can help the former win games and the latter not lose money. He’s body No. 47, a cog in the machine. If said cog cannot function properly—even if the machine itself wore the cog down—it will be replaced without hesitation or ceremony, unless it was a particularly special cog capable of outliving its warranty.

Conte’s is a quixotic quest that makes little sense — the antithesis of the conclusion Ricky Williams reached before his body yet betrayed him — and one that will be seen as pyrrhic, should Conte’s life-expectancy prophesy comes to fruition. His mentality feels misguided and counterintuitive, and not dissimilar to that of former NFL player Tony Boselli, one of the league’s more outspoken critics of ex-players suing the NFL.

“My whole thing about the concussion [lawsuit] is I question some of the guys in it and why they were in it — because we do know the risks,” Boselli has said. “Listen, we play the game. We know it’s risky. If any of us who played [says], ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that my body was not going to be the same the rest of my life,’ then you’re lying to yourself and everyone else, in my opinion.”

Surely, that sort of argument by dismissal would sound pretty horrible if Boselli directed it at a coal miner or severely wounded veteran. But because Boselli played football, and because there is a subconscious fear in most of us that if the work we choose is flawed then we are therefore flawed, football and its residuals must be exceptional.

“And there are lot of guys who played the game who aren’t having problems,” Boselli has also said. “It’s overblown when they say it’s the majority. I see lot of functioning guys who played the game with me.”

I see octogenarians who have smoked all their adult lives, too. The picture Boselli sees in his head is not the majority because confirmation bias dictates that because not every ex-player has been documented as prone to fits of rage or spells of forgetfulness or inconvenient spurts of suicide. And even if the majority of former NFL players have trouble walking or sitting or sleeping or lifting their grandkids, it may just suggest that awareness has not yet reached a critical mass, not that the inherent risks are acceptable and/or immaterial.

(AP)

Now, Conte isn’t asking to be the standard bearer for any particular cause. Nor can he be told not to do what makes him happy. As illogical as what he said sounds, and as relatively young as he is, he’s an adult, it’s his life choice, and he can do what he wants to his body if he’s compos mentis. Right now, he’s 25-year-old football player. He’s the lovechild of a No Fear shirt and a motivational quotes Twitter account, and his happiness cannot be quantified or rationed.

“And I’m fine with trading that risk for the opportunity to play football since it’s something I have always wanted to do and a dream come true,” he said. “Doing what I love outweighs risks despite injuries I have amounted this year.”

But Conte’s individual comments were assuredly not welcomed by a league office that does not see anything individual about its business — the NFL prefers its players do not “go rogue” — so in an odd way, it’s comforting to know that the NFL may need to scramble to come up with an explanation “proving” Conte wrong.

That he’s a mediocre player on a bad team starring in a hilarious soap opera right now is what saves the NFL from getting way more egg on its face here. Imagine if Russell Wilson said tomorrow that dying at age 60 with dementia was worth a Super Bowl ring and the brotherhood and the happy fans. What if Peyton Manning were to acknowledge an ironic potential connection between being away from his family to be the best he can be, and later burdening them if and when he’s unable to maintain control of his mental faculties? Roger Goodell might just up and quit (fingers crossed).

But most NFL fans don’t know who Conte is. In all likelihood he won’t be in the league in a few years and will only make news down the road if he is unfortunately correct about his expiration date.

“I’m not a doctor, you know. I can’t worry about that right now. I owe it to my teammates and these great fans.” That’s the bread and butter of NFL PR. That’s the company line the league wants and willfully ignorant fans expect. The athlete’s future is not to be anyone’s concern, including the athlete.

Conte is not the only player recognizing that playing NFL football may increase the chances of a man dying prematurely for myriad reasons, but he’s one of the very few verbalizing it. As more science likely suggests the back end of a player’s life might not be worth the supposed discipline, life lessons, and comradery on the front end, there will be a few more players who will say what Conte said. And like Conte, they will be doing so without really appreciating that dying younger for the sake of pro football doesn’t sound as ho hum to most people as it does in the players’ heads. Certainly, the NFLPA and groups fighting for benefits for retired players can’t be happy. They’ve fought for money from the engorged NFL by leaning on the argument that being aware of hazards shouldn’t negate hazard pay.

Thus, Conte’s self-endorsement (or is it resignation?) as a football player seemingly accepting his lot in life is as disturbing as it is eye-opening. A good guy who has always played hard for the Bears — he’s been remarkably and admirably willing to take public beatings during the toughest times of his career — Conte has seen his career marked by two things: 1) He’s the posterchild for a perennially underachieving defense; and 2) being injured. This is the same Chris Conte who has suffered at least four documented concussions, two of which occurred this season, and the second of those saw him re-enter the game against league protocol.

What’s saddest, though, is that the risk Conte says he accepts will never be appreciated beyond himself — and maybe not even that much years from now. Our heartstrings are best tugged in the cases of “he died doing what he loved.” The likes of Pat Tillman and Dale Earnhardt garner such respect because war and sports respectively literally ended their lives in immediate fashion and both died in the service of others—one for his country and the other for his fans. Football kills many NFL players but not instantly on the job. They don’t die in service. It doesn’t happen during football; it happens from football. That doesn’t fit the modern tragedy category well enough.

What Conte said is tragic in the most classic of senses. The tragic flaw of any character is usually a personal trait that leads to his or her demise later in the story. Sometimes it’s hubris. Other times it’s naivete. No matter what the cause, almost never is the person aware of their own flaw. Chris Conte’s flaw, one that won’t reap what has been sewn for many years yet, is self-awareness.