The widow of NFL center Grant Feasel is sharing her family’s story to help warn others about the dangers of sports-related concussions.

Cyndy Feasel lost her husband Grant in 2012 to cirrohsis of the liver due to alcoholism, which was connected to a degenerative brain disease called CTE. The CTE in turn was caused by a lifetime of receiving concussions from playing football.

Cyndy shares her story in a book by Nelson Books titled “After the Cheering Stops: An NFL Wife’s Story of Concussions, Loss, and the Faith That Saw Her Through.”

The couple, which had three children, divorced about a year before Grant’s death, ending 29 years of marriage. They made peace shortly before his death.

“If I’d only known that what I loved the most would end up killing me and taking away everything I loved, I would have never done it,” Grant told Cyndy weeks before his death.

Cyndy calls Grant’s issues a “slow fade.” She did not realize the extent of his brain injuries until his death; CTE can only be diagnosed by performing an autopsy on the brain, she said. The damage happened over the course of his lifetime of playing football.

To understand their marriage, you have to start at the beginning of their relationship, she told me. They met while attending Abilene Christian University — he was a Southern California guy on a full football scholarship and she was a Texas gal.

Their first date was a blind date, but she had already seen him around campus. At 6 feet, 7 inches, he was the tallest man she had ever met — and handsome. The two Christians had a great deal in common.

“I knew he was a different kind of guy,” Cyndy said. “A beautiful mind.”

Grant loved poetry, music and art. She had never known another guy on a first date to be into those things.

Grant was a gifted football player — and extremely intelligent. He won every academic award and was an academic All-American. He was accepted into every dental school in Texas but chose to put off a medical or dental education to play football. He was drafted by the Colts.

“We were kids in our early 20s,” she said. “One percent of people in the world would get a chance like this. Who wouldn’t take it, right?”

Cyndy calls those the good years. They traveled a lot and met lots of people. Grant worked hard and she was a stay-at-home wife. However, even before then, she worried about the physical toll the game took on Grant.

He had a concussion in his senior year of college. He blew it off. That served as a red flag to Cyndy, whose sister had fractured her skull in a serious fall. But people didn’t really talk about concussions at the time.

Grant would later suffer another serious concussion within the last five years of his NFL career during a game at Mile High Stadium in Denver. He went back into that game despite experiencing tunnel vision. Other symptoms included nausea and head pain. However, there was no sports concussion protocol in the 1980s and 1990s.

I asked Cyndy if pro sports organizations are doing better about dealing with concussions.

“I’m trying to wrap my mind around all of how big this picture is,” she said in response. Grant played football from age 8. “I think they’re talking about it more and there’s more awareness. But parents and people cheering the NFL games … I don’t think everybody understands the visual the brain is like gray Jello. I never dreamed the brain is made out of a soft substance like butter. If I had known that, I would have begged Grant on bended knees not to play.”

Grant’s brain was “jiggled” around in every play every day from age 8 to age 32.

“I think the NFL knows it and I think they know there’s a huge problem,” she said. “I think it’s all driven by money. It’s like a gladiator game, and I think we forget that it’s a human face.”

Cyndy said she posts...