Billy Ray Smith Jr. said something in an interview in 1987 that is nearly intolerable to read today. “Inside linebackers like to play smash-mouth,” he said, discussing his transition from inside to outside linebacker. Compared to other professions in the US, they lose brain cells more quickly. With the casual assurance of a man who believed he was explaining someone else’s issue, he said it. His age was twenty-six. He couldn’t have known that he was, in a way, already outlining his own destiny.
After what his family called a “long journey with dementia caused by CTE,” Smith passed away on July 29, 2026, at the age of 64. Over the course of ten NFL football seasons, hundreds of practices, and a career in which Smith started 74 of his first 75 professional games and sustained contact on almost all of them, he developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. In a respectful and straightforward statement, the family said that he had battled his illness “with unmatched bravery, dignity, and strength.” There’s a certain melancholy in those words when you read them. Clean endings are not possible with CTE. Memory comes first, followed by judgment, and finally, the person you knew.
While a person is still alive, CTE cannot be verified. Because the diagnosis necessitates looking at brain tissue after death, those who are affected by it and their families must deal with a condition that medicine is still unable to officially diagnose for years. Smith had been aware of this fact for a while. He was one of over a hundred former athletes who promised to donate their brains to the Boston University CTE Center upon their passing in 2009. That was seventeen years before his passing. It’s possible that he sensed something was changing even at that time, or it could just be the act of a man who had carefully considered the effects football has on its players and made the decision to make a valuable contribution to the study. As he had intended, his brain was donated to BU after his passing.
The football career itself was truly exceptional. Smith finished his collegiate career with 299 tackles and a school record 63 tackles for loss. He was a two-time unanimous All-American from the University of Arkansas. He was the first defensive player selected in the 1983 draft when the San Diego Chargers selected him fifth overall. He played in 126 games during his ten-year NFL career in San Diego, where he finished with 26.5 sacks, 15 interceptions, and 14 fumble recoveries. He won the Chargers’ defensive player of the year award twice and was named a second-team All-Pro in 1989. He was chosen for the Chargers’ 50th Anniversary Team after being admitted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000. He was more than just a footnote to San Diego football fans. He played a key role in shaping the franchise’s appearance for ten years.
Following his retirement, Smith remained in San Diego and pursued a second career in broadcasting, co-hosting radio programs and providing color commentary on college football at KGTV and Fox Sports Net. The fact that his wife, Kimberly Hunt, is a news anchor at the same station where Smith started his media career speaks volumes about how ingrained they both were in San Diego society. Smith had a platform and a purpose outside of the game during his broadcasting years, and by most accounts, he excelled at it. However, the illness gradually developed over years or even decades, making it impossible to continue that public life.
Smith’s passing coincides with a period of ongoing and unresolved reflection on the physical and psychological toll that professional football takes on its players, so it is worth taking a moment to consider the bigger picture. The NFL has funded research and acknowledged the link between contact sports and CTE, but there is no clear solution to the underlying issue, which is that the game causes the kind of repeated head impacts that seem to cause the disease. Smith is among the numerous former athletes whose families have revealed CTE-related illness following their passing. He won’t be the final one. Because he chose to donate his brain, his case will at least advance science. That is a modest but genuine act of kindness, given at the very end of a protracted illness.