We’ve written a lot about brain injuries in professional sports. Some of it has been critical of players themselves – often football players – who continue to play despite repeated concussions. The long-term effects of repeated blows to the head have led some sports superstars to suffer severe depression, and even worse, commit murder or suicide.

Today, we’d like to tell you about two professional athletes who suffered multiple concussions and had the courage to leave the sport they loved and find another career.

Chicago-area native Chris Nowinski played football at Harvard and was a professional wrestler whose career was cut short by concussions. After leaving professional sports, he founded the Sports Legacy Institute in Boston, which has been studying the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

His organization has joined with the Illinois Eye Institute Foundation and the Chicago Concussion Coalition to educate about 2,000 Chicago Public Schools coaches. Nationally, some 5,000 coaches have attended their workshops. Representatives have also spoken before 6,000 youngsters, mostly in the Boston area, but they plan to conduct more presentations in Chicago.

Former pro football player Ben Utecht, who was on the Indianapolis Colts team that beat the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl in 2007, walked away from the sport after five concussions and into a new career – singing.

This fall and winter, he’s touring with the Jim Brickman Christmas Celebration Tour, which will stop in Rockford, Illinois, on December 31. He cut an album of inspirational music and worked with a vocal coach in Nashville before eventually hooking up with Brickman’s group.

We commend Nowinski and Utecht, who are true heroes for walking away from the sports they loved and into another career and lifestyle. Let’s hope that the next generation of ballplayers takes note, and that they, too, walk away before it’s too late.