Matt Millen is calling it a season.
Millen, 60, who won Super Bowls with the Raiders and 49ers during his 12-year NFL career, is stepping away from broadcasting duties for the Big Ten Network for the rest of the college football season to focus on his health, according to multiple media outlets.
Millen revealed in May that he suffers from amyloidosis, a rare disease that could necessitate a heart transplant.
“We will certainly miss seeing Matt this fall, but his health is the clear priority for everyone involved,” Big Ten Network senior vice president Mark Hulsey said in a statement distributed to ESPN.
“We’re in the fourth quarter of a big football game,” Millen said to Sports Illustrated’s Peter King in May. “We’re down 13. Playing defense. It’s getting late. We need a stop. We need a big stop.”
He said that his condition likely went undiagnosed for years because it mimics other diseases.
“I’m OK if I don’t wake up one day,” Millen told King. “Yeah, I’d like to kick around a little longer, but if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. Some of it is just being pragmatic. I’ve always been that way.”
Millen was a standout defensive lineman/linebacker at Penn State. He was best known for his time with the Raiders, for whom he won two Super Bowls. He won a third with the 49ers and a fourth with the Washington Redskins. He spent 10 disastrous years as president and general manager of the Detroit Lions. “I was not ready at all,” he said in retrospect. “Not even close. I was in over my head.”