After watching League of Denial, my eyes have been opened to the invisible injury of CTE that can be caused by contact sports. It never crossed my mind that constant hits to the head could cause long-term injury and create a protein called Tau to accumulate in the brain. This is a concern to me because I have played football for most of my life, and even though I have never suffered a concussion I have had many sub-concussive hits throughout my career. The reality that football could cause me to have a disease called CTE in the future is very scary to me. Even though most of the cases of CTE have been found in NFL players, there are still some cases that occurred in high school football players as well. It makes me think of multiple friends who have suffered concussions more than once and makes me worry about their future.
My real question is what will happen to contact sports such as football? Knowing that they may be the cause of a horrible disease that ruins people’s lives, will these sports last or change dramatically in the way they are played? I think it will take some time, but I do think some contact sports will change dramatically. The NFL has tried to prolong this, but America is closing in on the link between CTE and football. It really saddens me that the sport I love so much might be changed or not even be played anymore some day in the future. Life during the fall and part of the winter will not be the same without football for me. But you can’t change the inevitable. What do you think? Will this discovery of a link between CTE and contact sports change many sports dramatically?
-Student #22
thesportinglifesjfc 