It be great if there was a control study done, where they looked at 202 brains of "normal" people. I'd be interested in what percentage that study found.

Those guys' kicks sail 50+ yards through the air, and dudes on the other end are fighting for the right to bounce it off their noggins. They often take two shots in one play if opposing players clash heads and also head the ball. I see it all the time in HS soccer, and can imagine it's like that as you level up, with just harder kicks and faster, bigger, stronger and better athletes.

 

I was never diagnosed because we didn't really know or pay attention to it then, but I'm sure I had a couple, maybe smaller ones.

 

It was my job from about 8th grade on in, HS and premier leagues, to win balls out of the air on punts and goal kicks. I used to pop tylenol quite a bit throughout HS cause of headaches. That doesn't count multiple head to head collisions, including one that left me with a nasty scar from seven staples.

 

Between a few hard hits with a gym floor in basketball too, plus a head to a fire hydrant once, it wouldn't shock me at all if the likelihood of me developing CTE is higher than my counterparts on the gridiron in HS.

It be great if there was a control study done, where they looked at 202 brains of "normal" people. I'd be interested in what percentage that study found.

Probably quite a few, but I am not going to be dishonest about it and say that repeated shots to the head is equally as damaging as not, but there are so many more variables. The black/white narrative of it all is what has gotten out of hand.

 

I have a form of anxiety. Millions of Americans do. I take a low dosage of a medicine for it, but I don't feel I am hampered because of it. My mother-in-law has anxiety. She is petrified going over bridges and way over the edge about many things because of it. We don't have the same symptoms.