Bam!!! You’re hit. You fall on the grass and in the distance hear a stadium of 85,000 people screaming for your team. You know you’ve been hit hard, as you begin to see double. You forget where you are for a second, until your teammates help you up. “You good?” one of them says. You vaguely respond “yeah,” as you adjust to your surroundings. You quickly shake off whatever just happened and get ready for the next play because you have a job to do, even if you’re a rookie. This is when CTE begins.

“Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including… concussions as well as… sub concussive hits to the head, ” according to the Boston University CTE Center. CTE has been known to affect boxers, but if you have seen the movie Concussion, CTE is also widely in retired and non-retired football players.

CTE triggers progressive degeneration of the brain tissue, including the build-up of an abnormal protein called tau. These changes in the brain can begin months or years, after the last brain trauma or retirement. The brain degeneration is associated with memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and, eventually, dementia.  So why would the Colts owner Jim Irsay compare taking an aspirin to playing football, that they both have equal risks. “I believe this: That the game has always been a risk, you know, and the way certain people are, look at it,” he added. “You take an aspirin and I take an aspirin. It might give you extreme side effects of illness and your body…may reject it, where I would be fine. So there is so much we don’t know.”

The first part is agreeable. Football has always been a risk. Though, you can’t compare the risks of football to taking an aspirin. They don’t correlate at all. One can give you dementia, while the other, heartburn. It’s not that surprising that Irsay would say this though, when so many people in football have said the same thing.

According to an article in the New York Times, even the “‘NFL commissioner Roger Goodell infamously said last month that there is also “risk in sitting on the couch.’” So why are they downplaying it by saying that football doesn’t have severe risks–because they know that if the public knew the truth, it would ruin the sport. The truth that playing football can give you permanent brain damage.

Dr. Bennet Omalu, the doctor who made the discovery of (CTE) quoted in the New York Times article, sticks by this truth. “[They must] admit wholeheartedly and openly and sincerely that playing football can damage your brain permanently. That is the truth. That is a fact…”