Jackson Hammond

Grippy Gorillas

Rogerian Essay

Mr. Gardner

CTE is real

CTE known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a brain condition that is

caused by repeated blows to the head. This injury to the brain is commonly found in

people that play in the national football league. There have been many studies on ex

players' brains to figure out what is the main cause of this head trauma. The main

question is does longevity in the NFL give players a higher chance of getting CTE.

There are not many things that tell you what position or what things in football

cause CTE, but one thing that they think they know is that the players that play longer

have a higher chance of getting CTE. Many cases are thought to have come from

repetitive coalitions to the head. In the article “CTE Risk Doubles After 3 Years of

Playing Football | the Brink.” By Lisa Brown it states that for every 2.6 years of playing

the risk of CTE doubles for players. Those who played 4.5 years or less were 10 times

less likely to get CTE but those who played 14.5 or more years were 10 times more

likely to get CTE. There have been many stars in the game that have had to give it up

early due to head injuries caused by playing football over their entire lives.

Another point people can make is the position that people play in the NFL makes

the chances higher. The most affected positions are the linemen, wide receivers and

running backs on the offensive side of the ball, and the defensive lineman and

linebackers on the defensive side of the ball. Over the years they have tried to make the
game more safer for players by making better helmets and more rules to protect the

players but they can never get away from the nature of the game and that is the ground

and pound. As much as they want to protect players they can’t stop the hitting and

contact or they would lose the nature of the sport.

The movie Concussion directed by Peter Landesman and produced by Scott

Free production takes a look into the lives in which some old head football players were

affected by CTE. This film shows how the NFL sweeps the cases of CTE under the rug

as they try to figure out what the cause is. The main thing that they found were the

brains of the football players that had died in the autopsies. They had found severely

damaged brains that had shown that these players were affected by CTE. The film

shows how people can not even know that they have it but still suffer from all the

consequences.

In this image of two brains it shows the difference between a healthy brain and a

sick brain. (see in figure 1)

 (Fig 1) Nola, J., et al. Beyond the Game | Blogs Digging Deeper Into Sports . 11

Apr. 2016, sites.psu.edu/jrnolablog.

This image shows the difference from the normal brain compared to a very

damaged brain. The healthy brain has the regular color to it and has not many gaps to

it. The unhealthy brain is very discolored and has many gaps especially the main gap in

the middle. It is also very small compared to the other brain.

I think that playing football for a longer amount of time greatly improves your

chances of getting CTE. I also think that the NFL can tend to this in a much better way

if they just take better care of players that are thought to have had a concussion. I

definitely think that players like linemen, linebackers, and skill players have way higher

chances to get concussions as well because of the constant banging of heads play after

play.

All in all I think that the concussions caused in the NFL are greatly increased by

playing for a longer amount of time, the position you play, and the way the NFL tends to

players with concussions. I think that some things that need to be put into place is a

strict concussion protocol rather than a very questionable protocol. I also think that

people can be more cautious with how they are hitting people and I think that there

should be a lot more research put into the causes of CTE.

Nola, J., et al. Beyond the Game | Blogs Digging Deeper Into Sports . 11 Apr. 2016,

sites.psu.edu/jrnolablog.

Concussion. Peter Landesman. Scott free production. 2015.

Boston University. “CTE Risk Doubles After 3 Years of Playing Football | the Brink.”

Boston University , 16 Feb. 2020, www.bu.edu/articles/2019/cte-football.