Chris Borland Quotes

I know if I don't look after myself, I will be talking to you in a couple of years' time mumbling my words and slurring. It won't be because I am drunk: it will be the fighting, taking blow after blow to the brain. That scares me. I don't worry about being killed in the ring; it's losing my mind that I fear.

It's impossible for me to dissociate the risk of playing football from the risk of C.T.E.

I forget a lot of things sometimes. I'm not one to sit here and complain. While I did not know the severity of what continuous head traumas could do to an individual and the mind and so forth, I'm not going to sit here and complain.

My father was an NFL running back, so I feel like I might be more susceptible, genetically, to CTE.

We've now found CTE in former NFL players who played every position except kicker.

The overwhelming evidence is that trauma is a major factor in CTE.

Omalu first found the tau 'threads' in the brain of former Steeler Mike Webster in 2002 and published his findings in 2005, in the journal 'Neurosurgery.'

The thing you don't realise is that every time you head the ball, your brain shakes. Every single time. Have you ever headed a ball badly and seen stars for a couple of seconds? That's your brain shaking. Let's be honest: that can't be healthy, can it?

The brain is suspended in a kind of thick jelly inside the skull, and a helmet can't keep it from sloshing around. If you hit your head hard enough, the brain goes bashing against the walls of the skull.

A child who plays a game of football for one season without any documented concussion - several months after that season, if you subject his brain to sophisticated psychological testing and radiological testing, functional MRIs, there is evidence of brain damage.

Precisely at the moment when an athletic career is most on the line and fan perceptions of a Herculean, supra-human performance are highest, an athlete's brain may be at its most vulnerable.

It's just a matter of sometimes the CTE in your brain affects what happens in your life... and sometimes... it does not.

We, as a league, we have not in any way changed our desire to do everything we can to make it safe, make it safe as to head injury. We hope and will support any data that would give us more insight into any short- and long-term consequences. We would support that.

When you have a fighter who's been punched a lot and been knocked out a lot of times, they're not going to be able to recover. They're going to look like they were knocked out.

At some point, we're going to have to get to the point where, before you play football, I'm going to test you at some stage in your life to determine if you're susceptible to concussions. We need a test that shows us that your brain is situated a certain way that puts you at risk. If you are susceptible, don't play football.

While we know, on average, that certain positions experience more repetitive head impacts and are more likely at greater risk for CTE, no position is immune.

My brain is - essentially, you take any college football player in the country, because I have had multiple, multiple concussions. I had 10 documented concussions, four post-concussion seizures and so, but, with that said, my brain is no worse than your average college football player's brain, right?

As athletes, we're always trained to play through stuff. And I've played through all types of injuries - ankle sprains, shoulder, whatever - and with the brain it's just different.

Sometimes I wake up and I think, where did my memory go? But at the same time, I signed up for it. Football has been like that for a long time, for ages.

If I have another concussion and I don't feel like I can play anymore, then I won't.

If chronic bashing of the head could destroy a boxer's brain, couldn't it also destroy a football player's brain? Surely someone in the history of football had thought to look for dementia pugilistica. Unlike boxers, football players wear helmets, but a helmet can't fully protect the head from damaging impact.

I would bet you that even though people think I absorbed an inordinate number of head injuries, I'd say relative to the number of guys who have played this game, I would say that my head injuries were relatively small.

It's the subconcussive hits, the constant bam, bam, bam that linemen like Suh give and receive. Those are the hits scientists say cause the lasting damage to the brain, the kind of injuries that made guys like Mike Webster, Terry Long, and so many others go crazy. The subconcussive hits - every single play.

The beginnings of CTE can start quite early.

Subconcussive injuries are brain injuries on top of unrecovered brain injuries.