How Playing Football Can Lead to Developing CTE

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1. What is a TBI? What is CTE? What happens inside the brain? How could playing football lead to development of CTE? The Frontline episode entitled “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis” focuses on the injuries incurred by players during football and the impact of such injuries. Throughout the episode many acronyms are used, such as TBI and CTE. The effect the sport of football has players can lead to certain injuries also discussed in the episode. Meanings of these acronyms and their consequences are explored in the following paragraphs. TBI stands for traumatic brain injury. A committee was created by the NFL called MTBI, which stands for mild traumatic brain injury, which was led by the New York Jets team doctor who believed brain injuries were not a serious problem. In the episode a doctor by the name of Omalu was interviewed. After studying the brain of a professional football player, named Michael Webster, he believed he saw physical evidence of the long-term damage playing football could have on the brain. This physical evidence was concluded to be CTE. CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is a progressive neuro- degenerative disease which had not been found in football players until recently. It was stated in the episode, “Repetitive brain trauma starts this cascade of events in the brain that changes the way tau [protein] looks and behaves. It goes awry, it starts destroying the integrity of the brain cells.” Doctor Omalu’s discovery was the first hard evidence which proved playing football could cause permanent damage. This finding was not well received by the NFL and Omalu was met with attacks by the MTBI committee and the NFL as a whole. Football players can suffer from TBIs which could ul... ... middle of paper ... ...he NFL dismissed claims [of TBI and CTE] parents continued to [allow] their children to play football without knowing the repercussions.” There has recently been an acknowledgement that children could develop brain injuries through playing football and it was suggested in the episode that no one under the age of fourteen should play tackle football. Although, in my personal opinion, I believe that tackle football is still very dangerous to play even after the age of fourteen. Due to the fact the brain is not fully developed until the mid-twenties there are negative results playing tackle football could have on children to young adults. Although young people playing football may be more susceptible to the negative consequences playing football can have on the brain it does not mean those over a certain age are invincible to such problems, as learned from the episode.

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