I think it actually is easier for players to abstain from watching than it is for people who haven't experienced it. I know a wide variety of former players that don't really follow football any more. They've kind of had that cathartic experience. They know what it is.
I would never call myself anti-football. I think I'm pro-information, pro-people making informed individual choices, pro-health, so for that reason, personally, I'm apathetic towards football. But at the same time, I think we can retain some civility, and I understand why people support and love it.
Obviously, not the biggest guy in stature. Straight-line speed wasn't my forte either. But I play very fast because I know the game. I take proper angles and know all my assignments.
I don't consider football fun. It's not like a water park or a baseball game.
I think I'm connected to this issue in some capacity, football and brain damage. So carving out a way to address it tactfully is important to me no matter what I go on to do.
Football is an elective. It's a game. It's make-believe. And to think that people have brain damage from some made-up game.
The idea that just the basis of the game, repetitive hits, could bring on a cascade of issues later in life, that was - it changed the game for me.
Dementia pugilistica was discovered in 1928... And we still have boxing. Football will continue.
One thing that's important to understand is that it's believed that the pathology of CTE doesn't have to do with concussion so much as it has to do with the accumulation of sub-concussive hits. So every hit matters. If you're subject to 800 or 1,200 of these every year, it accumulates. It's like erosion.
In places where people read hardcover books and eat sushi, they're not signing a five-year-old up to tackle another five-year-old.
I can't predict the future of football. I don't think it'll go the way of boxing because it's a team sport. It's built into our education systems, the flagship for a lot of universities' fundraising campaigns. So no, I don't think it'll go away.
One healthy thing I'd like for players to know, whether they're active or former, is you likely can't replicate the thrill of playing before 100,000 people and big hits and making that much money. We can get ourselves into trouble trying to.
I loved playing in the Big Ten, where it's three yards and a cloud of dust.
If I was a marginal guy or a practice squad player or a career-long special teamer, you take a hell of a lot less hits in those roles.
I just want to live a long healthy life, and I don't want to have any neurological diseases or die younger than I would otherwise.
My breadth of football experience, my injury history, and my all-or-nothing goal to become one of the best linebackers in the NFL, combined with all I'd been learning about the game's neurological effects on the brain, convinced me I'd be wise in choosing another career.
I walked away from pro football and a $2.9 million contract with the San Francisco 49ers because I didn't want to develop CTE.
The men and women that are hired to take care of players' health, their salaries are paid by the team. Before games, you would see team docs and trainers, and they're every bit as as excited to, say, beat the Raiders as you are; their emotions are tied up in it.
I'm involved in so many cool and interesting and redeeming things. I'm enjoying every day.
The 49ers drafted me assuming I wanted to play more than one year. At the time, I did, too. Things changed. They didn't deserve to be undercut. And I didn't want that to happen.
