Chuck Klosterman Quotes

I don't think any of us knew the dangers of repeated concussions or the fact that even when you got a concussion, the idea to go get treatment for it never entered our minds. We just didn't have - we weren't educated enough. We were really ignorant to it. I would get concussions in my early 20s racing, and it was a bit of a badge of honor.

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.

I had concussions as a kid playing football and basketball, and know what it feels like and to have someone say 'Just rub some dirt on it, and get back in there.'

The relationship between concussions and the asserted clinical symptoms of C.T.E. remains unknown.

As long as we're having contact and as long as there are collisions, there's going to be head injuries. What the long-term consequences are of that, we're beginning to learn, and that definitely will have an impact on the game as we know it.

The reason that people in the intellectual community argue that football is dangerous is because there's now a large swath of society that has no relationship to physicality or potential violence.

I had six or seven documented concussions, so I had a lot more than that. But I feel fine.

There are the medical dangers of football in general caused by head trauma over repetitive hits.

We penalize and suspend players for making contact with the head while checking, in an effort to reduce head injuries, yet we still allow fighting. We're stuck in the middle and need to decide what kind of sport do we want to be. Either anything goes and we accept the consequences, or take the next step and eliminate fighting.

I understand the seriousness of concussions.

Concussions happen. If not on every play, then they happen like every other, every third play, you know.

It's simple to get a concussion, you know. I don't know how many I've had over my career, you know, but I've definitely had my fair share.

I wish my memory weren't so bad. They tell me it's from all the football and boxing and the concussions that I got.

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

It doesn't take science to know that when you have head-to-head collisions, there's going to be some effect.

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

I've had concussions, and I'm still here. I still love the sport.

I've been wrestling since I was 18 years old. And within the first five months of my wrestling career, I'd already had three concussions. And for years after that, I would get a concussion here and there, and it gets to the point that when you've been wrestling for 16 years, that adds up to a lot of concussions.

I think, a lot of guys, when they get, you know, those hits or those concussions, they think, 'OK, well, I'm just going to kind of play through it here for the short term, and it's going to get better.' I would venture to say probably 100 percent of the guys that played my sport in the NFL have been there.

I think I had four concussions throughout my career that were diagnosed, and I guess that I've had seven more. But the fact that three of them came in a four month span when I was making a comeback in 2004 is a little bit scary.

In boxing, you've got CTE from head trauma constantly.

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 think the one thing I can say is not to play through concussions. I think that's unwise.

I don't ever want to be a punch drunk.

The beginnings of CTE can start quite early.