Concussion Effects Quotes

When I read Mike Webster's file before I began his autopsy, I knew he was more than a 50-year-old heart attack victim. His file and the television reports of the death of the former Pittsburgh Steelers center described a long, steep fall into bizarre behavior. I suspected he suffered from some sort of brain disorder.

I'm sure there were concussions galore back when we played, but the doctors would just say, 'Shake it off,' or something like that... or 'Come on, you got to be tough... get back in there.' I see so many guys who played pro football in their 50s now who are so debilitated from having played it.

When you get hit in the head, you don't recover from that.

The new disease was named chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and the NFL fervently and repeatedly denied that such a thing had anything to do with the league or its players.

I'm trying to do some things with my brain institute to understand more about the impact of concussion on brain tissue, because we have some scientists over there who are really good at looking at brain tissue and the effects of things on brain tissue.

I've had hundreds and hundreds of concussions, but I don't think that I have any permanent damage. A lot of my peers do.

Not every time someone gets hit these days with a kick, they don't necessarily take a flat-back. Maybe less flat-backs add time to a career, but if they miss some of it, it just seems like you're done.

Over the course of my 13-year career, I've had a lot of concussions, and yet, because I'm no longer competing or suffering from concussion symptoms, I felt like I was in the clear. The reality, though, is that I get concussions far more easily, and my symptoms last far longer than ever before.

I messed up my eyes. It's funny, I was training and we thought I had a mild concussion. But you know, I was out in Albuquerque and I would train from 9:30 to 11:00 and then I would rest all day long until 5:00 and I'd be playing on my phone, so I was playing on my phone and it scrambled my fore-vision.

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?

No, no, I don't watch football. The last time I tried watching was the last Super Bowl. The problem I have is, you know, the graphic nature of my imagination; when I watch and see them meeting head onto head, helmet onto helmet, what flashes through my mind is what's going on in their brains. It's like torture to me.

I had one major concussion. It's different for each guy. For me, it was never an issue because I didn't have an issue with concussions.

Mental illness is real, and I got them. I don't know if it's the multiple concussions or the lifestyle choices.

I think we've reached that point where we understand medically what we are doing to ourselves with these sports. In football, it's kind of hard to get the access that you want for the story and, of course, it's very long-term: the effects of the repeat concussions really don't hit until decades afterwards, whereas the traumatic injuries in extreme sports are very immediate. I realized Traumatic Brain Injury was a fascinating and important story that not had been told very much. I wanted to know more.