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I grew up in Texas when football was basically religion. My parents flatly forbid me from playing. Any other sport was fine, no football. Every single person I knew on the team ended up with at least some kind of minimal, permanent injury. This was a decade before there were publications about CTE.

I'm quite thankful that I never ended up on the team, and think the entire concept of high school football is incredibly stupid given what we know about CTE.

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When I played little league and high school football we had this one activity we did called "The Door". Essentially, it was a piece of plywood stuck in the ground so that you could not see who was on the other side of it. We broke into two lines and you just ran full speed around the door not knowing who you were about to smash into. The teams and coaches essentially cheered when someone got a "stinger". That was when you got hit so hard that your head felt like it was getting stung by a bee...I often wonder what effects that kind of stuff has had on my life.

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