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Concussions have brought the consciousness to the problem, but I think the problem is football-related injuries, period, and the lack of support from the league of those players who have suffered those injuries. The denial factor has been unbelievable. I'm here because I'm a fighter to try to bring attention to this fact.

You're not going to eliminate concussions. Anytime you hit your head, you have a chance of getting a concussion, in any sport, too. I think we have to learn more about it. Part of it is rules, part of it is equipment, part of it is medical studies, knowing more about the brain.

More and more NFL players have been willing their bodies to science so that their brains can be studied even if they die of other causes.

Scarily, football helmets, which do a fine job of protecting against scalp laceration and skull fracture, do little to prevent concussions and may even exacerbate them, since even as the brain is rattling around inside the skull, the head is rattling around inside the helmet.

I understand the seriousness of concussions.

A child who plays a game of football for one season without any documented concussion - several months after that season, if you subject his brain to sophisticated psychological testing and radiological testing, functional MRIs, there is evidence of brain damage.

Maybe I'm stupid or whatever, but to me if I got a concussion, if I could see straight and I could carry a football then I'm not telling anybody.

Athletes, coaches and parents today are increasingly aware of the danger of concussion, and this awareness influences decisions about buying new and reconditioned football helmets.

In the summer of 2007, Roger Goodell, the new NFL commissioner, convened a meeting in Chicago for the first league-wide concussion summit. All thirty-two teams were ordered to send doctors and trainers to the meeting.