While watching football on Sunday Night, viewers see the brutal hits that many football players take on almost every play. Although the helmets and equipment that these players wear are very protective, players still experience a variety of serious injuries. One of the most serious injuries in the NFL is also one of the most common: concussions. A concussion is a very serious injury; caused by the shaking of the brain, they significantly affect a person’s brain and mental condition. Many professional athletes, especially football players, have started to notice that the concussions they have gotten have led to even more serious long term effects.

Although the NFL has done a good job of hiding the dark truth about concussions that many players suffer from, there still have been lawsuits. The biggest one led to the league paying $765 million to medical exams and concussion-related compensation for former NFL players and their families. The NFL started facing lawsuits after former players were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is described as a degenerative brain disease that affects athletes with multiple head traumas. It is a very serious condition that affects a majority of football players who have gotten concussions while playing in the NFL. Most people do not think of this disease being serious because it takes a while to develop, but they also don’t know that it affects more than just NFL football players.

Doctors have also been struggling to raise awareness for CTE because as of right now, it is not well known. This is a result of the disease not affecting someone until multiple years after suffering a head trauma. Dr. Michael McCrea says, “The burning issue is CTE. The disease doesn’t manifest itself for 20 to 50 years, but it’s like a slow-moving train.” Because this disease takes a long period of time to develop and show its full effects, doctors are now doing test on brains of deceased football players. Doctors have found that 96% of NFL players suffered from this brain disease. Not surprisingly, when doctors did a study on football players of different levels, 131 of 165 players suffered from CTE. Dr. Ann McKee, who says people think doctors are blowing this disease out of proportions, responds with, “My response is that where I sit, this is a very real disease. We have had no problem identifying it in hundreds of players.” The NFL has shown efforts to try and minimize the effects their players suffer from. A spokesman from the NFL says, “We are dedicated to making football safer and continue to take steps to protect players, including rule changes, advanced sideline technology, and expanded medical resources.”

However, the NFL will always face the issues associated with mental health and concussions, due to the physicality of the game. Because of these concussions, football players of all levels with most likely suffer from CTE as a result of how many times they get hit while playing the game. Even if the league is able to find a way to prevent concussions while allowing the players to still play, there will still be former players who suffer from these side effects.  Unfortunately, concussions are a very serious injury for a player to have because of the effects that it can have on a player’s mind and the fact that they can lead to serious mental illnesses. The NFL can continue to pay for medical exams and concussion-related research for former players, but that will never make up for the suffering that the players have gone through. However, the league has taken actions in trying to prevent as many concussions as possible which has reduced the amount of concussions that players have suffered.