Head injuries no joke

By Ed Piper

"I do think it's just around the corner now," said Chris Nowinski of the project to diagnose CTE in living people.

Nowinski, the former WWE wrestler who retired due to head injury, became a neuroscientist, pursuing his doctorate at Boston University after completing his undergraduate degree at Harvard.

Right now, before the ability to identify people with CTE--the black-tar-looking disease that affects the brain after repeated hits--the only way to investigate brain injury is after a football player dies.

Dads and moms, I implore you, look at this before allowing your son to continue playing football.

My mother told my brother and me when we were young, becoming interested in sports, "You will not play football. You can play anything else." And she held to it.

Thank God. I would have had a million additional injuries to the ones I suffered in baseball (ruined right arm, causing me to alter my throwing motion) and basketball (tens of sprained ankles on each leg, a bad back at age 17 after jogging with ankle weights--it turns out I have spina bifida occulta on my left side), if not for our mother's edict. (Her brother suffered injuries in ice hockey she never specified.)

Lacrosse was not available back then. Rugby was unknown in our area (Long Beach and Camarillo).

Dr. Nowinski, CEO of Concussion Legacy Foundation, once living persons can be identified for CTE: "When the numbers are revealed, I think they will shock people."