Football is under attack. At least that's the perception for some, especially as we learn more about the effects of concussions on players' long-term health. And Cardinals coach Bruce Arians is tired of hearing about it.
"People that say, 'I won't let my son play [football]' are fools," Arians told TheMMQB.com.
"We have this fear of concussion that is real, but not all of those statistics, I think, can prove anything," he continued, echoing comments made by several NFL owners earlier this week.
“No, that's absurd," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told the Washington Post about the relationship between chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and playing football. "There's no data that in any way creates a knowledge. There's no way that you could have made a comment that there is an association and some type of assertion. In most things, you have to back it up by studies. And in this particular case, we all know how medicine is. Medicine is evolving."
Texans owner Bob McNair added, "I think it's an important issue. I'm more concerned about the misconceptions people can have about it than I am about what's really taking place. We're studying this issue closely, more than anyone else. We've put up money for research before anyone else did. Our medical scientists still don't know what the cause of CTE is. It appears that if you've had multiple concussions from whatever you've been doing, riding a bicycle, skateboarding, it's not just football, that there's a possibility it could lead to CTE."
Meanwhile, Arians has nothing but good things to say about football.
"This is the greatest game in the world," he said. "I think it teaches more values than any other game that you play. You have things that happen in your life that aren't going to be good. If you play football, you know how to handle them. It doesn't necessarily equate in track and other things."
Last week, during a roundtable discussion on concussion research with the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, NFL senior VP for Health and Safety Policy Jeff Miller was asked if he thought there was a link between football and CTE.
“The answer to that question is certainly yes," he said.
It was the first time the league publicly acknowledged the link.
