Harry Carson Comments on CTE, NFL Player Safety and More

Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson, who spent 13 seasons as one of the NFL's most dominating forces, will not allow his six-year-old grandson to play football over concerns about long-term brain injuries.  

“I’ve sort of made the decision, as the dictator of my family, that my grandson was not going to play football,” Carson said May 4, per Nathaniel Vinton of the New York Daily News. “He understands where I’m coming from. He’s not going to be playing football. I get him involved with other sports.”

Carson, 62, has been an advocate for brain health since the end of his playing career. He was speaking in Albany, New York, to a group of state lawmakers in support of a bill that would ban tackle football for children 13 or younger. 

“I think that parents should think long and hard about what they’re signing their kids up for,” Carson said. “There is definitely a correlation between head trauma and problems down the line, whether it’s in older adults with dementia or young people with post-concussion syndrome. It affects their quality of life.”

Carson played for the Giants from 1976 to 1988, making nine Pro Bowls. He and Lawrence Taylor are one of the best linebacker pairings in the sport's history, and they led the Giants to a Super Bowl XXI victory. They are both members of the team's Ring of Honor, and Carson joined Taylor in the Hall of fame in 2006.

All the accomplishments Carson had on the field took a toll soon after he retired. He was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome in 1990 and has dealt with ongoing symptoms for more than a quarter-century. Vinton wrote of Carson's day-to-day efforts just to deal with the pain:

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The damage was permanent, but there were coping mechanisms. He always carries sunglasses on flights, to protect himself from the sudden flash of sunlight when fellow passengers raise their shades. He selects restaurant seating to minimize unfiltered noise, which can spark a migraine headache. He doesn’t look at television screens from certain angles.

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Carson isn't the only player who feels this way. Former quarterbacks Troy Aikman, Terry Bradshaw and Brett Favre are just a few of the dozens of players who have said they'd be concerned about their children playing football. Jim Trotter of ESPN.com also spoke to a number of current players, and most of them said they'd prefer their children start playing football at a later age—if at all.

Much of the worry stems from damage repeated head trauma can do to the developing brain. A study by the American Academy of Neurology found that "more than 40 percent of retired National Football League players in a recent study had signs of traumatic brain injury based on sensitive MRI scans called diffusion tensor imaging."

Posthumous studies at Boston University found 87 of 91 (95.6 percent) former NFL players suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition linked to repetitive trauma.  

Carson said he will not donate his brain to any studies. 

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