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Society & Culture

Ep. 684 – Why we must STOP saying NFL players “got their bell rung.”

podcast October 3, 2022

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Yesterday a brother I am friends with in the NFL received a brutal concussion. It was hard to watch for a thousand reasons, but when you get to actually know these men as human beings, seeing the physical toll it takes on their brain and body is pretty terrible.

And as soon as he received the concussion, I started seeing people online and on television say something about him that I’ve heard my whole life. They started saying that he “got his bell rung.”

But here’s the thing – human beings don’t have bells. We don’t get rung. And that cartoonish description of someone “getting their bell rung” masks what we are really talking about.

Their brains are being smashed against their skulls – which is what a concussion is – which ultimately causes CTE. Each concussion is a traumatic brain injury. And we have to stop making it sound like something other than what it really is.

Also, FYI: one of the doctors that cleared Tua to play for the Dolphins after his concussion has been fired.

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