1. What is a TBI? What is CTE? What happens inside the brain? How can playing football lead to the development of CTE? The Frontline episode titled "League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis" focuses on injuries suffered by players during football and the impact of those injuries. Many acronyms are used throughout the episode, such as TBI and CTE. The effect that the sport of football has on players can lead to certain injuries which are also discussed in the episode. The meanings of these acronyms and their consequences will be explored in the following paragraphs. TBI stands for traumatic brain injury. A committee was created by the NFL called MTBI, which stands for mild traumatic brain injury, led by the New York Jets team doctor who believed that brain injuries were not a serious problem. A doctor named Omalu was interviewed in the episode. After studying the brain of a professional football player, named Michael Webster, he believed he had seen physical evidence of the long-term damage that playing football could cause to the brain. This physical evidence was concluded to be CTE. CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that until recently had not been found in soccer players. In the episode it was stated: “Repetitive brain trauma starts this cascade of events in the brain that changes the way tau [protein] looks and behaves. It goes wrong, it starts destroying the integrity of the brain cells.” Dr Omalu's discovery was the first concrete evidence showing that playing football could cause permanent damage. This finding was not well received by the NFL, and Omalu was met with attacks from the MTBI committee and the NFL as a whole. Football players can suffer from traumatic injuries that could ul... middle of paper... The NFL has rejected allegations [of TBI and CTE] that parents continue to [allow] their children to play football without know the repercussions. It was recently recognized that children could develop brain injuries from playing football and in the episode it was suggested that no one under the age of fourteen should play tackle. Although, in my personal opinion, I believe that tackle football is still very dangerous to play even after the age of fourteen. Since the brain is not fully developed until the mid-twenties, there are negative effects that playing tackle football could have on children and young adults. Although young people who play football may be more susceptible to the negative consequences that playing football can have on the brain, this does not mean that those above a certain age are invincible to such problems, as learned from the episode.