Top 35 Chris Borland Quotes

A generation of men really built the NFL and gave guys like me a shot, and a lot of these guys are left out in the cold by the league and forgotten.

I think flag football is a great alternative, and it’s a great game in its own right. It’s a wonderful alternative. You can develop all of the skills and athleticism and glean the lessons you can from contact football through playing flag.

I don’t dislike football. I love football.

I’m involved in so many cool and interesting and redeeming things. I’m enjoying every day.

I can’t predict the future of football. I don’t think it’ll go the way of boxing because it’s a team sport. It’s built into our education systems, the flagship for a lot of universities’ fundraising campaigns. So no, I don’t think it’ll go away.

I think I’d be a good pass-catching fullback.

The host of ‘Face The Nation,’ Bob Schieffer, was an important figure in my childhood years. Every Sunday in the fall, he occupied my family’s time after church and before the NFL pregame shows.

I just want to live a long healthy life, and I don’t want to have any neurological diseases or die younger than I would otherwise.

I enjoyed playing, and I’ve got a full and happy life now, so it’s not like I’m looking back longingly at my time in football.

I think the one thing I can say is not to play through concussions. I think that’s unwise.

As far as what it takes to play football, I’ve got all it requires.

About 10 percent of the time, I miss 3 to 5 percent of the game. I look back, and I’m happy that I played. I’m not wistful. You miss big games. I miss the locker room camaraderie. Sometimes I miss the lifestyle.

One thing that’s important to understand is that it’s believed that the pathology of CTE doesn’t have to do with concussion so much as it has to do with the accumulation of sub-concussive hits. So every hit matters. If you’re subject to 800 or 1,200 of these every year, it accumulates. It’s like erosion.

I never thought my choice to leave the NFL would lead to ‘Face the Nation.’ When I first thought of quitting, I cringed at the notion of becoming a football safety advocate. I was making a personal decision; I never set out to influence others.

I loved playing in the Big Ten, where it’s three yards and a cloud of dust.

I couldn’t really justify playing for money, and I think what I wanted to achieve put me at too great a risk, so I just decided on another profession.

I just don’t want to get in a situation where I’m negotiating my health for money.

I think it actually is easier for players to abstain from watching than it is for people who haven’t experienced it. I know a wide variety of former players that don’t really follow football any more. They’ve kind of had that cathartic experience. They know what it is.

I don’t do interviews without a collared shirt.

I’m more athletic than people think.

One healthy thing I’d like for players to know, whether they’re active or former, is you likely can’t replicate the thrill of playing before 100,000 people and big hits and making that much money. We can get ourselves into trouble trying to.

My experience over my five years at Wisconsin and my one year in the NFL was that there were times where I couldn’t play the game safely. There are positive measures we can take… but on a lead play, on a power play, there’s violence.

I think I’m connected to this issue in some capacity, football and brain damage. So carving out a way to address it tactfully is important to me no matter what I go on to do.

During the course of a 16-game season, everybody, in the end, is injured. It’s almost as if pieces just get broken off, and you give up pieces or an appendage every year.

I walked away from pro football and a $2.9 million contract with the San Francisco 49ers because I didn’t want to develop CTE.

If you gave me an hour in the day between ’09 and ’14, I could have told you exactly where I was and what I was doing.

If I was a marginal guy or a practice squad player or a career-long special teamer, you take a hell of a lot less hits in those roles.

A piece of my heart will always be in football, but my mind ended it.

The men and women that are hired to take care of players’ health, their salaries are paid by the team. Before games, you would see team docs and trainers, and they’re every bit as as excited to, say, beat the Raiders as you are; their emotions are tied up in it.

It would be ill-advised to compare war and a sport, but I don’t think the brain knows the difference. With post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries in blasts with veterans, we see a very similar and somewhat unique issue with repetitive brain injuries in football.

My breadth of football experience, my injury history, and my all-or-nothing goal to become one of the best linebackers in the NFL, combined with all I’d been learning about the game’s neurological effects on the brain, convinced me I’d be wise in choosing another career.

In places where people read hardcover books and eat sushi, they’re not signing a five-year-old up to tackle another five-year-old.

I just honestly want to do what’s best for my health.

Dementia pugilistica was discovered in 1928… And we still have boxing. Football will continue.

I wanted to fulfill my dream of playing in the NFL.