Chris Borland

Punishment for doing your job well is an unparalleled professional pressure.

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.

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.

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.

Folks who blithely disregard the benefits of football likely haven't played or are being intellectually dishonest. The game, perhaps more than any other, requires absolute dedication and teamwork. Yes, I ultimately quit, and if I ever have a son, he won't play, but I'll always cherish the lessons I learned from football.

I'm more athletic than people think.

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.

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.

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.

I've got a wide variety of interests.

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

Sometimes men and women have trouble with just being vulnerable.