We knew. We did know. I knew. I won’t deny it.
But what I knew I only understood in an insensitive and abstract way. It was a fact of sorts—almost a factoid. American football players suffer brain damage from playing football. This fact hid in the domain of gallows humor. It might be mentioned on Freaks and Geeks or Daria. I bet Greg Ginn has written a lyric about the subject. It was a talking point in the debate between jocks and nerds, if such a debate exists outside of the pop culture. I don’t know.