CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina Coach Larry Fedora said Wednesday he doesn’t believe it’s been proven that football causes the degenerative brain disease CTE and offered a passionate defense of a sport he believes is “under attack.”

Fedora, during interviews at Atlantic Coast Conference preseason media days, described the sport as an integral part of American culture and said it is “safer right now than it’s ever been,” though he acknowledged the risk of concussions in a sport featuring constant collisions.

It wasn’t clear who Fedora was referring to in saying the game was under attack, with the seventh-year Tar Heels coach noting, for example, “it’s more about people twisting data” to argue football is unsafe. He also said players should be educated on the risks of the game.

“I don’t think that the game of football, that it’s been proven that the game of football causes CTE,” Fedora said. “But that’s been put out there. We don’t really know yet.

“Are there the chances for concussions in the game of football? Yeah, we all have common sense, right? Yeah, there are. When you have two people running into each other or multiple people running into each other, there is a chance of a concussion. But again, I’m going to say, the game is safer than it’s ever been in the history of the game.”

Known to cause violent moods, depression, dementia and other cognitive difficulties, CTE has been linked to the repeated hits to the head endured by football and hockey players, boxers and members of the military. The NFL’s billion-dollar concussion settlement included payouts for a diagnosis of CTE.

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North Carolina is home to a noted center researching sports-related brain injuries, and Fedora’s comments caused a stir at the ACC event, which opened two days of sessions with the league’s seven Coastal Division teams. He returned nearly two hours later to speak with a handful of reporters.

“I’m not sure that anything is proven that football itself causes it,” he said. “Now we do know, from what my understanding is, that repeated blows to the head cause it. So I’m assuming that every sport that you have, football included, could be a problem with that, right? As long as you’ve got any kind of contact, you could have that. That does not diminish the fact that the game is still safer than it’s ever been in the history of the game, because we continue to tweak the game to try to make it safer for our players.”

THE SEC recently passed new rules making it easier for players to transfer within the league and be immediately eligible without a waiver, either as graduates or when leaving a team hit with NCAA sanctions. Before the new rule, graduate transfers had to sit out a year when moving to a new SEC school.

Such coaches as Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Florida’s Dan Mullen worry that the new rules could move the league closer to free agency if more freedoms to players are granted. They cringe at the idea players could be empowered to seek transfers as soon as they drop on the depth chart or are asked to run extra laps.

“I’ve expressed my belief in a guy who graduates from college being able to go where he wants to go,” Smart said Tuesday at SEC Media Days. “I feel very strongly about that, but when you start talking about every year … I’ve got to be honest with you, it’s hard.”

Smart said it would be especially tempting for freshmen, struggling to adjust to college life, to look elsewhere if it were easier for them to transfer.

“It’s not easy your first year in college,” Smart said. “It’s one of the biggest adjustments you go through in life. So to be able to make it easy to leave, I think that’s tough. I think it’s a fine line. I want the players to be able to have the freedom and rights, but it’s tough. Put yourself in that situation when you come in there and you’ve been told how good you are your whole life, and it’s difficult to make that transition.”


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