Dunce Cap Award: Rob Gronkowski

Oh, this was too easy.

Apparently, there's no such thing as an off-season for Rob Gronkowski of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. Appearing on Jim Rome's CBS Sports Network talk show, Gronkowski likened brain damage caused by concussions to drinking.

Rodger Sherman, writing for Yahoo!'s SB Nation, wrote:

"(Gronkowski) basically says that the late-life symptoms of brain diseases caused by repeated head injuries are more or less the same as when he has a wild night and drinks too much.

This is a frighteningly inaccurate comparison. It's true that memory loss is a common symptom of both drinking too much and CTE. But CTE has a variety of other symptoms. CTE leads to dementia. CTE leads to depression. CTE turns people into confused, angry husks of their former selves who hate being alive. CTE makes people kill themselves.

(Of course, drinking isn't great for your brain either -- longterm heavy alcohol use can also lead to dementia. And there's also a correlation between longterm alcohol abuse and depression, although nobody can say for sure which causes which. But Gronkowski isn't comparing CTE to severe alcoholism -- he's comparing it to his Tuesday night, which we imagine was pretty fun.)"

 

Mind you, this is the same brainless dolt that Bill Belichick left in a blowout win over Indianapolis and ended up blowing out his knee as a result. Apparently, he didn't spend enough time studying biology in either high school or in college.

 

What Sherman doesn't mention is whether or not Rome tried to debunk Gronkowski's frat-boy theory. To me, this is reason enough to send Gronkowski back to college for a refresher course in common sense 101. With this week's Dunce Cap Award as a token from this desk.