Legendary Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce faced much backlash on social media after suggesting famous racehorse, Secretariat, was on steroids last week.
In particular, a former horse racing reporter did not like Kelce's comments and threw out a CTE jab.
"Just going to put this out there, you know who else makes unsubstantiated claims not backed up by facts. People suffering from CTE. I’ll admit I don’t know whether @JasonKelce suffers from CTE or not, it’s impossible to know…", Jay Privman wrote on Twitter/X.
Instead of ignoring the troll, Kelce took a moment to educate his fanbase some more.
“I mean I can virtually guarantee that I have CTE, all the research would suggest I have some degree of it,” Kelce responded. “I think it is entirely reasonable to assume I have some degree of that pathology.”
Privman tried to back up his snarky CTE comment by saying he wouldn't wish the illness upon Kelce.
“I dont take offense at all. what I’m saying is that it’s completely reasonable to think I have CTE," Kelce wrote back. "Even though there is no test to see if I currently have CTE, The evidence suggests I probably do. Just like the reality that a lot, if not most of the high level horses of the 70s and 80s were doping because adequate tests were not available. But it really doesn’t accomplish anything to bring this up, I don’t know why I started, Secretariat was still a fantastic horse and legendary specimen.”
CTE, aka chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a brain disorder caused by repeated head injuries and blows to the head.
Considering Kelce took many hits while blocking for Eagles quarterbacks for 13 years, this is far from shocking news.
According to many research studies, CTE can slowly get worse over time and eventually lead to dementia, so it's probably for the best that Kelce chose to retire when he did this past March if he's experiencing symptoms.
More must-reads: