I’ve covered thousands of sporting events featuring what seems like hundreds of different sports over the years — everything from Pee Wee football on a chilly morning to the Final Four, going from riding in a bus while watching marathoners over 26.2 miles to catching powerboat racing off our Southwest Florida coastline.

A particularly unique aspect of home here is that nearly all of us come from somewhere else — a facet of life we have talked about in this space recently. The Collier County melting pot has sports ingredients from all over the country, and that makes it really cool to experience.

What we do seem to know about football and head injuries is this: They happen. Other than that? Yeah, lots of burgeoning science and correlation effect and post-life analysis allow us to hypothesize that a violent contact sport like football seems to hurt the ol' melon.